Some conversations are so predictable that you don't actually need the other person to participate. Others... not so much.

For instance. Today, we've been making lots of phone calls (no, insurance does not cover a water heater; it would cover the flooring if the repair went above our $1000 deductible, but while we're at it we're going to tear up all of the carpeting and replace it with laminate so it won't be worth involving insurance) and my dad and I went to Home Depot to browse through their "Install it Your Damn Self Flooring" aisle.

On the way out the door, my phone rang. It was Willem, with an odd tone to his voice - not the "water problems" tone, more of the "WTF" tone. "When are you going to get home?" he asked.

"Soon," I said. "We're leaving Home Depot now, so maybe 15 minutes."

"Okay. Because the flooring guy is here for the estimate."

"Yeah..." Can you see where this is going? I couldn't either.

"And he bent over to look at something on the floor."

"Yeah..." Oh, God. He had a heart attack. There's a dead flooring installer on my living room floor. I bet insurance won't cover that, either.

"And his glasses fell off. And they broke."

"Okay..." And you want me to buy him new glasses? Help me out, here.

"And neither of us has the manual dexterity to put them back together. We need you to come home and fix them so he can leave."

Seriously. At any moment during that conversation, Monty Hall could have shown up and offered me $1,000,000 or what's behind Curtain #3 to supply the next sentence, and I'd have walked away empty-handed. Or, worse, with a goat wearing diapers.

They were able to fix the glasses before I got home. I'm hopeful that it'll earn us a discount - Personal Medical Device Reduction or something - because something has to go well today. Just anything, really.