And furthermore, why is it in my house?

You know that moment, right as you wake up but before you really wake up? When you aren’t quite sure of what is going on?

Well, now add to that hearing a disembodied voice in the distance … and you pretty much have what just happened to me.

Not that I would be spooked by some unknown voice coming from downstairs.

Not me, boy.

One of these days I will tell you why I am in hyper-gear to make my house safer … but suffice it to say I have been doing just that.

Security lights outside … check. 
Mace … check.
Panic button to make car beep … check.
Shotgun …

Well, you get the idea.

Today the latest in my arsenal of safety measures arrived. A new house phone.

Okay a new refurbished house phone, but new for me.

Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that it’s a whole new set of features to learn how to use.

The main selling feature was the fact that I would now have a handset upstairs in the bedroom in addition to the one downstairs in the office (formerly known as my living room).

But in addition to that, it has a speaker phone … for those annoying times on hold being told repeatedly how important my call is to them … for forty-five minutes.

It also has the ability to do an intercom between handsets. Not that there is anyone to intercom with here, but still, a cool feature.

Then there is the ability to do the dialing to my voicemail service automatically. No more typing in the long string of options to get to my messages.

Then there is the one I had forgotten about. The disembodied voice.

When there is an incoming call, the phone starts to speak to me. It tells me who is calling. This is going to be helpful if for some reason I am otherwise detained when the phone starts ringing. I’ll know whether to drop everything and make a dash for the phone … or just continue with what I am doing for a while.

Neat feature.

Except when you forget you have it … and it wakes you up from a nap … and the voice is creepy sounding.

But other than that … neat feature.

But the best feature of all.

It’s pretty.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy. Seriously.