The Glory of Techmology

Werk recently upgraded† to the latest Microsoft Outlook, which includes a voice-to-text for voice mail.

Let's back up: if someone leaves a message on my office phone, I get an email with the caller ID and a play button that I can either send to my phone‡ or listen to via a media player on my computer.

PLUS... when I got a company-sponsored cell phone,§ they hooked my Outlook to it, so I¶ get a copy on my cell phone of the email that contains a copy of my work voice mail when someone leaves a message on my work phone.#

Hans and I were toddling off to lunch yesterday, when my phone tick-tocked†† to tell me I had a message. When I checked it, I recognised it as a voice mail notification,‡‡ but it also had the following text§§:




Let's back up again: Brother wants to be black. At times, Brother has thought he was black. He's pretty hip to the hip hop culture, so I read the text and thought it was an actual text or an email maybe. At first, I said to myself, "Self, Brother is having problems with his autocorrect." Then I decided he was rapping some hep slang that I simply wasn't down with.¶¶

Two or three minutes of examining context and I realised it was voice-to-text## and it was kinda screwed up.

By that time, I really wanted to know what "brooklyn truck" was going to be.

Here's the actual voice recording:




And here's a transcript:

"Yo, it's your brother. I'm probably going to give you... drop you an email too, but I just thought I would check maybe if you could, um, drop by here on your way home today real quick so I can slip you a key, go over, y'know, what to do with the cat and stuff.††† Awesome. Alright, thanks. Bye."

"Brooklyn truck" is now acceptable Untiedt sibling slang for "real quick."‡‡‡


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And I use the term loosely.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Desk phone, that is.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Which isn't quite the treat it sounded like at the outset. I can't call the carrier for help, I can't add international texting - even if I pay for it myself - because if IT has to support too many odd requests they'll explode, and I don't have a mouseball on my phone and I hate that. As I whine about this, I'm wondering if I need to spend some time in a Third World country to gain perspective.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): ...can be in close, personal contact with work 24 hours a day...

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Screw the Hokey-Pokey, *that's* what it's all about.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Because that's the noise I chose to represent notifications.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): It had a picture of a phone.

§§FOOTNOTE (jump back turn around): Which was the first time I'd seen text on an email with a picture of a phone on it.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (throwin' up gang signs yo yo): Word to your mother like it's hot. And a bag of chips.

##FOOTNOTE (in for a penny or two): When I said the Outlook upgrade was recent, I apparently meant, like, yesterday.

†††FOOTNOTE (I'm just so terribly cross): Brother and his girlthing are going to Costa Rica for a week. B-cat (Beatrice, Brother's cat) is a travelling man's cat and has always been perfectly capable of entertaining herself for days on end. Brother is blaming it on the girlthing - he says ever since Cindy moved in, B-cat thinks she needs attention all the time. Hence the need for a catsitter.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (we're on the right track): I feel confident I can speak for Brother too when I say, "Don't feel you need to be an Untiedt sibling to use this wonderful new slang phrase. Spread the world! Share with your friends!"

A Mare, Egrets, Moose†

Just a few more days and I should be just about caught up.

Small. Subdued. Except, as always,‡ for the Subdude.§

So I have small¶ pictures.#





Pictures of kids are necessary, since Christmas is muchly about the kids.

Pictures of cats are necessary, since if you purport to maintain a knitblog, you must occasionally post a picture of a cat.††

Pictures of Brother are necessary when he is sporting the very festive Batman pajamas.‡‡

Pictures of AntiM and her various adult relatives are NOT necessary§§ when they are adequately represented¶¶ by the Brother picture.

[SUMMARY: Rules were meant to be made up.]

I got skulls in my stocking, and I'm delighted.





Finally, wine charms I can get behind.

[SUMMARY: Wine charms that say "poison" could be very useful.]

I don't want to run down all the loot,## but I did get one very, very blogworthy gift from Jeff's mom:†††




Mrs. Berry% writes entertaining mysteries set in a small southern town. I thought I owned most of them, but it turns out there are a couple I was missing.

Turns out there's one that's NOT EVEN OUT YET that I'm "missing."‡‡‡

Excuse me... WAS missing.§§§

My elitist little heart just goes pitter-pat.

Check out the inscription:




The temptation to take a red pen to it and return it is fierce, but I do have some sense of propriety.¶¶¶

[SUMMARY: Don't look a gift book in the inscription.]

Tomorrow, more exclusive, inside news.###


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): You know... like the Sandra Boynton card. For the record, if you Google "wee fish ewe a mare egrets moose," there are 694 entries. 691 of them are blogheadings. I am an inadvertent sheep.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Except that first week he was off afternoon naps. We looked up in the middle of family dinner and said, "Where's Dr. Doom?" He had taken himself to bed. At 6:30. *That's* subdued.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): If Tallest, Hairiest Nephew is the Dude, it follows that his little brother is the Subdude.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Size doesn't count.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Which you can click for big if you just can't get enough of the Batman pajamas.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Rule 112 (c). For cat. Also? The cat is sitting with the Appalachian birdhouse the nephews got me for Christmas.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): I said, "Oh, Dr. Doom, what a great present! I think your dad should go put it on RIGHT NOW, don't you?" That may explain the look on Brother's face.

§§FOOTNOTE (speaking of redundant): And, in fact, would be redundant.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (puts on his pajamas one leg at a time): Probably outdressed.

##FOOTNOTE (oounding home the point): Even my white fig diffuser and my George Hamilton autobiography. No, I'm not making that up... it's the adjunct to my very own copy of Zorro, the Gay Blade.

†††FOOTNOTE (three crosses to bear): Who has played bridge AND Scrabble with me and still clings to the belief that I can read. Bless her heart.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): She will *always* be Mrs. Berry.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (how do you diagram that?): I realise the usage is untenable, but I will give up all semblance of grammatical decency to get to the punchline.

§§§FOOTNOTE (§§§ubtle): That's me trying to be subtle.

¶¶¶FOOTNOTE (très, très, très... c'mon -- it's a multilingual pun. I don't have to finish it, do I?): I have no sense of propriety. I'm just trying to ensure I still have a place in Mrs. Berry's heart and a shot at sainthood.

###FOOTNOTE (pounding the celebrity beat): Me and Paris Hilton.

A Very AntiM Christmas

First, because this is still, above all, a knitblog, some knitting:




The top three are graduated bowls, based on Leigh Radford's pattern in "One Skein."

The pattern is written in two sizes, one with a cast-on of 45 stitches and one with a cast-on of 55 stitches. That would be the yellow one and the purple one, respectively.†

For the red one, I cast-on 65 stitches.

On the bottom, you may recognise the Lint Bowl, felted and felted again. It was 75 stitches. Some of the blue flecks became part of the bowl, some still hung around in the halo.

As you can see, they weren't nearly uniform. In a perfect world, Leigh Radford would have told me which Glad bowl to buy to block these suckers on. I settled for a sort of frankincense-gold-myrrh look I think is appropriate to the season.‡

I nested them, still damp, and stuffed them in a box for eBeth the SIL for Christmas. I told her that she could shape them any way she wanted while they were still wet -- could even soak them and do it all her way to start with.

One of them is now a very oblong napkin holder.

[SUMMARY: Do-it-yourself presents. Brilliant.]

I won't make you wade through the roughly 200 pictures I took of the nephews, but will treat you to a random sampling of the weirdness that is the family of AntiM:






That's me on the bottom. Brother said, "Can I write my name on your forehead?"

"No."

"Can I write my name on your nose?"

"No."

"Can I write my name on your cheeks?"

"No."

"Can I write my name on your ears?"

"No."

"Can I write my name on your arm?"

*pause*§

"OK."

*pause*¶

*scribblescribblescribble*

Five days and four showers later and I still have little blue ink flecks on my arm.

[SUMMARY: I am one with the Lint Bowl.]

The smallest bowl became B-Cat's house of pain. B-Cat was adorned, then escaped, only to be hatted again and sadly resigned to the hellish prison that is her life on Christmas:#





I got several lovely gifts, of course, but the one I find most blogworthy is this:




Yeah, look closer:




Brother tells me the Deluxe Skull has a lot more dissection capability. Mostly, this one spontaneously loses teeth.††

Brother also tells me it's made in China, so I probably shouldn't lick it.

[SUMMARY: Listen to those who know and love you.]

I have to relate a little my-nephew-did-the-cutest-thing story to you.

Dr. Doom was so excited watching me open the present he gave me. Before I even had the first flap of wrapping paper loose, he said, "It's a frame I picked out myself with a picture of me..."

"Really? I can't wait to see..."

"...a naked picture."%

"Really!"

And sure enough. Little naked Dr. Doom paddling his feet in the water. It's all very tasteful and the salient bits are out of view, but definitely a naked three-year-old.

eBeth had picked out one where he was apparently roaring at the camera and tried to talk him into that as wholly appropriate, but he was having none of it. So she put her version behind the naked picture in case I should want to maybe rotate them.

I don't know that I ever intend to rotate them.¶¶

[SUMMARY: The most Marin gift of all...]

The nephews had a pretty good Christmas morning in their new AntiM shirts.




And I love my nephews, but the best thing about Christmas morning before the drinking began was Retarded Hand-knit Superhero Puppet Theatre:




Batman: "Dude, you're wearing a skirt."

Spiderman: "At least I have a spider on my chest. You have a scary, mighty triangle. Ooooooh..."

B: "And where are your arms?"

S: "One of your ears is floppy."

B: "And your legs?"

Spiderman didn't really have a leg to stand on,‡‡ so Retarded Hand-knit Batman turned his witty wiles to Big Yellow Grappling Batman.

RHKB: "Yellow? What kind of colour is that for a superhero?"

BYGB: "Is that a triangle on your uniform?"

RHKB: "Uh... Yellow?"

BYGB: "Shut up."




[SUMMARY: Theatre of the Absurd.]

I got many tiny bottles of alcohol in my stocking, and this small bottle of what I hope is champagne, and not -- as it may be -- champagne-flavoured soda. Which sounds ghastly.




Then Brother and eBeth and the Nephs left for Pennsylvania and I stayed in bed and read almost all day Sunday and Monday. I was going to clean house. Really.

[SUMMARY: The best-laid plans of mice and Marin...§§]

It snowed on Christmas. Really, really snowed. This may not impress you, but it has never, ever in the history of Marin really snowed on Christmas. I even looked up the statistics, and, while there have been times in memory when there was snow on the ground on Christmas, those years brought only 0.2 inches of snow.

Prior to 2007, the deepest snowfall ever recorded in Denver was 1.7 inches in 1912. One-point-seven-inches, 19-fucking-12.##




So, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.




WEATHER UPDATE: It's snowing like the Third Circle of Hell here, so Denver is closed.

[SUMMARY: I'm goin' home.]


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I really wanted to make the purple one the big one, since purple's my favourite colour, but I decided to go with what eBeth might want rather than my own selfish taste. It's another Christmas miracle.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): And I will insist to my death that I *meant* it to be that way. I'll do that right before I whisper, "darjeeling" and gasp my last breath.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Wondering how long this can possibly go on.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Wondering whether to risk life and limb on a possible bluff.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Don't let her fool you too bad. She ate her own weight in kitty treats that night.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Which is mostly OK because it came with a baggie of bonus replacement teeth.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

§§FOOTNOTE (like implants on a porn star): A line I used some time last week and Brother accused me of waiting all day to use it. Might as well get some mileage out of it.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): My father, not too long ago, while watching Dr. Doom do something weird, turned to my brother and said, "You don't deserve this. Your sister, maybe, but you don't deserve this." Weirdity* and exhibitionism may skip... sideways? in the gene pool.

*FOOTNOTE WITHIN A FOOTNOTE: Because Brother is so, y'know... normal. (Where is the eye-rolling emoticon?)

¶¶FOOTNOTE (two of clubs): And I would so love to share that picture with you, but if I didn't get taken down on To Catch a Predator, I worry I'd become a very popular NAMBLA target. Once again, the line between art and pornography is blurred and trampled.

##FOOTNOTE (gaining pounds all the time): For emphasis, you know.