I’ve recently taken to using the dictation app on my phone to capture ideas when 1) I’ve no paper to write on, 2) no pen to write with or, 3) where taking both hands off the wheel isn’t a bright idea (like, ever).
Other than Siri sometimes deciding I meant something other than what I said, I like it. It works best if I review the transcript sooner rather than later, because if too much time passes I can’t even begin to guess what I was thinking. Or I can, but Siri’s interpretation was way more entertaining than the original.
Like this text message Siri transcribed for me, en-route to a friend’s house:
“I’m on my way. I’m at the intersection of Highway 12 and fucking. So probably 15 minutes. I have soup. And cornbread. Celibate.”
Siri is exhibiting her Freudian slips. Or cognitive dissonance. She clearly doesn’t know what she wants.
But despite these little kerfuffles, I’ve embraced dictating; and, it turns out, astonishingly, some new habits are easy to learn. Despite all the propaganda about habit-learning to the contrary, I quickly learned to tell Siri “period” and “new paragraph” and “question mark” as I dictated, to ensure she properly punctuated things as she wrote stuff up. Because, yes, punctuation matters.
The thing is, my dictation device–my phone–is also, well, a phone. I call people. They don’t answer. I go into voicemail. I leave a message by recording my voice on their device, and when my friend gets that message, they listen to my voice speaking my message.
And, because I’ve so easily adapted to dictating, my voice messages now include not only the substance of my call, but a meta-message: instructions for periods and question marks and paragraphs.
Which will be very helpful comma should my friends decide they want to transcribe my voicemail period
Daily Post-Prompt: Astonish
I know people who seem perpetually positive and upbeat. I’ve known them for years. They’ve been dealt some rough hands in life, so it isn’t that they’re simply Pollyanna’s.
A friend’s grandson, tending sick baby chickens, was late for football practice. When he arrived, he apologized to the coach, saying he had chick problems.
Reading blogs is, for me, a way to travel, because I discover new things. There’s that initial “lost feeling” experience when I first arrive. The longer I stay in a place, I’m able to get my bearings, start noticing details of the place, and meet some local folks. Then, when I head off to explore new lands, I carry these traveler-impressions with me.
Some things I take for granted. Knowing how to cook is one of them. I don’t mean just being able to follow a recipe, but knowing how to ferret through the fridge and create something out of nothing. “Let’s see what the refrigerator has for dinner tonight.”
An interesting way to write about “self.” I find it fascinating to read a description by this blogger that separates mind from body, as if two distinctly different things. Given the sometimes contradictory ways my own inner personas can respond to something, I totally get this.
I like to think when I walk into a retail store that I’m going to walk in, stride over to what I need, check out, and go home.
I call my insurance company and a robotic voice answers, telling me to press 1 for English. The voice returns and tells me to enter my account number. I punch 9 digits. Brief silence and then robotic voice tells me to press 2 for sales; 3 for billing; 4 for…I press 3, listen to a few rings, and get another robot, who again wants my account number. I re-enter the same 9 digits. Another brief silence and then I’m advised that the “next available representative will take my call” and “this call may be recorded for training purposes.”
Miss O’Connor lived in a small, blue, clapboard house, around the corner from the library. It was a short walk: out the front door, down one step to the sidewalk, past a neatly trimmed lawn edged by two rows of pansies, then 52 steps to the library entrance. It was a walk Miss O’Connor made every week of the year, except the third week of November.
Bubba and I had a party to go to across town. It was the wet of winter; rains and winds swirled outside and the sun had long set on the horizon. The idea of driving that night was unappealing; 30 minutes to get there in the dark on wet and very windy roads that risked flooding, plus the drive back after monitoring our drinking. It was a holiday party, requiring us to get dressed up in fancy attire.
Walk the Goats 