Santa's big present this year was a Garmin GPS device. It's quite lovely. I was able to get my food shopping for the New Year's Eve party done by knowing precisely where the closest grocery store was off of the highway on my way home from work.
I have it set to the British accent. She's quite lovely, too, actually. Very polite and articulate.
"In 200 yards, make a RIGHT... Turn RIGHT."
Sometimes as we're going along and the traffic is ridiculous (rare occurence in Mass, as I'm sure you can imagine) I imitate her.
"Move into the RIGHT lane because the f&^king idiot in the LEFT lane is only going fifty miles per hour. He obviously doesn't know how to drive in the fast lane. This is unfortunate."
My friend Anthony suggested I name her; something with the initials GPS.
On the way home from work, Alicia and I pieced out the perfect British sounding name as we bobbed and weaved through not-so-bad traffic.
B: Some sort of hyphenated name. Like Pemberton-Smith. What's a good G name? A British sounding one?
A: It's hard to think of any kind of G name.
B: Yeah. There's Gloria, but that's not British enough...Gretchen sounds too German. Ooh, how about Guinivere?
A: No, Gwyneth.
B: Yes! Gwyneth Pemberton-Smith.
A: I feel like it should be Smythe.
B: I was just thinking that! Okay, so, my Garmin lady is Mrs Gwyneth Pemberton-Smythe.
Alicia, by the way, has a TomTom. Her British Lady GPS voice is simply Emma Thompson, and there's no way around it.
Origins of GPS:
Gwyneth - Welch, poss. from the Welsh word "happiness"; other meanings: white, fair
Pemberton - variation of "Pemberley", where Mr Darcy
lived (with me)
Smythe - topographic name for someone who lived by a forge, or a metonymic occupational name for someone employed at a one, from Middle English smithe, smythy ‘smithy’. (from here)
Real origins of GPS - Global Positioning System.
http://www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/site/us
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