Steve Stadelman is out of Pocket

[Pete VanderLaan]

...and in Japan where he can't access craftweb which is apparantly causing him some heartburn. So if you have to get in touch with him, email him or just wait until the 17th. It's not that long.

[Brent Hickenbotham]

I'm surprised he hasn't gone into cardiac arrest yet!!!!!!!!! I bet he's playing a lot of solitaire.

[Don Burt]

People I work with say 'out of pocket' when someone is unreachable too. I wonder how that usage came about? I think of 'out of pocket' as meaning unreimbursed expenses, but when someone is unavailable, I think of 'out of reach', or 'out of touch'. 'Out of pocket': I wonder if there isn't football influence there. Or pool?

[Rick Kellner]

スティーブ 様 へ、

とくべつ に、 日本 の 旅行 の 間 に なっと を
たくさん 食べて 下さい。
その 外 に日本語 で 「モリー ガラス ファーナス」 の 発音 を 練習 すれば いい ですよ。

お元気 で、

リック

[Ben Rosenfield]

Originally posted by Don Burt
People I work with say 'out of pocket' when someone is unreachable too. I wonder how that usage came about?

From: http://www.takeourword.com/current/page2.html

I wonder if you have any insights into how and when the phrase out of pocket has come to mean "unavailable" or "away from the office". It's so common now that when I use the phrase in (what I believe to be) its original sense of "requiring one to pay cash that may not be reimbursed", I sometimes cause confusion. Is this a generational issue, or a regional one, or...? Whence this troublesome usage?

Out of pocket originally referred to being out of funds. The OED's earliest example of this is from 1693. That meaning is considered obsolete. It also meant "to be a loser in a transaction" in the 18th century. By 1885 it was being used to refer to expenses that were not covered or that would not be reimbursed by another source. This was the dominant meaning until the 20th century, when, as you mention, the meaning "away" or "unavailable" arose. Interestingly, the OED's earliest citation for this usage, which they say is American, is from 1974. Once again, the amazing TOWFI research team has found a citation almost 30 years earlier, from 1946 (another WOOHOO!). We reproduce it for you in its entirety below:

Law Officers Request Aid in Uncovering Texarkana Murderer

Texarkana, May 11 —Murder-haunted residents in the Texarkana area were asked to play detective today in an effort to track down the slayer of five persons during the past seven weeks. Sheriff W. H. Presley and Chief of Police Jack Runnels asked "every man and woman in these two counties to recall whether or not any person close to them was missing or out of pocket" during the nights when the killer stalked his victims.
Asserting somebody was "out of pocket" the nights of the slayings in Bowie and Miller counties, the officers appealed to the residents for information.

- Salamanca [New York] Republican-Press, May 11, 1946

Our best guess is that the existing out of pocket was adopted to mean "away", "missing", or "not in contact", probably with the influence of the phrase in [someone's] pocket, which had been around since the early 19th century, with the meaning "quite close to, in close attendance upon [someone]". We also suspect that, if the phrase with the "missing" meaning appeared in a newspaper of 1947, it had been in use for some time prior to that.

[Steve Stadelman]

I am at Kansai Airport now enroute to Inchon Korea, to home.

I was in this totally beautiful farming village putting in some equipment and the whole experience was wonderful!

It was a new experience not to have cell coverage for a week.

[David Patchen]

I love Japan; hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I would have. Excellent food, beautifully simple aesthetic, natural beauty (women included) and just such a strange and wonderful place.

If you consider that North America and Japan were only recently (last 40 years?) easy to travel to/from, Japan makes more sense. It's kind of a parallel universe to the USA--just as advanced (perhaps more) but amazingly different.

What were the highlights Steve?

[Ben Rosenfield]

Originally posted by Steve Stadelman
It was a new experience not to have cell coverage for a week. You'll be delighted to find about 496 voice mails from me. I left a couple for you, not knowing where you were. Then, when I found out you had no access to your cell phone, I started leaving one-word messages. Listen to them quickly enough to piece together some sentences. And then, well, let's just say the final 179 messages will require you to grab a pen and paper. Jot down the one-word messages, then try to put them together in a sensible order to arrive at the last sentences.

Totally awesome!!

[Pete VanderLaan]

and this will help you pass the time on your flight home....

Ben is SO thoughtful.