"Football field"
Jun. 10th, 2013 08:55 pmOnce upon a time, back in the early days of the Dreamwidth Open Beta, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zarhooie and I started talking on the phone.
A lot.
Now, at this time, I had just recently moved in to my little hole-in-the-hill apartment, which involves steel-reinforced concrete and is basically a Faraday cage wrapped in stone. This does not improve the already dodgy signal from being on the wrong side of the hill.
Eventually (after far too long) I realized that instead of keeping my head and the phone in the cubic-foot sphere of reasonably reliable cellphone signal, I could in fact just leave the phone there, and use my Bluetooth headset.
One small problem.
These were still the days before internal-battery small-electronics devices had more or less standardized on MicroUSB as the charging solution. The very nice Plantronics headset I had at the time had a tiny and inconvenient plug which wasn't either MiniUSB or MicroUSB, and I did not have particularly many unoccupied outlets near the computer desk. Therefore, I had it sitting on the kitchen peninsula by the door.
I could take short calls without the headset, but for anything lasting more than a minute or two, I'd want to grab the headset. So when Kat called, I'd answer the phone. "Hold on, I'm getting my headset," I'd say.
My apartment is tiny. It's about twelve steps, round trip, between my desk and the kitchen peninsula.
Kat is sarcastic.
"Do you have to run all the way across the football field to get it?" she asked once, or words to that effect.
"Yes, Kat, I just sprinted a full six hundred yards in thirty seconds to get my headset. To talk to you. Because I love you."
I might also be sarcastic. Just a little.
For whatever reason, the "football field" joke caught on. And as is the way of these things, the shorthand got elided further and further. And then one day, Kat asked something like: "Hi Azzie! Do you have to go get your football field?"
"Nope, I saw you sign off, I already got it."
From then on, the headset itself was known as the "football field", resulting in baffling phrases like "I lost my football field, so I've got to stop by Target" and "This football field sounds much crappier than the last one." "Well, it is a crappy football field, it's got a crappy microphone."
And this concludes today's explanation of the surreal phrases from my life.
zarhooie and I started talking on the phone. A lot.
Now, at this time, I had just recently moved in to my little hole-in-the-hill apartment, which involves steel-reinforced concrete and is basically a Faraday cage wrapped in stone. This does not improve the already dodgy signal from being on the wrong side of the hill.
Eventually (after far too long) I realized that instead of keeping my head and the phone in the cubic-foot sphere of reasonably reliable cellphone signal, I could in fact just leave the phone there, and use my Bluetooth headset.
One small problem.
These were still the days before internal-battery small-electronics devices had more or less standardized on MicroUSB as the charging solution. The very nice Plantronics headset I had at the time had a tiny and inconvenient plug which wasn't either MiniUSB or MicroUSB, and I did not have particularly many unoccupied outlets near the computer desk. Therefore, I had it sitting on the kitchen peninsula by the door.
I could take short calls without the headset, but for anything lasting more than a minute or two, I'd want to grab the headset. So when Kat called, I'd answer the phone. "Hold on, I'm getting my headset," I'd say.
My apartment is tiny. It's about twelve steps, round trip, between my desk and the kitchen peninsula.
Kat is sarcastic.
"Do you have to run all the way across the football field to get it?" she asked once, or words to that effect.
"Yes, Kat, I just sprinted a full six hundred yards in thirty seconds to get my headset. To talk to you. Because I love you."
I might also be sarcastic. Just a little.
For whatever reason, the "football field" joke caught on. And as is the way of these things, the shorthand got elided further and further. And then one day, Kat asked something like: "Hi Azzie! Do you have to go get your football field?"
"Nope, I saw you sign off, I already got it."
From then on, the headset itself was known as the "football field", resulting in baffling phrases like "I lost my football field, so I've got to stop by Target" and "This football field sounds much crappier than the last one." "Well, it is a crappy football field, it's got a crappy microphone."
And this concludes today's explanation of the surreal phrases from my life.
