answering machine magic

i love answering machines. or, i should say, i love clever or odd outgoing messages. ever since i got an answering machine, i’ve always loved making funny or bizarre outgoing messages. my creativity was unfortunately squelched by roommates or marital partners for various lengths of time due to some need on their part to present a professional appearance to potential callers. usually at some point i cracked and created a weird message anyway, only be chastised and see my beautiful work turned back into a mundane, sterile, “we’re not here” message. for the last couple of years i’ve not had roommates or a marital partner though, so i’ve been able to let my repressed outgoing message juices run wild. (not that losing my marriage is worth that, but it’s one of a very few bright spots i saw for a long time.)
so anyway, i got a new answering machine a year or so ago. it doesn’t lose the messages if the power goes out, which is pretty cool. unfortunately, i have a tendency to let messages slowly build up. some of them i keep for sentimental or humorous reasons, others just because i plan to keep them as short-term reminders but then they build up (sort of like my email inbox). i guess i should record some off and delete them.
this week i had hit the 40 messages mark, so i decided it was time for a cleaning. it was kind of interesting going through them, as some of them were from back in october (or even earlier). the one i had the hardest time deleting was one from jennifer. she wasn’t saying anything of any importance or weight, but her voice…man, it just sounds so good to me. to use an old phrase, it’s positively dreamy. like i feel all mushy inside and grin like an idiot. well, i deleted it.
now i just need to keep from trying to figure out some reason to get her to call and leave me another message. 😉