Facebook = Timesuck
I caved. I’ve been resisting Facebook for a while. My friend, Karen, has been after me to join for at least a couple of months, and I just couldn’t see the point to it. I remember Twelve getting on MySpace, and thinking how ridiculous it was… why would he want to sit there and chat all evening with kids he just saw at school? I thought the same thing about Facebook, figuring that if I had something important enough to say there, I could just as easily say it here. Then my friend, Jenny, joined.
Let me just say now, for the record, that I am a terrible friend. I don’t do a good job of keeping in touch at all, and it doesn’t seem to matter if a friend lives in town or across the country. So as you can imagine, I’ve lost touch with a lot of people over the years, simply by not doing anything. When Jenny mentioned all the people she’d found on Facebook, it occurred to me that this might be a way I could reconnect with some of those friends, so I had her do a quick search to see if any of them had pages, and lo and behold, all of them do. That was it. That was all it took for me to completely and totally cave and create a profile.
I was really afraid that Facebook would be something I’d sign up for and never use… much like Twitter. It could still turn out that way, of course, but it’s different enough from what I do and share here that I may actually keep up with it. Of course, I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to figure it out, changing my status, filling out my profile, and checking out my friends’ profiles – that’s 4 hours I’ll never get back. But, I’m hoping I can use Facebook as a tool to stay in touch with all the people I don’t see frequently, and who knows? Maybe I’ll make some new friends in the process. For someone as introverted as I am, this is ideal.
Feel the burn
Oh, god. I didn’t realize exactly how out of shape I am. I knew I was beginning to huff and puff when I climb the stairs at work, and I can’t lift both of the girls without putting forth real effort, which is so shameful given that I’m only 33.
I posted here that I joined a gym. It’s a brand new LA Fitness, it’s on the way home from work, and I’m committed to going at least three times a week. It finally opened on the 12th, and today was the first day of the rest of my exercising career. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do much… I had already planned to start out doing cardio work only, and after a couple of weeks I’ll start working on the weight machines. Anyway, after 20 minutes on an exercise bike, I rode 5.5 miles, and hit my target heart rate (and then some) and maintained it. Oh, and my butt hurts.
I think I’ll go again tomorrow, but I’ll try something different. Maybe just a walk on the treadmill? Assuming my legs still work in the morning…
A Moment
Mom and I always have fun when we’re together, and at some point we almost always have a moment where we completely lose it… we laugh, and laugh, and laugh, until we pee our pants and tears roll down our faces.
We went shopping while Mom was here over Christmas, and stopped at the local Sonic for a cherry limeade for me and a chocolate-cherry Coke for her. While we waited for the waitress to bring our order, we watched as shopping carts made their way across the Meijer parking lot we were facing, and sadly, we started making up stories about them. One of the shopping carts looked like it was trying to make it over to the Sonic, but got stopped at the curb… we assumed it was just hoping to take a break and get something to drink. There was another shopping cart that was obviously trying to latch itself onto a truck bumper so it could try to break free and make a new life somewhere else, but the wind blew it just the wrong way and all of it’s newfound hopes and dreams were dashed.
The third shopping cart, though, the one pictured above… well, it was really making a break for it. We watched as it rolled through the parking lot, headed for traffic. And I said to my mother, speaking for the shopping cart… “Look! I’m just tired of being pushed around!”
We haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time. It felt GOOD.
