A few days ago, James woke me up in the morning.

"Were you expecting a call from Mark today?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, because I was.

"I don't think you're going to get it," he said, in that rare tone of voice that he uses when he's not happy to be delivering bad news. "There's been a death in the family."

I've been dwelling a lot lately on my brother's likely deployment to Iraq, and this news FREAKED ME THE FUCK OUT. "What!? Whose family?" I was trying to wake up, but there was that morning fogginess that make my panic feel like I was still stuck in a nightmare, so I wasn't sure if what he was saying was what I was hearing.

"In our family," he said, and now I was completely disoriented and just stammered a bit. I think he wasn't expecting his words to jar me as much as they did, because he looked a little guilty and said, "I mean, your phone died."

Oh. Alright then.

At this point, I was so relieved that no person had actually expired that I didn't really care that much that the night before, upon returning from a night out walking in the rain, we'd drunkenly put our pants in the washing machine without checking the pockets.

Remarkably, the iPhone is still able to power up a bit ... but only a bit. The logo appears on the screen for a few seconds, and then the whole thing just shuts off. We've tried every method of drying it out imaginable -- including putting it in the oven on "warm," surrounded by dessicating rice. No luck. So oh well -- I'll probably just be getting a new one, which is fine, and not something I'd have been able to do if it was an actual death in the family.