How to go from Madonna to Lilly to Myrtle in a single evening - and even have a sex change!

I recently had a birthday. 

On my birthday, I had a call scheduled with Mia Wang, the Director of Strategic Finance at Epicor (yes, I had a busy birthday!).

Anyway, not wanting my home phone to ring while on the cell with Mia, I unplugged it by yanking the line out of the wall.

I finished the cell phone call with Mia, and then oops…..

I headed out the door for the rest of the evening without putting the home phone line back into the wall jack.

If you have Vonage home phone service (and the reason I do is so I can call 60 countries of the world including Australia, India, Germany, Poland, UK, Singapore, Iraq, Malaysia  for free)….you know what happens when your line is disconnected.

Well, I’ll tell you…

Even with the line disconnected, your service is still active and callers can call and leave a message for you.

But instead of going to your home phone, the calls go direct to Vonage where the voice mails are received on a generic mailbox. 

This is how Vonage home phone service stays continuous, even when the internet is down.  (I know you are thinking: “Nice!”)

Now here's where the fun starts…

When someone calls and leaves a voice mail for you on the generic Vonage voicemail box, you get an email alert on your personal e-mail with the caller’s call id and a text transcription of the voice mail.

These text transcriptions are shall we say inspired.

Here for instance, are the text transcriptions of the voice mails I received on June 15 when I was out and my line was unplugged... 

Transcription 1:  Wherein I am miraculously transformed into Madonna by Mohammed of Keno …

"Happy birthday Madonna wish you happy birthday to my down, you know, Jott, have a good evening and enjoy your evening. Alright, bye. This is Mohammed at Keno. So if you"

Transcription 2:  Wherein I am rechristened Lilly & Myrtle...

"Hi Lilly it's David here. Sorry to disturb you all probably this Sunday. But anyway just let you know, Myrtle. If you need to be there at your house at 1130 and the rest of the those and things just something small. But anyway, celebrate your birthday is coming over. Okay. So see you tomorrow at 1130. Thank you no happy birthday once again. And much love coming your way. I'm. Take care. Bye"

Transcription 3:  Wherein I am turned into a man and instead of being sent something auspicious, I am sent something suspicious...egads!...

"Hi Daniel, this is Christine. You are calling to wish you all very, very, very happy birthday. Well I'm sure you're having. I love you Dee, how long would send you down something suspicious and not so good luck enjoy and happiness for the whole deal. I needed to see if I can catch up with you maybe I'll, you're tomorrow morning. Enjoy your evening and then the rest of the night. My"

There you have it - how I went from Madonna to Lilly to Myrtle in the course of a single evening - and even had a sex change!

P.S. 1: Lily&Myrtle is the name of a floral company in the UK. You can check them out here.

P.S. 2: If you enjoyed this “Fun with transcribed Vonage Visual Mail", you can get your own by signing up for Vonage World. They currently have a promo offering the first 3 months of service at just $9.99 a month. You may want to do some Rosetta Stone language courses first, however, if you want to take advantage of all the 60 countries offered under the Vonage World plan which are as follows: 

 P.S. 3: In case you are wondering - do I love Vonage or hate Vonage, my post 4 decisions which I wish I made earlier will leave you with no doubts.

P.S. 4: Clearly, if I had to rely on the inspired transcriptions alone for my messages, it would send me up the wall, so I don't spend too much time trying to decipher the transcriptions. Instead, I listen to my voice mails by logging onto my Vonage account.

P.S. 5: Enough about Vonage. Thanks for reading and wishing you a great great week from Madonna, Jott, Lilly, Myrtle & Daniel.