Facebook is the devil

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. First, the love.

It has allowed me to get back in touch with people from high school and college. This has probably been the best part of Facebook.
I can keep up to date on people's lives, from pics of kids, to where they went this past weekend, to what they are doing this very second.
I can reach a lot of people at once. Approximately five minutes after I was laid off, I updated my status to read "Faith just got the ax." Within 15 minutes, I received a ton of sympathetic comments, a few personal emails, and a phone call. This saved me a lot of trouble of sending out emails to friends. Since bad news travel fasts, I also received friendship requests from a half dozen people within the hour, mostly former coworkers who had heard the news because I was friends with their friends.
There are a ton of silly, pointless quizzes, some of which are kind of fun, especially the ones about friends. Who knew a friend from high school has been married three time? Not me, at least not until I took the quiz about her.
You can be a fan of almost anything. Another silly thing about Facebook, but it is a interesting to see what people like and to see what you have in common with friends and strangers alike.
You get to see a side of some people you might not have known. Sometimes this side is a little odd or unexpected, but most of the time it is what it is.

But Facebook has its drawbacks too. There are just some things about it that I either don't get or I just can't stand. For instance:

I think the term "friend" is used too loosely. I wish you could add "contacts" instead. Some people who have asked me to be their friend I barely remember. I am pretty sure I have never even talked to some of them.
Sometimes it feels like high school, the part I don't miss. I am so concerned about hurting a person's feelings that I have yet to reject a friendship request. In some cases, I am friends with people I am not sure I ever talked to. I wonder why these people bothered to friend me. Just to have a lot of "friends" for the sake of a big number? And in some cases, these people have never sent me a message, written on my wall, or commented on anything I have posted. So why did they want to be my friend to begin with?
When you have too many friends, it becomes hard to keep up. I have over 100 friends. I did not want that many; 50 would have been fine, but I have not turned any request down, for fear of hurting someone's feelings (see my previous point). But now I have to keep scrolling down on the off chance I may miss a good update from someone. It happened to me when I announced I was laid off; some of my friends missed that post and then had no idea what subsequent posts were about.
Some of the requests people send are annoying or questionable. With Facebook you can send people drinks, flowers, etc. I go along with some of those and ignore most. But when a guy friend asked me to lick his lollipop, I drew the line there. I did not want a comment posted that read "Faith just licked Aaron's lollipop." I don't think he meant anything by it, but if I were his wife and read that post, I would not have been happy.
Facebook is addictive and a huge time suck. Enough said.

I think it is funny how different generations use Facebook. I have a few young "friends" on Faceboook who just graduated from PSU this month. Unlike a lot of my same-aged friends, they are rarely on FB; a status update for them usually means telling everyone about a party or a fraternity event. For most of my friends, we write about what we are doing or just did, and more often than not it is about kids or current events.

I suppose I will continue to stay on Facebook, at least until the job search kicks into high gear. I have my profile set so only friends can see it, but you just never know...

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

And in this corner

This weekend I am running in the Regent Run Around the Square, my first 5k race since 2006 and my first Run Around the Square since 2002. The last time I ran in that race, I entered the "heavyweight" division. If you know me, you know that although I am not skinny, I am certainly not a heavyweight. And even if I were, isn't it more important to be healthy and in shape? Which I am. How else could I run 3 to 4 miles on a regular basis? (Okay, I have not run 4 miles since the beginning of June, and I sometimes let two weeks go by before I run again. But during the school year, I was a regular runner, and trust me, I am doing just fine now.) Who thinks up these things? Don't enough women have self-image problems without being made to feel fat when they are not (and even if they are overweight, why make a big deal about it)? Luckily for me, I think fairly highly of my physical self; at the very least, I (mostly) accept what I have, try to work on it somewhat, and just b...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...

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