Ah, Memories

At long last, I have gotten a new phone. But now is not the time to talk about that. First I must eulogize my old phone. My old phone and I have been through many things together. There was that period where I could only take calls standing in a certain spot next to my chair. Not in the chair, of course, but next to the chair. There was that period where I would get cut off four times during one conversation. There was that period where I had to charge it daily, when I wasn't even using it, because its battery ran down at three times the speed of a normal phone. Happy times!

I feel like there should be a genre of jokes like the "yo momma so fat" jokes, except instead it would be like, "yo phone so old . . . it has an antenna." Yo phone so old, it only has eighteen buttons. Yo phone so old, it has buttons. Yo phone so old, you can't type parentheses on it. Yo phone so old, you can cover its whole screen with your thumb. Yo phone so old, it folds out. Yo phone so old, it can't take pictures. Yo phone so old, it doesn't have a calendar. Yo phone so old, it can't play music. Yo phone so old, you wait to answer it on three rings because you can't be sure it isn't a party line.

My phone is really old. My phone is so old I couldn't get my contacts and old texts off it, so I had to take pictures of the good ones.

This is like practically my first text ever. Sent to me by my boss. While I was sitting next to her. While we were manning the booth at the medieval conference at Kalamazoo.

This was followed by "Bill O'Reilly waxes his legs," which is almost certainly not true, and moreover not our business if it is, but we were really, really bored. Hence this text from Matt during that conference: "Personality assignment of the hour: Ann Coulter, drunk, and convinced she has a parrot on her shoulder."

Others that amuse me, and probably only me, include:

From Ivan: New favorite word for fin-footed mammals: pinnipeds. Second only to “dugongs” in awesomeness.

Also from Ivan: It’s all fun and games til someone drops their pants in the fire.

Also also from Ivan: We’ll just shave a normal cake. It will be fantastic.

From Matt: Gatie. Hdjekn. I aqe upridemfnxd. Ru are akso sassz. Pleare enej kibke ne   jtj!? <3Matt

Also from Matt: Was Ingrid Dutch? I can’t remember . . . (This really is only funny to me. But I find it hilarious.)

From Katie P, who never texts me, but felt it was important that I know who she was sitting across from on the train: Dark hair, olive skin, super light eyes, and no smart phone.

And this one, from Dan, who was standing outside my door at the time:

Goodbye, phone. You have served me well. Sort of.

Just Checking In

In case you wondered how Meridian: The Original Alpaca is doing, he is as handsome as ever.

His profile is still very distinguished.

And he has a healthy appetite:

My sister tells me one of her coworkers recently started an alpaca farm out of the blue. I anticipate this happening to me someday. I imagine it is like waking up one morning and realizing that everything is now clear. All the things you thought you wanted were just nonsense. What do you really need in life? To have a good-tempered and huggable alpaca nearby at all times. That is all. That, and maybe a capybara, a tiny house, and a snap-bracelet watch. Nothing else matters.

Halfway There

We have snacks at the office-- nothing fancy, but there's a good assortment of crackers, chips and granola bars. And apparently we also have someone at the office watching their weight, because half-eaten packets of food keep showing up in the snack basket. And someone, fed up with these rejected bags of partially handled comestibles, put up a sign... a warrant if you will, for "The Half Bandit", wanted for the crime of eating half of something and putting it back-- like anyone else would want it. This sign was seen as universally clever and stayed fixed to the cupboard door for several weeks. And today, I went to the kitchen for a coffee and found this:
Whoever ripped that sign in half... please be my friend?

Teeny Tiny

My dear friend and pen pal Natalie recently went to Ecuador. She wrote me a beautiful letter about her adventures and included some incredible pictures, including one of some butterflies that I honestly thought were fancy hair combs someone had for some reason dropped on the ground. I'm a bit slow sometimes.

Anyway, inside the envelope there were also these wee folks:

Look how tiny! They are about an inch tall. They look like worry dolls, but they don't seem to be worrying. I like them. I'm going to put them with my little alpaca (who is the size of a skyscraper to them, but whatever) and it will be my Very Small Exhibit of Very Small Things From and/or Relating to South America.

Great Giver of the Alpacas Keeps On Giving

My second issue of Alpacas Magazine has arrived. In this issue I learned about:

Attracting a barn-full to my farm event
It turns out that marketing in the alpaca industry is exactly like marketing in any other industry. Personally, I don't see why you would even need to market alpacas. If you just put up a sign that says HILARIOUS-LOOKING ANIMALS NEXT LEFT that would probably do it, right? Who wouldn't stop in?

Reinforcement in Applied Behavioral Analysis
The behavioral articles are always my favorite. Last time we learned about berserk alpacas. This time we learned how not to freak out alpacas so that they won't even come near you. Tip: don't lunge forward and hug them. They don't like that. In fact, nobody really likes that.

Sustainable Farming
"Can you make money out of your manure? You bet! Call it 'Pacapoo' and sell it to the local gardners and small farm producers." This name is a winner. I would totally do this. Apparently there are big bucks in poo.

Fiber
Fiber as in alpaca fleece, not "how to make your alpaca eat bran muffins." The guy who came up with "Cotton: the fabric of our lives" has been enlisted to give a boost to the alpaca fiber industry. I am all for this, but I foresee one problem. Every single garment shown in the magazine is hideously ugly. There may be places where people would wear these things and not feel shame, but to reach the rest of the country I would recommend moving away from the colors of the seventies.

Bizarre(ly Effective) Advertising
Once again, there is some exemplary advertising, and I am not being funny about this. I genuinely love these ads and they would work on me if I were at leisure to purchase alpacas. Also, they happen to be very weird.

Joe Camel's cousin, Vinny Alpaca, with his bingo babe, Ginger. They always promise each other they won't blow their winnings on fresh blackberry brambles this time, but then they can't help themselves.

In some alternate universe, there's a statue of this in the Louvre, because the "farmer with an alpaca head" is a powerful, yet mysterious, figure in the ancient mythology of that world.

There was also an ad for a 3.5 million dollar alpaca ranch in Oregon. It had lovely gardens, mountain views, and of course alpacas. If they threw in a capybara and a maybe just a small paddock of unicorns, I would take out a loan.