It's pink. Pink.

I spent part of yesterday celebrating my nephew's upcoming birthday with him. I bequeathed him my old and well-worn iBook, reboxed as if new with a big sign that said Happy Birthday. When he arrived, I told him I had a gift for someone in the next room that needed a bow and asked if he would go put a bow on the package. Because it was his birthday, he looked at me quizzically but said "Sure." I know he was expecting to hear about HIS gift, not someone else's! So he went into the other room. me behind him and all I heard was "Oh! You didn't!! Oh!"

The look on his face was priceless. Then he said "This deserves 24 hugs. More." I laughed and said "One hug will do." Birfdays are fun!

I spent the rest of the day in techno land, trying to come up with a better voice activated cell phone arrangement. My goal is to be able use more of the functions on a cell phone. I'm trying out a Nuance mobile phone package through Sprint on a Palm Centro to see how that works and I saved a lot of money by going for the mass market approach, using products designed for the able bodied that cost less because they are sold to more than the disability population. This program fetches mail, texts, digit dials , goes to web sites and does a number of other functions that will be very helpful. The phone, which was reasonably priced, also has the usual Palm stylus inputs. I can alternatively input data with a stylus on a mouthstick or assistive device for those functions that the voice may not cover. The Nuance Voice Control package costs 20 dollars a month, but I have a free one month trial package on the Palm. (Please note that some functions, such as email, limit the number of words in the body of the text to 20).

Last night, for the first time in umpteen years, between using the voice recognition, stylus and the Palm software on my voice activated computer, I was able to set up my own contacts for the phone. Independence! It was very exciting.

And, of course, the phone is pink. I'm a girl quad.