The "Friend" Situation (with bonus video!)

I have been having a few strange occurrences with the whole online "friend" situation, lately.

Well, it's really not just been "lately" as it's been going on for a while - pretty much ever since I got hooked up to Facebook. I fully admit that I am fairly selective about who becomes my online "friend."

For one thing, I refuse to become online "friends" with anyone I work with. If they leave the company, sure. If they want to connect with me via online business-networking sites, maybe. But if we are currently working together, no. There are simply some lines I don't want to cross.

I don't necessarily need people I work with to see photos I post of family events. I don't need them to know what TV shows I watch. And I certainly don't need them to read my "personal" (in quotation marks since we all know that anything online stops being truly personal) comments about life and/or work.

But there are other people in my life who also don't show up in my Facebook feed. These, for the most part fall into two groups: People I've only met once and really haven't spent enough time with to know whether or not we might be friendly offline; and people whom I've met more than once and have never considered to be friends of mine in the offline realm. Unfortunately, this has - over time - resulted in a number of contact requests being left un-dealt-with, which keep popping up as "reply to this request" notices in the margins.

For the most part, though, I'm okay with this. If I know - at the time of the request - that we have nothing in common and would never spend time together over dinner (whether we've only just met or have known each other for decades), I simply don't feel obliged to say "want to be my friend?" to the person - or to reply "gee, I'd love to" when asked.

The trouble (of sorts) comes in when people who seem to know a ton of my/our friends show up and say that they want to connect. There's that weird gray area of "Did we meet at a party? Were we introduced 5 times, and I just don't remember?" mixed with "I'm pretty sure you don't know me, but it might be rude if I don't reply." But, with more sophisticated spam out in the world, it's becoming harder and harder to know for sure.

Oddly enough - for me, at least - it's causing me to throttle back the big, wide Internet and narrow my window. Making sure that my "friends" are truly my friends. Which, when you come right down to it, probably isn't a bad thing. It's just a thing.

To make this less of an odd downer of a post, I decided to include the following video by Garfunkel and Oates. I debated between this one and another one, but this one seems to work best, here. Enjoy. (Though you may want to send any kids out of earshot, since it's wonderful, but does include some adult language.)

Funeral Insurance

I've kind of gotten used to the fact that a lot of sites track all that you do to try to figure out how to advertise to you.

It's a little weird, sometimes - like when you go look at a pair of shoes online, and for the next three days every sidebar includes an ad for those shoes. But, for the most part, it's unobtrusive, and I fully admit that I kind of like seeing ads that I might actually be interested in.

After all, I'm just never going to be clicking on the "Meet sexy women over 50" ads. And - as far as eye candy goes - those ads don't do as much for me as the brown-on-brown Bass saddle shoes that have been showing up, lately.

A while ago, I created a social media group for some friends of mine and I to keep in touch a little better as we plan to meet up next spring. In the title, I included the word "reunion," and a number I'd rather not discuss at the moment.

Almost immediately, I started getting ads for Rogaine and Just For Men beard coloring. For the record, I have not purchased either. Considered them, yes. Purchased them, no.

Today, though, I got one that I was even more surprised by. Yep. It was an ad for Funeral Insurance. This strikes me as odd for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that I'm pretty sure at some point I'll have a funeral. I'm not sure I need to pay someone to guarantee that. I mean... we all die. And even if all you get is a pine box and an unmarked grave, that's still - in essence - a funeral. Don't need insurance for that; Death will take care of it for me.

All things considered, I kind of feel like I need that insurance almost as much as I need the sexy women over 50. At least the women might appreciate cool shoes.

**Yes, I know that the insurance is supposed to cover all the costs so your family doesn't have to. But... still... I'd rather have the shoes at this point. 

Bad Quote Quotient - Just Desserts

When I was at the South Dakota Festival of Books, I heard a couple of editors (literally, they are a couple) speak, and one of their tips was that you should always read your entire manuscript out loud as you're in the final stages of editing. Word for word, whatever is on the page you should read out (preferably with a partner in the room listening to you).

Well, today at work, I found that to actually be a helpful technique.

You see, sometimes, when I'm editing, I'm working with authors who might rely just a tad too heavily on spellcheck to do their dirtywork. So you get the wrong versions of it's/its or their/they're/there, but you also get words that are a little less common.

You might have someone telling you that he checked his suite in the mirror before leaving. Or that a fax had gotten into the chicken coop the night before and eaten all of the checks.

Seriously. I've seen some doozies. And, about 98 times out of 100, I can usually figure them out pretty quickly and substitute in the right word.

Today, however, I was stumped. I read the sentence about 5 times, trying to figure out what the author meant. I put the questionable word into an online dictionary to see if there was an alternate meaning I was missing - or whether just maybe there was an "often confused with" suggestion that would clue me in. I was completely at a loss.

Finally, I turned to my office mate and said "I have no idea what this means. You have to help me."

Here's the sentence:

"He licked the gelato where it started to melt down, then sat at a table under the big canapé."

When I got done, I said, "I have no idea what that is supposed to mean."

She laughed, and said, "When you first read it, I heard it as 'canopy.'"

"OHMIGOD. That's it! It's supposed to say canopy!"

I could have sat there for another hour and never figured that out, since in my head I kept reading it the way it was spelled, and not letting the context take over.

Here's hoping the author realizes how much we're going through for him - and just how hungry the manuscript is making me.

Yet Another First

As you get older, there are fewer and fewer things that you can do for the first time. It's just basic math and logic.

First steps, first words, first day of school, first solo bike ride, first lost tooth... They all take place pretty early on. Then you move on to things like first date, first kiss, first time driving a car. Again, for most people, these are pretty early in life.

Eventually, the firsts take more time to come around. There's typically a big gap between the first day of high school and the first day of college.

First day at your first real job comes up at some point. Maybe first passport. First massive hangover. First plane trip.

Yes, you can keep finding firsts if you look hard enough, but some of them may mean you're trying to hard. If you start tagging the "first time at this new Starbucks" or "first time I've commuted home using that road" they just don't seem to mean as much.

Well... I happened to have a first on Friday night which I don't think I'd ever expected I would be having at age 47: My first time at a "male revue."

There's a mid-length backstory which got us to that point - it involves people Christopher works with and a group of au pairs - but that's not the important part. The important part is that at 8 on Friday night we were in the suburbs at a bar where the sign outside said they were hosting a "Male Review" and the crowd was 99.8% women.

(The people working there, however, were incredibly gracious to us - as the random men who showed up for the show. Yes - that's one of those things you hope for in the 21st century, but at a dive-ish bar in the 'burbs, you really never know.)

I'm going to cut to the chase and bullet point this for you:

• It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. 
• We figured out which dancer was the gay one before the performance even started.
• We think we've probably gotten spoiled by the quality of dancers that typically perform in the places we go - like on Broadway show tours. (And, sadly, this seemed to be pretty much the "third string, playing to the 'burbs" troupe.)
• Yes, we each tipped at least one dancer who came to the table (it was actually less uncomfortable to just tip them so that they'd move on). (Ironically, it was not the gay one.) 
• The fried cheese curds were decent, and the beers were cheap.
• And, okay, it was actually kind of fun - and definitely not a boring Friday night by any means.

Will we ever do it again? I won't say never, because that usually means whatever I say never about ends up happening. But... definitely not any time soon.

For now, we'll just look at it as one more first checked off the list.

Time Change Hangover

No. You didn't miss a blog post this week. I did. I completely missed Wednesday's blog post. It wasn't intentional. I had planned to write one - though I hadn't thought about a topic, but that's pretty normal for me. I just found myself going to bed on Wednesday night thinking "I was supposed to have blogged today."

I thought about posting something yesterday, and moving ahead from there, but I decided to wait so that I could stay on the same every-other-day schedule, simply with a missing one in the middle. Which brings us to today.

I have to admit that this kind of "oops" is not confined to the blog, lately. I'm only 10% of my way through reading a novel for my book club - a book that I recommended - and I'm close to realizing that there is simply no way I'm going to get through it in the next 10 days.

I've decided to blame pretty much all of this on the change of seasons and the time change that happened last weekend. Suddenly I'm getting home after the sun goes down, and walking the dog in the dark. Oddly enough (because I'm not a massive snow fan), I was thinking last night that some snow on the ground would be nice, because then it would be easier to see her. 

The office at work has suddenly gone from being too chilly because the air conditioning was on to being too chilly because the heat isn't flowing properly through the ductwork. My mousing hand is constantly cold, but I refuse to work while wearing gloves or sitting under a blanket.

Hmm... a blanket might be nice... and a pillow... maybe just a short, autumn-inspired nap...

When You Realize Your Age

Yesterday, one of my nephews was in town for a three-hour layover at the airport. He and his girlfriend were flying from South Dakota back to California, and I was able to carve some time out of the weekend to go pick them up and give them a driving tour of the area.

Among other things, we did a purposeful drive across the Mississippi River, because his girlfriend (a Californian born and raised) had never been east of the Mississippi. We later went on a walk halfway across a bridge over the river in downtown Minneapolis, so that we could take their picture "in the middle of" the Mississippi.

In return, she took a picture of my nephew and me in the same spot. At which point something odd dawned on me.

I'm starting to ramp up for a 25-year reunion trip to Paris, to see some of the people I knew when I lived and taught there between college and grad school. And, when I lived there, when people would send me postcards or photos I would put them up on the edges of the window in the "living room" (it was a very small apartment, so that's using the term very loosely).

One set of photos was of my sister, and included a photo of her newborn son. My nephew. My now-25-year-old nephew. With whom I got my photo taken in the middle of the Stone Arch bridge, yesterday.

Yeah... if the years don't get you, the photographs will.

There's A Time For Everything

I think that Christopher and I have set all of the clocks back tonight. At least all the ones in the house. (If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that this is a relatively large event, with more than a dozen clocks, not including watches, car clocks, etc.)

I haven't tackled my watches, yet, and the car clocks will have to wait until tomorrow. But the majority of them are done.

I wish I could say I was excited about the extra hour of sleep. I mean... I am excited about the idea of an extra hour of sleep, but there's one catch to that that every pet owner knows: pets don't pay attention to clocks.

This means that the pup will still be getting up at 5am (make that 4am) because that's what time Christopher usually gets up to feed her.

And she'll be sure it's time to go for a walk at... umm... I guess it will be about 7am, since I usually take her out for a walk around 8am.

It's going to be very strange for her, I know. And it's going to be kind of difficult for us, too, I'm sure.

Oddly enough, although we lose an hour of sleep in the spring, it makes this kind of thing easier.

You'll forgive me if I yawn a lot the next few days. But, of course, if I'm doing it when I walk her in the evening it won't matter - starting tomorrow, by the time I walk her at 5:45pm, it'll be too dark out to see my face.