I need a new voicemail message. Just like away messages, I obsess over my voicemail and feel obligated to change the outgoing message all too frequently. I’ve had a bunch:

As recorded by my sister Kat:

WHAT UP, THIS IS SETH’S PHONE. um. It’s not being answered right now, so um, leave a message and I’ll get back to you later. peace.

That one confused some people. Most messages would start, like, “um, I’m calling for Natalia…”

When I was getting calls about internships and had to be super-professional at all times:

You’ve reached Natalia Lastname at 614-mynumber. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name, number and a brief message I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks! Bye!

Barf.

As recorded by me, Matt and Andy and to be performed in a sort of round and then holding the note out to create a barbershop quartet-esque chord:

THIS IS NATALIA’S PHONE LEAVE A MESSAGE
THIS IS NATALIA’S PHONE LEAVE A MESSAGE
THIS IS NATALIA’S [laughter]

CALL ME BACK!

We had been drinking.

As recorded by Kat, sung to the tune of the Three’s Company theme song (can’t really explain the S Club in that video, sorry):

Come and knock on our door! This is Natalia’s phone! And I’mnotpickingitUPrightNOWbut if you leavemeamessage then I’ll call you back! da-da-da-da. That would be so dapple…

So for now, mine is the kids I babysit and I saying “hey girl hey” and then the standard “leave a message…kbye!”

I am open to suggestions. Also, what does your voicemail message say right now?

“Regret” is a strong word, but I wish I would’ve kept playing piano.

I started taking piano lessons when I was ten. Mary Fran, the go-to church pianist, would come over once a week and teach me and my sibs songs from what we deemed The Baby Book. Said book contained songs like the deliciously un-PC “The Indian Song” and a tale of equine adoration called Horse Sense. Beats one and three (it’s 6/8) are capitalized because that’s what we intentionally played (and sang) loudly:

I’m RIding the PLAINS on my FAVorite HORSE!!!
His HORSE sense is KEEN so we NEVer get LOST!
You MAY think I’m CRAZY but ONE thing I’ll SAY
This HORSE has more SENSE than a BUNdle of HAY!

My poor parents.

Anyway, I got through the first book and decided that was enough ivory tickling for me. But since then, the piano’s sat in our living room gathering dust and occasionally obliging us for rousing renditions of Heart and Soul, Chopsticks and that buh-duh-duh-DUH-DUH! song you play on the black keys.

I felt particularly ambitious a few summers ago and printed out sheet music to Praise You (well, that’s more like four measures than actual music), Fur Elise and Only Hope by the artist Mandy Moore (Chris loves her) and learned those. They’re sloppy and I don’t play them correctly, but I missed the way it felt to press keys and hear music instead of garbage.

Both of the families I babysit for have kids who play piano, and I’m pretty sure the 11-year-old girl I sit for now is going to quit later this year even though she’s getting good. And although I can’t make her do anything, I do kind of want to sit her down and tell her that as dumb as it feels now, she needs to keep doing it, lest she be 23 and want nothing more than to sit down with a teacher and have to be reminded to curve her fingers and look at her key signature.

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I was born a Windows girl; I will die a Windows girl.

Just like the hokey commercials spoof, my boyf is a Mac and I’m a PC. This is something we continually (jokingly, but not without standing up for our OSes) argue about.

He says he likes to be able to find his things right away without having to look for them; I say I like the challenge of finding my stuff (and sometimes, you want to hide files, amirite).

He also says he never gets viruses because he has a Mac. While this is true, anyone who has successfully killed spyware knows the sheer joy and the ohyesIdidjustslaythatgarbage feeling of eradicating harmful files from your computadora. Honestly, I like the feeling of knowing I can control how things work and occasionally totally screwing things up. I’ll hit the “advanced user” button on the install because I know what I’m doing. Sometimes I download stuff by accident and it gets ugly. But I can handle it.

Last, he says he can do more artsy stuff on his computer, which is admittedly accurate. My artsy stuff is limited to making stick people drawings on Paint, making awesome MIDI arrangements of pop songs on NoteWorthy Composer (that was what I spent the better part of high school doing) and making ringtones with Sound Forge.

I think of Macs as being like

typety type apple iLoveMyMac blah blah blah iMovie Garage Band omg

and PCs being like

!!!!!!!!! yeah pwned!!!!!!1 and stuff

You nerds know what I mean.

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I got an email from YouTube today saying that one of the videos I posted was infringing copyright. I apologize to anyone in Djibouti who cannot see the two-year-old video of me and my sister dancing in her room to Blink-182! I am pleased, however, that people in Tuvalu can watch while their island sinks. Here’s what the message said.

As a result, your video is blocked everywhere except in these locations:
American Samoa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Fiji, France, Germany, Guam, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, United States, United States Virgin Islands, Vanuatu

What should I do?
No action is required on your part. In some cases ads may appear next to your video. If you want to make your video available globally you can use AudioSwap to replace the audio in your video with a track from our library of pre-licensed songs.

Under certain circumstances, you may dispute the copyright claim from UMG. These may be any of the following:

    * the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
    * you believe your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
    * you are actually licensed by the owner to use this content.

WOW. brb looking up fair use

edit: interestingly enough, there’s a woman who had the same thing happen – and successfully sued the record company. She posted a video of her kids dancing to a Prince song, had her video taken down and reinstated six weeks later.

I think I might hit the Blink guys up on Twitter.