How Fantastic is Facebook?

My answer is:  Pretty Fantastic!  My sister is in Afghanistan on a military base and she gets the internet and can access her Facebook account which allowed us to have a chat conversation yesterday morning when we were both supposed to be working.

Years ago I would have had to tell her how I had an abundance of stomach gas and was apprehensive about going in to a meeting in a letter.  Then I would have had to get an envelope and fill it out.  Then I'd have to find a stamp.  Then I'd have to send it and wait for her response for about two weeks.  Now, because of the miracle of Facebook, she can advise me immediately that I should try to "take care of business" before the meeting because she recently put off going until after what she thought would be a 20 minute meeting, which turned in to a 90 minute meeting, and let's just say everyone was sorry.

Of course, everything that is wonderful also has its down side.  During the very same bathroom chat I had with my sister across the globe, I happen to read a status update by a former student who is upset that Obama is going to take away his "right to bare arms."  If he has ever seen a picture of Michelle Obama and her beautiful guns, he would know that Obama is an obvious advocate of sleevelessness.  I guess I should have taught homophones a little more.

Winter, holidays, yadda yadda

The family took a little trip to Bentleyville tonite.  Mr. Bentley is one of those people who go totally overboard decorating their yard for the holidays; so much so that he used to give tours of his yard, and then a few years ago the city of Duluth moved (and expanded, I'm guessing) all his stuff to Bayfront Park and you can go and see all the lights.

First we stopped and picked Mitch up at his office downtown.  He has a new desk he wanted to show off and also, there was this:

Watch out Fortune 500!

Bentleyville was pretty cool but I only got one picture because my batteries went dead, I think because it was 9000 degrees below zero.  I'm depending on my niece Jonee to post her pics on Facebook so I have pictorial evidence that I was there because I will never go again in weather colder than 60 degrees.  My face is still thawing.

Sam, Rory, Kira and Rheo

I got home and looked on Facebook and discovered that I could make a decorative collage of my status updates for the whole year.  Christmas card idea:  done and done!  Here it is:

Merry Christmas, and you're welcome!

I have impressive Facebook Friends

My Facebook friend, Tiffany, who I went to high school with just finished her second Ironman race.  I knew she was training for it and I knew Ironman races included swimming, biking and running a marathon, but I had no idea it was all done on the same day.  (No, YOU shut up!) Seriously, that's brutal.  She wrote about her experience here.

The first part of the race is swimming 2.4 MILES.  Do you know how far that is to swim?  It would take me the better part of a day to do it alone in a pool, much less outside, in some lake with a bunch of other athletes pushing and shoving.  Tiff said she ingested a bunch of water.  Then after they swim, they get out and immediately get on a bike and ride it for, get this, 112 MILES.  One-hundred and twelve miles!  Why not just a hundred?  Why tack on the extra twelve?  I thought maybe the swimming was done on a Friday, the biking on Saturday, and then the running on Sunday, but no, it's all one day.  After the bike ride they get off and run a marathon.  26 miles.  Tiff said she was having GI problems she thinks from ingesting all the water during the swim so toward the end of the marathon she was stopping in port-a-potties about every mile.  Hello, Worst Nightmare!  How you doing?  She finished the race in 12 hours.  Twelve hours of solid, non-stop exercise.  Needless to say, I would die.  I feel like an Ironman when I do a one hour workout video from start to finish without stopping it for rest breaks.  I would have drowned during the swim.  Probably within the first quarter-mile.  And even though she was sick she finished in 39th place.  That is amazing.  Congratulations, Tiff!

My sister Amy thinks I should train for a 5K running race and write a training blog like Tiffany did.  It would be such a sad, sad little blog.  I'm guessing there would be a lot of entries that were titled with some variation of the following:  "Why I didn't exercise today" and "Running Sucks ASS!"

My other impressive Facebook friend is Maria Bamford.  She is a comedian from Duluth who I've been a fan of for years.  She is HILARIOUS.  She is the blond lady on the Target holiday commercials.

I could watch her do crunches on the Target parking-lot balls, and run in her red track-suit and high heels all day long.  I love her!  Here's her website.  If you happen to listen to one of her albums and hear her do the impression of her mother, know this:  It is spot-on perfect.  I talked to her mom on the phone once for about an hour and it is ridiculous how perfectly Maria can copy her.  Watch this video to see.  I've never actually met Maria in person, but my friend Dana went to high school with her and has promised to introduce me to her.  I bet Maria is coming home for the holidays, Dana!  Hint hint! 

Those are my impressive Facebook friends.  Both of them.  The rest of you, get off your asses and do something impressive!*

*just kidding!!!!**


** not really, get out there and do something blog-worthy.

Facebook, I love you, and I hate you.

I have a Facebook page and I'm in a love/hate relationship with it.  I love it because, obviously, I get to be in touch with every person I've ever met that has a computer without actually having to see them face to face or talk to anyone on the phone.  But I hate it too because I spend WAY too much time looking at it and trying to think of vacuous update statuses.  Actually I hate it for a lot of reasons.  I'll just make a list:

1.  I waste too much time on it.  Totally wasted time.  Nothing productive coming out of it.

2.  I can't think of status updates.  There are only so many times I can tell people I have to poop before they unfriend me. 

3.  I was talked into (by myself) to make a page for this blog and now I'm in a stupid position of waiting for people to "like" it which is kind of pathetic in a way. No, not in a away, totally.  Totally pathetic.  Thanks, Facebook.  I put a "like" button up and it immediately said that 146 people liked it.  Thanks for making me feel popular, but Facebook, we both know that was a lie, and if we both know, it's a pointless lie. 

Sad

4.  Passive aggressive status updates from friends.  For example: "Why is it that old friends hurt you the most?"  Really?  MUST you post that on a public internet bulletin board?  Can't you just start your old friend's house on fire and be quiet about it?

5.  Vague, secret-y status updates from friends.  "Today could be the day!  Cross your fingers and pray for us!" but when you ask them what they are talking about they say they don't want to talk about it.  TOO LATE.  You posted it on the internet, now you have to talk about it. I want to know because I'm not going to cross my fingers for you because I don't know what I'm crossing my fingers for.  What if you have decided to take up the worship of the ancient god Moloch and today is the day you burn an infant alive?  I'm not really for that.  

6.  Getting unfriended.  I looked at my profile one day and I had 150 friends.  I looked at it later and I had 149.  Somebody dumped me, and I looked through the list and I can't figure out who it was, which obviously means they probably weren't all that important to me, but still.  "Unfriended."  Rejection.  Yuck.

7.  Mitch makes fun of me.  He thinks having a Facebook page is narcissistic.  And that makes me think that if he thinks having a Facebook page is narcissistic, what must he think of me having an entire blog devoted to myself?  Talk about narcissistic!  But he doesn't say anything about that because he retains even more superiority in letting it remain an implication.  Now we both know that he thinks he's just a little bit better than me and that really squeezes my 'roids!

Do you have a Facebook page?   What do you think of Facebook?

(p.s.  Friend me!)
(p.p.s I hate myself)