johnrobe

I'm terrible at checking voicemail. I don't know why… maybe it's because I've moved on so far from something like voice messaging, or maybe it's bad experiences with messages people have left me, but let's put the cards on the table here — I suck at listening to, and acting upon, messages left on an answering machine.

As a result, typically, the motivation I have for listening to messages is someone emailing me and saying, "Hey man, tried to leave you a message, but your mailbox is full!"

Just because I act this way doesn't mean I am proud of it, so after being inundated with messages of this nature this morning, I checked my messages, only to discover that about half of them were phone calls left by someone who dialed me accidentally from their pocket.

At first, I was annoyed by this type of call, but now I have to admit, I kind of like them. They're like a little mystery story. Who is this person? What were they doing when they called? I can hear things in the background. I can hear the rustling of their purse or their pocket. Sometimes, you're even lucky enough to hear snippets of conversation that you shouldn't hear.

Once, I even heard the person who had called me complaining that I never answered the phone! It's like they planted a bug on themselves, just for me! Gold!

As I thought about writing about all this, I thought, "I'm going to be clever and invent a term for it." I thought the perfect term was "pocket call". Good thing I did a search before blogging about my cleverness. Seems the term was invented long ago for this very thing.

Ah well, I will have to satisfy myself with knowing that I am the inventor of the increasingly commonly used term, "Tash cart".

Whatever happened to singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" for someone's birthday?

Maybe it's because "Happy Birthday to You" is so overused, but I long to hear a different song for someone's birthday, and the old standby that you used to see in movies and whatnot, Jolly Good Fellow, seems like much more of a compliment then a generic bit of well-wishing.

I was going to do some speculating of how it could be interpreted as a bit of a put down to suddenly be told that you're a jolly good fellow "… and so say all of us" instead of "… which nobody can deny", but apparently that's a regional/cultural difference. The British sing "For he's a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us" and Americans sing, "For he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny".

Sort of fits in with the cultural stereotypes I suppose. It's more American to assume that nobody can deny how great the person is, but the British are more conservative.

"Well, we can't really be sure that someone won't deny it, but by Jove, none of us would!"

I have a pair of grey pants that have a cuff at the bottom. For some reason, whenever I wash these pants, one of the cuffs gets a really weird fold in it and it looks funny, so I always have to iron the cuff of the pants.

This morning, while doing my usual ironing of my shirt, I forgot to iron the cuff of my pants, so I was all set to leave and I remembered I needed to fix it. I ran downstairs, hoping to get to it while before the iron had cooled down (surely, this is the origin of the phrase “strike while the iron is still hot").

Unfortunately for me, I was also in a hurry, so the idea of actually removing my pants to iron them though sensical, wasn't timely. So I just undid them, stepped out of the offending leg, and ironed that way. It may shock you to hear that it was awkward.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking that a cord/pants/iron entanglement and the subsequent ironing of delicate parts was about to ensue, but fortunately, you would be wrong. It went off without a hitch, except for one thing. I suddenly had the mother goose rhyme:

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John
Went to bed with his stockings on;
One shoe off, and one shoe on,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.

Going through my head.

Of course I had the alternate version:

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John
Tried to go to work with the iron still on;
Half pants off, and half pants on,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.

Sure, doesn't sound that bad — until you've had it going through your head for 8 hours straight. Good luck with that if it happens to you.

As a side note, while looking for a suitable photo to include with this post, I happened upon the one attached, which is a photo of Suresh Joachim, minutes away from breaking the ironing world record at 55 hours and 5 minutes, at Shoppers World Brampton.

You hear that world? Here in Ontario we have the world's best and fastest ironers! In your face! Sure, some may scoff at my unorthodox half-panted ironing style, but it's all part of what you need to go through to become a world class ironer, like Suresh! Maybe I should take his record on myself.

How is it that people get slower and slower and slower until finally they have to ride around in a scooter, then suddenly they're allowed to motor around at speeds that would make an olympic sprinter scared?

Today downtown I almost had to dive out of the way as 3 older folks wizzed by in formation on their scooters. Now, you are probably thinking I'm taking artistic license, but I'm not. I'm admittedly not an olympic sprinter (anymore) but there is no way I could have caught these people.

Did I mention this was indoors??? Do you need a license for these things? I don't have a car anymore… should I get a rascal?

Timmi and I went to Niagara Falls on Friday for a date. It was great, more photos and words about it later.

On the way back though, we experienced something I thought was a little unusual. We got on the bus, and the driver announced:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is an express bus, so we will only be making 3 quick stops tonight, in St. Catherines, Grimsby and Hamilton."

Have I gone my whole life with the wrong idea of what "express" meant in my head, or what? Where did the non-express stop?