Incan Pictographs and Telephones

Greetings loyal readers,

I'm still working away on our Top 50 Distributors List, making dozens of follow-up phone calls and trying to keep track of the results with about 15 hand-written, needlessly convoluted lists. God help me when I'm doing this again next year, as I'm sure I'll no longer recall why I have corresponding charts and notes in Spanish, German and early Incan pictographs. Being thorough has little to do with being logical, I suppose.

The terrible list-making isn't much of a downer though, as I'm sure I'll eventually become fluent in the German I'm writing all these notes in. My phone skills, however, are another story. Right now, they're somewhere between a nervous Oliver Twist and a wimpy ex-boyfriend who is politely begging for his rare EPs and favorite sweater back (Seriously though, Danielle, if you're reading this, it'd be really great to have my NOFX vinyls back. Please?).

In my defense, I am a writer, so it's technically acceptable, if tragically predictable, that I have the social skills of cold noodles. After all, what does knowing how to pen a fun story about ducklings and space travel using proper comma placement have to do with being a combination of Obama and Prince Charming on the phone? If you say "everything," you are a jerk.

Still, I do enough work on the phone that you'd think I'd be getting better by now. To speed along the self-improvement engine, I thought it might be a good idea to include a few phone conversations of myself trying to secure interviews with suppliers, transcribed here into the wonder-blog, so you all can read along and maybe offer up a few tips.

Conversation style #1: The Speed-mumble

ME: "Uh, hello my name ismikecornnellandI'maneditorwithhljsdhfkls, I mean hljsdhfkls, I meanIwaswonderingifklarrbockkk ohgodI'm so ...

OPERATOR: "Sir, are you okay?"