"Hello, Moshi!"

I learned this evening that technology can be fun and scary all at once. Maybe I should start with scary...

My aunt in Florida recently bought my grandfather a talking clock. Hehe...that's not the scary part yet. My friend, Teresa, and myself had the joy of taking it out of the box and plugging it in so that we could figure out how it works and then explain it to Poppa. While reading the instructions aloud I apparently said the magic words because all of a sudden it came alive and, I must say, scared the tar out of me! "Hello, Moshi!" That's all it takes and this thing goes to town asking what you want know...words simply can't express how surprised I was when it talked to me the first time. It was quite hilarious to Teresa and Gran who were standing nearby.

The funny part...well, there are several. Teresa, forgive me if you read this...Teresa was a little confused at first about which part of the instructions was the command and which was the description of the command so she would say the obligatory "Hello, Moshi!" loud and clear, but when it asked for the command she would make it an entire sentence..."What time is it?" Suddenly there were wave sounds coming from the machine...which lots of pretty lights. LOL! Definitely not what we were going for. Suddenly the monitor went blank...so I say "Hello, Moshi!"...nothing. Nada. Zilch. "Hello in there! Do you speak English? What's wrong with you? TALK TO ME!" And those are just the comments I can remember...I actually had myself quite amused by this point. How do we get the stupid thing to come back on?!

In the end we learned it had come unplugged.

All the fun started over after that as when it comes unplugged you have to reset everything. Grrr....

Now the funniest part of all: I imagine Poppa standing in front of his clock in the morning saying "Hello, Moshi!" and seriously just want to laugh until I cry!

Thank you, Aunt Becky!