Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about my sharing habits with my girlfriends, because I’ve realized I favor certain communication methods over others, and it’s mostly up to chance on who I will communicate with next, and how. So I am finding myself saying more often, “Did I tell you about this?” and being surprised that I didn’t (and feeling that guilt). 

Ha ha, let me explain. First of all, I feel very lucky to have several close girlfriends*, and secondly, I usually don’t have anything “important” to communicate with them**. Just my typical day-to-day blatherings. 

But who I talk with, and how, changes on a day-to-day basis, so what gets shared with whom does as well. 

I prefer in-person communication above all other. But we can’t see our friends every day, can we? So after that, I really like google chat, cause it’s easier to type using a keyboard, than texting. And it’s live communication. Then, email is nice. And texting is good too***, but some things are just too much to put in a text. 

So, it’s all very obvious, but I have just been thinking about how the people I see in person, tend to get news the soonest, then maybe someone I google chat with, or write an email to, and so on. Ha, notice that phone calls were not on that list? I only call my mother and grandmothers.

Which… brings me to the point of this whole post (long arse intro, huh?!). My parents were in town this weekend and we had such a nice visit with them. The four of us did things together, as well as spending time with other people, but I also had the chance to have some one-on-one time with my mom and dad, separately. 

You guys know that I get that one-on-one time with my dad quite often when I see him, because the two of us work out together. And I truly cherish that time with him. I gossip away, and when I shut up, I get to hear what is going on in his life, ha ha. 

But I rarely, RARELY, get that one-on-one time with my mother. Like… I can’t remember the last time I did before this weekend. When I am around her, there are almost always other people there, too. And she is usually busy, taking care of people! And when I call, she is often on the go, or around other people. 

So, to have that time with her, was just fantastic. We talked about a lot of different things I know we never would have, had we not been one-on-one.

Sigh, I realized though, that I am horrible about keeping them up to date in things that are going on in my personal life****. You know, the things I started out this blog post talking about – the day-to-day blatherings. At least that made me feel better about how quickly I share them with my girlfriends, as I was updating my parents on things that happened over the entire last year!

With whom would you like some more one-on-one time?

*and interestingly, mostly from different social groups – not many are friends with one another
**as in, why do I even feel guilty if they are missing out on my dramz? ha ha
***and really fantastic for keeping in touch, just not sharing long stories, hee hee
****really, just talking about small things here – I tell them “important” news

On Monday, Steven said goodbye and was heading out the door for work when I called to him, “Wait! Don’t I get a goodbye kiss?!”

So he walked over for one. 

And shocked me on the lips. Ouch! 

Ha ha. It’s that time of year. It’s dry. We’re all picking up static electricity. Poor Data has it the worst. You can see his fur light up if you pet him in the dark. 

And my hands! What the heck! Every year. EVERY DANG YEAR! The right one is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more dried out than the left one. Gosh, it hurts so much. 

What do you people do so you don’t get all dried out when the humidity and temperature drop? Use humidifiers? Actually use lotion? 4za <—-added text from Data

Hmm, maybe the lotion thing would be a good start. Muah ha ha. 

I’d love to take an anatomy class and woo hoo – our local, fab community college offers one!

I love this muscular system cheat sheet my parents gave me, but I’d like to rely on it a bit less.

Sigh, the problem though?! It’s online, and I struggle BIG TIME with learning from videos. Sigh sigh sigh.

What’s your preferred learning mode? In person? Hands on? Classroom? Textbook? Video? Osmosis?

I greatly prefer a classroom/in-person setting with hands on training when applicable. This is followed by text book. I can learn from a book, I just really have to focus, and hey, that’s easier for me in a classroom. Video? Not a good chance. With dual monitors, I’m constantly screwing around with something on the other screen. It’s pathetic how short my attention span is when it comes to watching videos (for learning or for fun).

Maybe I’ll look around and see if other local colleges offer a weekend course. Or I’ll just have to learn to focus on the screen!

(Total FWP, fo sho. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to expand my knowledge, and the money and resources to do so. Just thinking about how I learn best, is all.)

What if you could only gift people “homemade” items this holiday season? What would those gifts be?

(Ha ha, I know, another holiday post SO soon! Hey, better this than what I’ve been thinking about – how this time of year makes me feel bad about how well I don’t know certain family members, and vice versa.)

As I am bundled up at work today, wearing some finger-less gloves that a friend made me, I’m thinking about what a nice, thoughtful, useful gift that was… and how I’ve used them for years!

And my mind also wandered to “what could I make for someone?” Um… I bake. I can make those fleece cut & tie blankets. Err… I can offer personal training sessions? Ha ha – no one wants that. 

Man, I need some skillz! Knitting/crocheting (whatever the difference is) is actually something I’d like to learn! And I could probably stand to try a few other things.

Or, I could just buy items from my talented friends and family! I have a second cousin who makes pens, bowls, jewelry and other items out of wood. My friend Kelly makes beautiful wreaths. And Steven is super duper handy! Hee hee.

Or instagram or any other social media platform that uses metrics to show you the amount of “interest” in your postings, whether by likes, followers, etc. (And really… was the “like” feature always there? I can’t even recall!)

Well, this article is interesting (pdf here) (highly recommend if you have the time to read it!). The author discovered there is a browser plug-in called “Facebook Demetricator,” which removes all of the “numbers” from Facebook – likes count, who liked it, dates, etc. The plug-in description explains it well:

The Facebook interface is filled with numbers. These numbers, or metrics, measure and present our social value and activity, enumerating friends, likes, comments, and more. Facebook Demetricator is a web browser addon that hides these metrics. No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on who they are and what they said. Friend counts disappear. ’16 people like this’ becomes ‘people like this’. Through changes like these, Demetricator invites Facebook’s users to try the system without the numbers, to see how their experience is changed by their absence. With this work I aim to disrupt the prescribed sociality these metrics produce, enabling a network society that isn’t dependent on quantification.

Interesting to think that you get your “social value” from places like Facebook, but hey! That is the society we live in now. And that is what made the author of the article try it – they read a paper the plug-in developer, Benjamin Grosser, had written, where the point was that people are using these numbers to assign value to their relationships and life. SCARY! (or not? normal, maybe? sadly?)

So what did the author think after using the plug-in?

• They weren’t sure if it was “liberating or invalidating” to not know how many likes a photo would get. 
• They did like not seeing who liked something, then liking it themselves, based on its merit and not feeling like they had to, because their friends did. I thought this was really interesting. I have liked things after seeing a friend like them, too. 
• They felt immune to “viral posts, to Facebook peer-pressure, and to acutely targeted ads.” They hardly clicked anything, anymore, feeling like they were in a vacuum.

Super interesting, right?!

Alright, now tell me…  would you try this Demetricator plug-in? Or do you NEEEEEED your numbers?!

Of course, I turned it on, to try! Here is a screenshot of the changes I noticed so far (showing my blog page for privacy reasons, but it’s similar on the personal page):

(Also, if someone likes a comment, it doesn’t show who, or how many, just that it was liked – you have to click on it to see by whom. And I really like that it turns off how many unread posts you have in your groups!!!)

But, I think I will still see these metrics in the pages app on my phone and on the iPad! We’ll see how this experiment goes!