Too busy Tweeting about the commercials, knitting, cooking, eating & rockin’ out to The Who to take very many pictures.
Thumbs Up: Doritos commercials, Hyundai Bret Favre commercial, Kia commercial, Griswolds commercial
Thumbs Down: GoDaddy.com commercials, Green Police commercial (OK, it was funny, but in a “That’s TOO close to reality” way, especially for anyone in/close to San Francisco)
Oh, yeah…Best part? Hubby won $650!!!
Last night, it was our turn to host the middle schoolers from our area of the church. Since it’s half-way through the school year, some of the fifth graders have started attending the middle school events so they can have relationships started by the time middle school camp comes this summer. Hubby wanted nachos, so I bought a big can of orange nacho cheese goo, a bunch of chips, salsa, and jalapenos, and the kids made their own nachos. We had a short discussion on:
Ecclesiastes 9:11 (New International Version)
11 I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Hubby tied it in with the Stupor Bowl Super Bowl tomorrow, etc. The kids had some interesting ideas. Afterwards, he paired the kids up into four teams for a tabletop football tournament, makinlg sure to make all the teams mixed boy/girl instead of having them compete boys against girls as they have been lately. Most of them didn’t know how to play at first, but once they got the hang of it, they had a great time! We did have one kid who needed to play one-on-one in a quieter, less stimulating situation, so Hubby and I took turns playing at the desk with him. They all seemed to have a good time. I’m sure you can tell from the pictures which team one, lol. (Sorry about the fuzzy pictures; I should have used the regular camera instead of my iPhone.)
So, this is something I’ve been turning over in my head for a long time but have never gotten around to posting here. Who are you? If you have a blog or are on Facebook/Twitter/Plurk/MySpace/whatever, how do you decide how much of yourself to reveal and which aspects of yourself to reveal?
When I first started my blog, it was largely as a way to share family pictures and updates with people without having to email everyone big files. OK, wait. That’s not the first reason. The very first reason I started a blog was b/c Hubby started one, and I felt a bit competitive (If you’re going to have a blog, then I want one, too!). The more logical reason was for the pictures. The blog quickly became focused on my knitting with occasional forays into conservative politics, PAIL (Pregnancy and Infant Loss) awareness, and Pit Bull advocacy. When we travelled, I used the blog as our travelogue.
If you have some sort of online presence, how do YOU choose to express yourself? Do you only choose to express one aspect of your life - say, just your knitting, or just your culinary adventures? Do you have separate blogs for each area you choose to express? (At one time, I had this blog, plus one for tracking my reading through the year, plus a yarn wishlist-type blog. I also had a separate one when I was participating in the “101 in 1001″ project.) Do you try to do everything in one place?
How “out” are you about who you are? Is your blog anonymous with nicknames for everyone in your family, your town/state never mentioned, or do you give all kinds of information, practically giving your address and phone number?
If you use Twitter or Facebook, how often do you update? Do you only mention the larger things, or is every little movement of your day logged? (Hubby jokes about a friend from church who seemed to update her Facebook status every 15 minutes, and then she got an iPhone - yikes!)
Do you try express your whole self? Is that even possible? Is it even advisable? Are there areas of your life you purposely hide? (Perhaps you have a child with severe special needs whom you choose to shield from public scrutiny, or someone in your family is an addict who is actively using but you use your blog as a break from the drama in your home?)
I have tried to give a fairly well-rounded picture of myself, but I don’t think it’s really possible to give the WHOLE me online. First of all, I do choose not to use my daughters’ names online, just b/c it seems safer. More practically, however, how COULD I express ALL of me? I talk about funny stuff that happens in my family, but am I really going to blog about every argument in my marriage, every time I have to discipline my kids in some way, every weird dysfunctional thing? Is it really my place to talk about someone else’s addiction or psychological issues? Is it appropriate for me to describe my sex life, and do I even want to? (Uh, that would be NO and NO…) Am I going to publish every set of sermon notes from church, what I got out of it, every prayer I pray or sin I battle? Does anyone really want to know all the weird thoughts in my head?
See what I mean? We might think people can get to know us from our blogs/other online presence, and we might feel we know someone else that way, but by definition, even if we don’t consciously limit it, it IS limited in scope. So, how do you decide?
I got started thinking about this a few years ago. We went on a trip and were going to meet an online friend of mine. Her husband asked, “So, who ARE these people we’re going to meet?” She showed him my blog, and from my profile, he said, “Gee, do these people even DRINK?”, thinking we were some kind of stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddies. It surprised me b/c I didn’t think I’d given such a narrow view of myself, and it got me thinking about the limitations of online profiles, descriptions, blogs, etc. Around that same time, I invited another online friend to meet us somewhere. For various reasons, she declined, and I later found out that she emailed the friend we did meet to find out what we were like, if we were boring weirdos, if I was like the Dana Carvey “church lady” character, etc. I can joke with her about this now, but at the time, it hurt my feelings just a little and made me think about this whole subject.
So, back to the original question: If you have an online presence of some form, who are you? Do you use it to express many aspects of yourself, or just one? Do you express the real you, or have you created some whole online alter ego as an escape from your real life? Who are you?
**With apologies to Pete, Roger, and the late Keith and John. I’ve been thinking about this blog post since long before tomorrow’s halftime show was scheduled.
So, there was this guy named Ezekiel, and he lived a loooong time ago. One time, he got REAAALLLLYYY overwhelmed. Instead of doing something about it, he went to Tel-Aviv and just sat somewhere in town for a week. Yupp, just sat there.
This is also my general M.O. when I’m overwhelmed - I do nothing. I had decided a couple of weeks ago that February would be a “Finish It Or Frog It” month for me because I had an embarrassing number of WIP’s and hibernating UFO’s. I have several new projects which I need to get cranking on, so I wanted to clear a path.
Well, THEN I got overwhelmed. This time around, my way of “doing nothing and sitting under a tree for a week” was to do what RChrispy has pointed out that I do when I’m fast approaching a deadline: I cast on something new.
Like I said, I am insane.
(For the curious, this is the beginnings of a Moderne Baby Blanket in Reynolds Wash Day Wool on US size 5’s in assorted colors.)
So, this started out life as a Shrug This shrug, got modified from the get-go, got altered a bit more, then some more, and ended up as a cardi for me. Thing is, it NEEDS something b/c it’s definitely more flattering (and warmer!) when closed. SO, the question is: Should I procure myself a very simple shawl pin (yes, I realize the stitch holder doesn’t really work) or get a single button or get a few buttons? I have a small bit of yarn left, and I’m pretty sure I could finagle a way to add some buttons as an afterthought.
Once again, discuss…
The question is: How BAD a fail is this? Is it a TOTAL fail, or does it work as a kid-sized hat? It was intended as an adult-sized Felicity, but even though I went up a couple of needle sizes, it came out “a little snug” on Thing Two, who’s eight. Is it acceptable as a gift for a nine-year-old girl, or should I donate it to 7Long (7Long = the pediatric oncology unit) for a younger kid? OR should I felt it and turn it into a small purse, lol?
Knittaz, discuss…
Just a few friends over for dinner last night for Hubby’s birthday. I wanted to have a lot of people b/c we haven’t had a party in a while, but it was his birthday, and he wanted something really low-key, so that’s what we did.
I gotta say this new goose recipe is DA BOMB! Definitely easier to make since I bought a meat mallet, lol.
As you peruse the highlights, please bear in mind that Thing One was the self-appointed photojournalist for the evening (click for bigger and to get to the whole batch of pictures)…
Still not sure what I’m going to do with this shawl. At the moment, it’s lurking in the corner, folded very nicely, waiting for a good home. The more I look at it, the more likely I am just to keep it, but it feels a little silly when the Stonechat color is so similar to my Col China scarf. I dunno; we’ll see…
[During a tickle fight with Thing Two...]
Those are NOT bongos! Those are called buttocks.
A few weeks ago, my brain snapped as I found out that my friend Evelt’s son Tony and my friend Robbin’s daughter Eryn were expecting a son in a matter of weeks and were about to get married. Hunh? I had no idea any of them knew each other! Tony and Eryn have no idea how they SCORED in the in-laws department. The baby shower was on Saturday, and here are the few pictures I took. I’m really bummed that 90% of them are fuzzy; I should have taken my camera instead of relying on my iPhone for pictures. Oh, well…
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