humour

Butt Of The Joke

/ Diane Henders / 91 Comments

…Or maybe ‘joke of the butt’ would be a more appropriate title.  Yes, I had a colonoscopy last week, and an upper GI scope at the same time – I suspect they shook hands in the middle.  But at least the specialist was kind enough to reassure me that they did use different scopes in my butt and my mouth.  Small mercies.

I won’t get into the sordid details of the day-long preparation, partly because I don’t want to gross anybody out, but mostly because Billy Connolly has already gone there in graphic and hilarious detail and I could never compete:  https://vimeo.com/24340828

In any case, the prep didn’t bother me too much.  Mind you, I’m not saying I’d care to do it again in this lifetime, but for me the worst part was not consuming anything but clear fluids for an entire day.  I am not a happy camper when I’m hungry.

I wasn’t too worried about the procedure since I knew they would be giving me conscious sedation, and it worked – I don’t remember a thing between when they started the IV and when I became aware again in the recovery room.

And that creeped me out more than all the prep and procedure combined.

If I’d been fully anesthetized, I wouldn’t have worried; but when other patients returned from their procedures they were fully conscious and (apparently) coherent.  The guy in the bed across from me was acting completely normal – reading his chart and visiting with the nurse while she gave him the recovery-room fare of orange juice and cookies.

I don’t remember a thing until I had orange juice and cookies in my hand.  I don’t even remember the nurse handing them to me.  Suddenly, I was just… there.  Eating cookies.

Uh-oh.

I expend a lot of effort maintaining my verbal filters in public, and if I was sedated enough to eliminate those filters, there’s no telling what I might have said.

Probably something like, “Hey, Doc, if you’re gonna do that, you could at least kiss me first.”

Or I might have recited one (or several) of the classic lines overheard during colonoscopies:

  • “Take it easy, Doc, you’re boldly going where no man has gone before.”
  • “Find Amelia Earhart yet?”
  • “Can you hear me NOW?”
  • “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
  • “You know, in Arkansas, we’re now legally married.”
  • “Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?”
  • “Now I know how a Muppet feels!”
  • “Hey, Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.”
  • “You used to be an executive at Enron, didn’t you?”
  • “Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not, in fact, up there?”

Worse, apparently you have to expel all the gas that they blow inside you, and I don’t remember doing that, either.  But I know far too many fart jokes and if my inhibitions were down, God only knows what I might have said.

They didn’t treat me any differently when they released me, so I’m hoping I kept my inappropriate sense of humour under control.

But I’ll never know whether I’m now the butt of their jokes…

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  What do you think of Tom?  Click here to have your say!

The Closet Reveal

/ Diane Henders / 37 Comments

Thanks to everybody who took at guess at which items weren’t in my closet last week!  It was lots of fun (and occasionally slightly disturbing) to read all the guesses and the reasoning behind them.  So, without further ado, here’s the photographic evidence along with my reasons/excuses for harbouring such oddball items.  (Hubby and I share the closet, but for the sake of fairness I only included items that belong to me.)

But first a disclaimer:  we’re actually not total closet-slobs.  Here’s how our closet normally looks:

closet

And here’s the exploded view with the items numbered according to the original list:

closet inventory1

closet inventory2

closet inventory3

closet inventory4

closet inventory5

And now for the explanations:

1. Umpteen pairs of jeans – Yep.  No explanation required.

2. Bellydance scarves with jingly coins – Remember this post with this video?

3. A bearskin rug – It’s a sleigh rug, left over from the 1930s when my dad used to drive the horse and sleigh to elementary school in Manitoba’s bitter-cold winters.  I’m impressed that almost everybody accepted its presence without question!

4. A bag of cosmetics – Believe me, I was as shocked as you when I discovered this ten-year-old item lurking in the bottom of one of my dusty unused handbags.

5. Books – As @krsmithsite pointed out, the proper place for books is on my giant wall of bookshelves; but I keep my first editions tucked away in a storage bin in my closet.

6. Suitcases – I bought the tiger-print because I thought it would be easy to spot on a baggage carousel… and then I ended up in a wrestling match with some other lady who’d thought the same thing and made off with my suitcase thinking it was her own.

7. A stuffed deer head – Nope, but I’m surprised and flattered by the number of people who thought I might have one in there.  It’s good to be unpredictable. 🙂

8. A white cowboy hat decorated with pearls and silk flowers – From our campy western-themed wedding seventeen years ago.  Neither of us cared about “traditional” so we decided to just have fun with it!

Phill & Diane wedding Aug 13 1999 hi-res9. A stuffed rat – Several years ago, Ikea’s toy designers apparently thought every child should have a cuddly rodent, and my funnybone was so tickled that I had to buy a couple.  (Not Fuzzy Bunny, @ElTea, but close.)  The rats migrate around our house, showing up in odd places and provoking chuckles every time.

10. A heart monitor – For use with my Nike Smartwatch at the gym.

11. Wax crayons – I keep some goodies in my closet for when the little great-nieces-and-nephews come to visit.

12. A plastic flute – See above.

13. A set of knives – The same tub contains items that are awaiting either gifting or re-gifting, and I don’t even remember where this carving set came from.  (Shhh, don’t tell.)

14. 4½” candy-apple red stiletto pumps – Nope.  I’d love to say I own a pair, but I don’t.

15. A backpack – Actually, I have a couple of them in there, plus a couple of duffel bags.

16. Half a dozen waist pouches – Sorry, @jenny_o, I really do have half a dozen.  I buy them in bulk whenever I can find them because they’re hard to come by and I wear them out fast.  (My friend Judy refuses to be seen with me while I’m buying them.  I think she’s afraid my fashion disability might be contagious.)

17. A luggage cart – Yep.

18. Pink cowboy boots – That’s a resounding ‘no’.  I do have several pairs of western boots, but I draw the line at pink.

19.Christmas cards – Gotta store ‘em somewhere.

20. A camera tripod – See above.

21. Dusty business clothes – It’s probably about time to vacuum them again…

22. A Frisbee – Nope, the Frisbees live in the garage.

23. 4½” leopard-print satin stiletto pumps – I got them for ten bucks at Payless, intending to use them for a photo shoot that never happened.  But they give me a giggle because they make me think of the scene with Lurene and her zebra stilettos in Book 5, so I’m keeping them.  After all, who knows when one might need satin animal-print stilettos?

24. A sequined evening gown – Believe it or not I have one, and it still fits.  It’s a classic design, so I might even wear it again.  Someday.  Maybe.  But not with Item 23.

25. A dead plant – No.  Usually my plants flourish and take over, but if one actually dies I commend its remains to my backyard garden, not my closet.

26. A soap dispenser – Yep, it’s another item in the gift tub.

27. Dust bunnies – I’d love to say no, but the embarrassing truth is that I found a flock of them happily reproducing behind my storage bins.

28. Boxing gloves – One pair 14-oz. boxing gloves; one pair muay thai gloves.

29. Scented candles – These live in the gift tub, too, waiting for their scent to dissipate enough that I can stand to have them in the house.  It’s been about five years so far.

30. A clothes shaver – For some reason I have two.  Never been used.

And… drum roll, please…

As you’ve probably noticed, nobody correctly guessed all five items; but Lois and el Tea were closest with three each.  So, as a tie-breaker I’ll use a random number generator to select a number between 1 and 100 – whoever guesses closest gets an appearance in Book 12!  Ladies, please post your guess in the comments below.

Thanks for playing, everybody!  And now, inquiring minds want to know:  What’s the oddest thing in your closet?

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  Watch Your Language, Young Lady!  How do you feel about Aydan’s swearing?  Click here to have your say!

Peek Into My Closet

/ Diane Henders / 89 Comments

A few months ago I mentioned I had run across a list of impromptu speech topics for kids.  It amused me, so I hung onto it for potential inspiration.  One of the topics that caught my eye was “What you would find in my closet”.  Prosaic, yes?  But the part that tickled my funnybone was the addendum:  “Make something up”.

Well.

Let’s have a peek into my imaginary closet, shall we?

First off, don’t step into that human-sized glass cylinder with the Google Maps interface displayed on the outside.  That’s my teleportation chamber, and it’ll send me anywhere on earth in the blink of an eye.  (And it gets me there and back intact, too, unlike the Galaxyquest version.)

Next to that is a safe containing several million dollars in untraceable cash.

Why are you looking at me like that?  Of course I’d never use my teleporter to pop into bank vaults in the dark of night!  I won that money fair and square with the lottery ticket that’s framed on the wall right over the vault.  Honest.

At the back is a TARDIS – not because I want to travel through time, but because it’s bigger on the inside.  One can never have too much closet space.

Inside the TARDIS is a giant toolbox full of high quality tools, all clean and organized and ready for use.  (And it’s got a Hubby-proof lock on it so the tools stay clean and organized and ready to use.)

There’s also a gourmet kitchen stocked with the latest tools and appliances, fresh delicious ingredients, and that all-important cooking gadget: a top-notch personal chef.  And a trap/skeet and rifle range; and a fully-equipped gym.

That’s where my flight of fancy ends, but I’m harbouring quite a few oddball items in reality, too.  If you can correctly guess which five items aren’t currently residing in my closet, I’ll write you into Book 12 in a cameo appearance!

  1. Umpteen pairs of jeans
  2. Bellydance scarves with jingly coins
  3. A bearskin rug
  4. A bag of cosmetics
  5. Books
  6. Suitcases
  7. A stuffed deer head
  8. A white cowboy hat decorated with pearls and silk flowers
  9. A stuffed rat
  10. A heart monitor
  11. Wax crayons
  12. A plastic flute
  13. A set of knives
  14. 4½” candy-apple red stiletto pumps
  15. A backpack
  16. Half a dozen waist pouches
  17. A luggage cart
  18. Pink cowboy boots
  19. Christmas cards
  20. A camera tripod
  21. Dusty business clothes
  22. A Frisbee
  23. 4½” leopard-print satin stiletto pumps
  24. A sequined evening gown
  25. A dead plant
  26. A soap dispenser
  27. Dust bunnies
  28. Boxing gloves
  29. Scented candles
  30. A clothes shaver

Which five of these things are not in my closet at the time of writing?  Make your guess before next Tuesday July 19th at midnight MDT!  And yes, I promise I’ll explain the presence of some of the strange items next week.

What’s in your imaginary closet?

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  How Do You Like That Setting?  Click here to have your say!

Disgusting Butt Mounds

/ Diane Henders / 57 Comments

So tell me:  When you read the title of this post, what was your mental image?

Okay, maybe that isn’t a fair question.  After all, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, I’d be shocked if you didn’t immediately leap to an off-colour interpretation just because you know me too well.

So let’s keep this scientific and unbiased.  I’ll rephrase the question:  What would you have envisioned if you’d seen that title on the page of a serious and established online newspaper?

At this point you may be shaking your head and saying, “Get a grip.  It’s just another one of your twisted misreads.”

You’d be completely justified in thinking that, but no; this time I had read the headline correctly.  In its entirety, it read: “Will Timmins council get rid of downtown’s disgusting butt mounds?”

I read it once; then again.  Triple-checked to be sure I wasn’t misreading it.

Stared at it, wondering, “What the hell can they possibly be talking about?”

And then my brain exploded with speculations and vile mental images:

Speculation 1:  Maybe the denizens of downtown Timmins have frequent and/or intentional wardrobe malfunctions that expose their disgusting butt mounds, and everybody’s sick of seeing them.  (I visualize the follow-up headline: “Timmins eyes buttcrack bylaw”.)

wardrobe malfunction

Speculation 2:  Perhaps people are reacting to one of those ill-conceived investments in Downtown Art that leaves everybody questioning the sanity of both the city council and the artist.  (New headline:  “Timmins makes cracks about butt-ugly sculpture”.)

kiss this

Speculation 3:  Or maybe the Butt Mounds are some sort of natural landscape feature that the citizens of Timmins find offensive and their city council is coming under pressure to raze the eyesore.  (New headline:  “Environmentalists implore: ‘Timmins, support your Butt Mounds!’”)

butt mounds

Sad to say, I wasn’t even close with any of my speculations.  Nope, they were talking about mounds of cigarette butts in the outdoor smoking areas:  https://www.sudbury.com/around-the-north/will-timmins-council-get-rid-of-downtowns-disgusting-butt-mounds-328274

Well, shit.  Talk about anticlimactic.  But at least it gave me a giggle or three.

What’s funny in your world this week?

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New discussion at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  Two Guys, One Girl – What Do You Think?  Click here to have your say!

Self-Driving Auto-Paranoia

/ Diane Henders / 50 Comments

A couple of days ago I discovered an article about how and when a self-driving car should be programmed to injure or kill its passengers.  It’s an alarming proposition, but it’s actually a valid point:  if the car has to choose between wiping out ten pedestrians or only its driver, simple logic says it should choose the lesser number of casualties.

But the realization that my future vehicle may be plotting to kill me makes me just a wee bit mistrustful of technology.

Or, in my case, more mistrustful of technology.  I’ve never been good at leaving my safety in the hands (circuits?) of inanimate objects.  (Or even animate objects, for that matter.  I’m a lousy passenger even with a human driver – I spend as much time watching the road as the driver does.  But that’s another story.)

My point is, I’m suspicious of any electronic device that wants to make decisions for me.

Take my GPS, for instance.  The lady inside my GPS can usually get me where I want to go, but she’s not always good at it.  When we’re in unfamiliar territory, Hubby usually drives while I navigate.  Theoretically the GPS should be all we need, but I never go anywhere without a paper map; partly because my GPS has a tendency to announce “Low battery!” and/or lose its satellite connection at critical moments, but mostly because I don’t trust it to choose the best route.

I can set it to ‘faster time’ (which is usually dog-slow) or ‘shortest distance’ (synonymous for ‘via goat-paths and dodgy neighbourhoods’), but there’s no setting for ‘common sense’.  So, after a few forays through dense forest on steep roads no wider than our car (though, as the GPS insisted, that road was technically ‘paved’) our trips have become a power struggle between the GPS and me.

The GPS lady says, “In… two hundred metres… turn left.”

And I say, “Ignore that.  It doesn’t know what it’s doing.  Keep going straight.”

Hubby, like all husbands with a modicum of self-preservation, silently follows my directions while the GPS says in snotty tones, “Recalculating.  In… one hundred metres… make a U-turn.”

Me:  “Ignore that.  Keep going.”

GPS (getting cranky):  “Recalculating.  In… three kilometres… TURN LEFT, IDIOT!”

Me:  “Ignore that…”

Given the choice, I’d rather have an up-to-date paper map and only use the GPS to pinpoint the location of the nearest Dairy Queen.  (And don’t get me wrong; that’s a critical function.  I need frequent ice cream breaks when I’m on the road.)

But antagonizing my GPS is probably a bad idea, because the new cars will have them built in.  And if a hostile GPS triggers the ‘kill-the-driver’ algorithm, I could be in serious trouble.

On the surface, the self-driving car seems utopian:  I could be snoozing or reading or snacking while my car takes me safely and efficiently to my destination.  But in reality I’d probably end up sitting in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel, simultaneously watching the road and keeping a wary eye on the car in case it tries to kill me.

But maybe I’m just paranoid.

Or maybe that’s not a ‘maybe’…

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And speaking of technology… there’s a new discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  Aydan’s Tech Gadgets – Love ‘Em Or Hate ‘Em?  Click here to have your say!

Give Me Air!

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

I used to be much tougher; but the older I get, the more I enjoy the comfort of modern conveniences.  Yep, I’m turning into an elderly wimp.

When I was a kid there was no such thing as sunscreen; or if there was, the news of it hadn’t filtered through to our little rural backwater.  As a fair-skinned redhead, sunburns were inevitable unless I wanted to stay indoors all my life.

I didn’t.  I was out all day long in my shorts and T-shirt, playing in haystacks and crawling through tall grass and wading in ditches; putting cool compresses on the sunburn at night and peeling the skin off a few days later until I was one big freckle that lasted until winter.

Our little farmhouse didn’t have air conditioning in the early days, and there was no escape from the muggy heat of a Manitoba summer.  Even with all the windows open, the house was airless.  Clothing and bedding were perpetually damp and clammy from the humidity.

Big black crickets infiltrated the house in summer.  I’ll never forget the first time my brother brought one of his girlfriends home for the first time.  We were sitting at the dinner table when, in a momentary lull in the conversation, there was an audible *plop*.  Yep, a giant cricket had crawled out from behind the wall clock and fallen to the floor before scuttling into the safety of a nearby air vent.  The memory of the look on that girl’s face still makes me snicker.  (Their relationship didn’t last, oddly enough.)

But…

These days I don’t venture outdoors without slathering on sunscreen, swaddling myself in long sleeves and long pants, and donning a hat and sunglasses.

My skin is now sensitive to some invisible critter that lives in grass and dirt, so anytime I’m working or playing outside I have to tuck my pant legs into my socks to prevent giant red welts on my legs.  (This has the added bonus of making me look like a complete doofus.)

If even a single bug ventures into my house I instantly swoop down and annihilate it.  (Unless it’s a spider or a ladybug, in which case I gently pick it up and put it outside unharmed. But all others get heartlessly squished.)

And a couple of years ago we had central air installed.

Here in Calgary, air conditioning is viewed with a hint of condescension (until the temperature tops +30C/86F, at which point it’s regarded with envy).  We usually only get a couple of weeks of hot weather and even then the temperature rarely exceeds +15C/59F at night.  Most people just open the windows when it’s cool and close them during the day.  Air conditioning is for wussies.

So when I sit in my cool, comfortable living room while everybody else bakes… instead of feeling smug, I feel a bit embarrassed.

That is, until a few days ago when the air conditioner inexplicably quit.  And the temperature rose one degree inside the house.

Well.

The way I rushed off to phone the service line, you’d think the fires of hell were licking at the crack of my ass.  “OMG, the temperature’s gone up a degree and the air conditioner isn’t running!  What will I DO?!?”

Um… take a pill, that’s what.  A couple of years ago the temperature in our bedroom regularly topped +30C in the summer.  It didn’t kill me.

But apparently now it will.

‘Scuse me while I totter off to my rocking chair now…

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  When does a series end for you?  Click here to have your say!

Beating The Bean Breeze

/ Diane Henders / 59 Comments

Sometimes I just don’t think things through the way I should.  For example, the other day I had beans for lunch… a few hours before going for a massage.

So the masseur is working on my lower back and hamstrings, and I’m thinking, “Uh-oh.  Those beans are kicking in.  What’s the etiquette here?”

I mean, the whole point of a massage is to relax.  Clenching one’s butt cheeks together kinda defeats the purpose.  And having somebody put pressure on the inflated area really doesn’t help, either.

But what do you do?

Just let ‘er rip and pretend nothing happened?  I don’t think so.  Even if I managed to squeak out a silent-but-deadly, there are only two of us in the room.  The masseur knows nothing came out of his ass, so the process of elimination (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) is fairly simple.  I’d know; he’d know; and each of us would know the other knew.

Or do I make up some polite lie?  “Excuse me, I need to stand up to stretch out for a few minutes.  Could you please leave the room and I’ll let you know when I’m back on the table?”

Seems like a good option at first, but if I really was just stretching and repositioning, it wouldn’t take that long.  What happens when he comes back into the room and his eyes start to water?  Then we’re right back to the painful process of pretending everything is fine while we both quietly asphyxiate and I melt into a puddle of sheer humiliation.

It might be better to get it all out in open (so to speak):  “Sorry, I had beans for lunch and I’ve just now realized the consequences of that.  If you value your hands you’ll take them away from the vicinity of my nether regions right now.  Go stand outside, and I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come back in here.”

But I’m thinking that might make things a little awkward.

The worst part was that it made me think about Chaucer, and trying to suppress both a giggle and a fart nearly did me in.

I know that last sentence has left you wondering ‘WTF?!?’, particularly since I revealed some time ago that I hated all the literary classics.

Thus my mother’s devious brilliance is revealed.  She was a teacher, and she found a foolproof way to interest recalcitrant teenagers in Middle English literature.  She didn’t go on about how Chaucer is considered the father of English literature and the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. Nope; one day she ever-so-casually mentioned that Chaucer had a dirty mind and wrote poems with farts in them.

Well, hello, “The Canterbury Tales”!

Which brings me full circle:  Lying on the massage table trying not to reenact “The Summoner’s Tale” and suppressing giggles and farts with equal determination.

Can anybody help me out with the correct etiquette for the situation?

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New discussion over at the VBBC:  Aydan Then And Now.  How has Aydan changed, and how has your opinion of her changed?  Click here to have your say!

Zen, Shmen.

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

Sometimes a lifetime of voracious reading is an advantage; other times, not so much.  On the upside, as long as I have a book (or newspaper or magazine or propaganda pamphlet or even a shampoo bottle with text on the label) I’ll never be bored.

On the downside, having a bottomless well of trivia in one’s brain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  I know what to do in just about any situation, but it’s not always practicable to do it.

For example, I know how to make a gas mask out of an empty bleach bottle, a bulletproof vest out of Bibles, and a deadly weapon out of a newspaper.  I sincerely hope I’ll never be in a situation where I need these skills.  But if I were, I suspect that the chances of actually having an empty bleach bottle, a stack of Bibles, or a newspaper are slim to none.

In the non-lethal side of my reading, I’ve also absorbed a startling variety of random information:  Business and marketing and writing tips out the ying-yang, of course; but also fascinating factoids on everything from neuroplasticity, Buddhism, and quantum physics to Wicca, time management, and mindfulness meditation.

The latter two came to mind last weekend while I was broiling in my car at a dead stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  There’s something about a traffic jam that ratchets my blood pressure up to Vesuvius levels.  It’s part claustrophobia and part resentment over the waste of my all-too-scant ‘spare’ time.

The time management books tell me that sitting in traffic is an ideal time to plan to-do lists and so forth, but I think they underestimate my powers of concentration.  (Which is a polite way to say I’m incapable of driving and thinking at the same time.)  If I started plotting Book 12 while sitting in a traffic jam, I’d blink back to reality two hours later still parked in the same place while infuriated drivers honked and swerved around me, spewing invective and flipping me the universal gesture of fellowship and goodwill.

Or how about Zen and mindfulness?  I should ‘be in the moment’.  There was no emergency; I wasn’t late for any appointments; and there were absolutely no negative consequences that could result from my slowdown.  I should just breathe.  Relax and enjoy the downtime.

Zen, shmen.  I knew a detour that would take me to my destination via the back ways and save me oodles of time!

Or not.

In the traffic jam, I had noticed that the black minivan ahead of me had a distinctive set of those little family-caricature decals on the back.  When I finally made it to my destination half an hour after winding through a series of convoluted back streets, guess what I saw in front of me?  That same damn minivan.  Apparently it took precisely the same amount of time to inch through the traffic jam as it had taken me to follow my complicated detour.

That took a bit of the shine off my triumph, but not as much as you might think.  I’d rather be actively driving than sitting in traffic for the same amount of time.  And at least nobody yelled or flipped me off.

Zen traffic meditator or complex detour planner – which are you?  And what’s the most obscure thing you’ve learned lately?

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New discussion over at the VBBC:  Blue Eddy:  Man of Mystery.  What do you really know about Eddy?  Click here to have your say!

Corrupting The Dragon

/ Diane Henders / 70 Comments

*F-BOMB ALERT*  This post contains a non-comprehensive list of swearwords and assorted vulgarities

When my nieces and nephews were young, I expended quite a bit of effort censoring my language while they were present.  When they finally became adults, I breathed a giant sigh of relief and promptly shocked the shit out of them when I reverted to my normal vocabulary.

I didn’t really mean to let it out all at once; it was just that I was so glad to finally be past the point where I could be accused of corrupting innocents.  I knew they’d heard it all before in school long before they ever heard those words pass my lips, but I didn’t want to be accused of being a bad example.

(Though, come to think of it, I’m still a bad example.  But at least as adults they can choose whether it’s more appropriate to follow my bad example or just pretend they don’t know me.)

Anyhow, my point is:  I thought my days as a corrupting influence were over.

I was wrong.  Last week I corrupted a dragon.

Not a mythical beast (which would have been oh-so-cool), but a software dragon.  Dragon Naturally Speaking, to be exact.  It’s supposed to transcribe spoken words into typed text and I’m always looking for ways to streamline my work, so several weeks before Christmas I bit the bullet and laid my money down.  Then I got so busy I didn’t have time to set it up.

But I finally had time to tackle it last week.  After a rocky start in which it pretended to recognize my microphone but in fact ignored it (causing me to exercise my considerable vocabulary once again), I got everything installed and ready to go.

Dragon learns your vocal quirks and vocabulary as it goes along.  One of the ways it does this is by reading through documents you’ve written and learning all the words that aren’t currently in its database.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

Yep, Dragon wanted to learn from me.  And hoo-boy, did it!  I was afraid its little software synapses were going to melt.

Its analysis of my latest book took quite a bit of time.  Then it spat out a list of ‘new words’ that looked like a tutorial for a preacher’s son off the leash for the first time:

dragon vocabulary

dragon vocabulary2

I didn’t know whether to laugh or be ashamed of myself.  (I laughed, of course.  Uproariously.)  And I foresee even more laughter in the future, when the software mistakes innocent words for their less polite counterparts.  Let’s just say that I won’t be using it anytime soon for writing business emails (unless I scrupulously edit it first).

To tell the truth, I’m little bit pleased that the next time Dragon messes up and makes me emit a burst of profanity, it’ll actually understand what I’m trying to say.

But I haven’t activated its ‘talk back’ feature yet.  Somehow that just seems like asking for trouble…

Anybody else ever used a speech-to-text program?  Any tips for getting the Dragon to sit up and pay attention?

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How are we doing over at the VBBC?  Click here to have your say!

Sordid Chocolate Mousse

/ Diane Henders / 42 Comments

As you’ve probably guessed if you’ve read my books, I’m a foodie – I love to eat, try new foods, and cook.  Although when things go awry the way they did this week, well… not so much.  But I’m addicted to recipes, and the internet is my evil enabler.

So this week I got sucked in by Blender Chocolate Mousse from a local food blogger’s site:  Dinner With Julie.  The recipe required a blender (quelle surprise), which I rarely use because it’s a pain in the ass to clean. But all the stars and planets had aligned:  I had my food processor out anyway, I happened to have whipping cream in my fridge, and the recipe sang its siren song.

(Note the critical disparity in the previous paragraph:  Blender Chocolate Mousse.  I have a food processor.  This is how fiascos begin.)

Per the instructions, I chucked the chocolate in the food processor, poured in the hot custard, and fired that sucker up.  Knowing that disaster lurks behind the simplest activities, I heeded Julie’s advice to put a towel over the food processor just in case.  But it performed faultlessly – not a single drop of chocolate marred my towel.  Smugly congratulating myself, I removed the towel and took off the food processor lid.

That’s when everything went to hell.

Blenders have watertight lids.  Food processors have lids with a large hole in them for the pusher device.  As soon as I tilted the lid to scrape the mousse off the inside, the pusher thing fell out on the counter.  It was, of course, covered with liquid chocolate mousse.  It bounced.  Several times.

Chocolate mousse splattered over several feet of counter, the backsplash, other appliances and me.  That generated some creative language, but little did I know it was only a foreshadowing of things to come.

The blending bowl in my food processor has an open tube in the centre for the driveshaft, and the blade housing sits atop it.  So you have to remove the blade housing before you pour anything out of the blending bowl.

Liquid chocolate mousse is really slippery.  The blade housing is a smooth plastic cone.  I couldn’t get hold of it.

After scrabbling uselessly at it for longer than I care to admit, I finally brained up and hooked a spatula under the blade.  When I pulled it out, chocolate mousse dribbled through the bowl opening, all over the driveshaft, and all the way to the sink; but by then everything was so sticky that it didn’t make much difference.  I poured the mousse into ramekins and turned to the cleanup.

In my defense, I’d like to reiterate that it was chocolate mousse.  And wasting chocolate is a crime.

At least, that was my excuse when Hubby rounded the corner and caught me licking the shaft of the food processor.  For the record, there are few things more embarrassing than getting caught performing fellatio on a kitchen appliance.  Especially when it’s one you don’t even love.

I mean, I could be forgiven for getting it on with my sexy European tomato press.  Even being caught in the act with my virile high-powered juicer wouldn’t have been so bad.  But a chocolate-smeared food processor?  It just seemed so… sordid.

Anyway, I got the kitchen cleaned up at last, and the mousse was delicious – silky-smooth and over-the-top chocolatey.

But I’m not sure it was worth it.

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