Winter finally decided to swing through town and brought a cute-but-pointless dusting of snow with it this morning. Of course, that means it’s cold again after a decidedly moderate stretch. It also means that my hands are cold today. Cold enough that I find myself blowing into them and rubbing them constantly in an effort to keep them from turning blue and breaking into a thousand crystal-ly pieces when hit with an Acme hammer.
Well, maybe the Acme hammer thing isn’t really all that likely, but still, I don’t like cold hands. It never used to be like this either. I never used to get cold, but then that doctor of mine decided to address my high blood pressure. I mean, sure, it’s probably better in the long run that my head’s not going to explode, but that’s little consolation when I’m trying to type “consolation” and it keeps coming up “constipation”.
The problem is that I type a lot, whether we’re talking about writing software for the day job or trying to produce words in a logic order that hopefully produce some form of entertainment to someone, somewhere. And generally, typing requires manual use of one’s digits. Which means that as much as I’d like to cross my arms and bury my paws in my armpits all day, I kind of can’t really do that.
I suppose I could solve my finger frigidity by investing in some of that new-fangled speech recognition software, which I gather is a bit like having an assistant from Mad Men but without all the booze, smoking, and salacious office politics. But unfortunately, I known to become quite the mumbler when I’m constipating concentrating on soemthing . In fact, I’ve been told I can put Seinfeld’s “low-talker” to shame. In other words, I have enough trouble with people hearing me correctly. The last thing I need is to be attempting to dictate into a manuscript and look up to see that the software’s written, “Hey, dumbass, speak up, I couldn’t decided if that last phrase was supposed to be, ‘stick to that beam’ or ‘seven dwarves in whipped cream’.”
Oh, and for the record, I think you have to have one of those fancy headset things to make that software work. I’m not a big fan of the headsets. For one thing, they look ridiculous on software engineers. Look, if you’re a stock broker, a drive-thru attendant, or 1-900 sex-talk worker or something, I get it, it makes sense. But not me. Plus, I’m still a 10 year-old at heart. If I spend all day rocking a headset, I’ll be pretending to Captain Awesome of the Starship Nerdgasm before lunch. Trust me, having my boss walk into my office just to hear me call for a full salvo of photon torpedoes across the alien’s bow isn’t doing anything positive to my annual review.
The good thing, though, is that I’ve pretty much reached the end of my needing to write for the day.
Time to give my icy fingers a rest.
So I’m going to go sit on my hands and watch Downton Abbey, if I can figure out how to operate the remote control by thought.
Luckily, though, this is the greater Cincinnati area. Tomorrow will probably bring a balm 75 degrees.
At which point I can complain about long sleeves.
Pud’n
Puddintopia 