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Did y'all think that there wasn't going to be an update today?

Me too!

And yet, here I am, pondering about what appropriate blog fodder would be for a day on which my brain is already at the beach (an oddity, that, because I usually don't care for the beach).

So, in a flurry of mental flappery, here's what I settled on as the topic of the day: Voicemail messages.

Work with me here, folks. I do come to a point eventually.

Over the past weekend I was goofing around with a friend, leaving horrific voicemail greetings in terrible British accents. I did MY voicemail greeting in a particularly bad accent, which cracked me up to no end.

Then I forgot to change it.

So what? you might think. What's the big deal? Who really cares about that?

What you might not know is that my cell phone is my EVERYTHING phone - good for personal calls, business calls, school calls, WORK CALLS, etc etc.

I have thus far confused 1 handyguy bookergirl (who, bless her, actually left a message that was completely on-topic, then later confessed to great degree of confusion), 1 friend (who, bless her, thought it was terrible and told me so), and 1 boss (who, bless her, asked me "where did that voice come from?" and had the good grace to laugh at/with me when I told her it was me.)

Currently, I have no plans to change the greeting but for a minor re-do, in which I CLEARLY IDENTIFY that it's MY phone and that I've hired some snobby answering service to take my calls. Cuz dudes? That shizz is funny no matter WHERE you live.

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This bizarre voicemail message thing continues a long history I have with all varieties of answering machine-age.

See, when I was in grad school (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), there was no internet. As a result of this shocking lack of amusement, we very often had to turn creative with our other outlets in order to express ouselves.

I chose the answering machine as my base of operations.

(ASIDE: The thing was, when I was in school nobody could ever find me, least of all my parents, who worried over me and wanted, nay, NEEDED, to talk with me, and feared for my overall health and safety when they couldn't get it touch with me.

WEEKS would pass before I'd call them if left to my own devices.

This is why they bought me my first answering machine, because with it they could at least LEAVE a message. Whether I returned it or not was always a matter of debate.

End of ASIDE)

What y'all may not know about me is that I have (or did have, anyhow) mad imitation skillz, and a tendency to pick up accents and personalities (I'm just like my Dad in this regard). These skills were put into play on a regular basis during my "answering machine" years, to the point that my folks and friends would call and hope I didn't pick up the phone so that they could listen to the outgoing message.

I recall being a Chinese Restaurant, a Swedish Massage Parlor, A Mexican eatery, someone underwater, a man, and a giddy valley girl. There were others. Many others. I rotated out a message weekly, sometimes more often, just because I could, and because maybe I got a little fixated on the whole thing. Maybe.

It appears as though a new era is about to begin, this time with the cell phone. One BIG issue though is that NOW I just have to balance what I think would be hilarious with the fact that people at work and my kids' friend's parents might be leaving mesages.

So, ya got any suggestions for what might work given THOSE restraints?

I'm open to any and all suggestions.

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Y'all have a great weekend - I'm headed out into the hot in search of a sprinkler and a beer.