Facebooked

So I got an e-mail from a dear friend the other day inviting me to look at her Facebook page. I have no interest in Facebook whatsoever and have been listening all week to the news reports about people surrendering all their rights, plus their firstborn children, when they decide to join Facebook. So when I got this e-mail, I was faced with the dilemma of just blowing off my friend or signing over all future royalties in order to join.

So I joined.

But here’s the thing. Now I can look and see what people are up to, see if they’re online at the same time I am and communicate electronically with them or just peek at their pictures. These are typically people I don’t make the time to call or visit with already. Now I have another vehicle to not have direct contact with them. I’m not feeling good about this. It’s bad enough that I have a blog and just say things at people without actually having a dialogue. Now we can have entire relationships without actually having relationships. And – here’s the added stress I don’t need: what if I don’t add friends – then it looks like I don’t have any friends. Or what if I just start adding people to make it look like I have friends, but really they’re not my friends – just acquaintances. Am I leading them on? What if I don’t like them that way… Or what if no one comes to my funeral, but lots of people sign the online guest book…

I’m going to call my friend. Or maybe just send her a link to my blog and she can read what I think.

Public Display of Affection

I love Valentine's Day.

I know - it's a big marketing thing that sets ridiculous expectations for high school boys and inattentive husbands, effectively setting most up for failure.

Still - I love having an excuse to reflect upon how much I adore my husband.

I had an assignment in class on Wednesday (it's an organizational behavior kinda thing) and I had to provide an analysis of my family as an organization. I was asked to consider what the long-term goals of the organization are, who makes the rules, how do we know what the rules are, what happens when the rules are broken - stuff like that. In considering my family organization to be me & Jeff, I was able to determine the structure of the organization is nearly perfect ~ we share the same long-term goals, decisions are made cooperatively with the good of the organization in mind. It's a partnership that emphasizes strengths, minimizes weaknesses and realizes a common-good. Plus there's kissing and stuff.

So - I'm happy on this Valentine's Day to tell my husband how much I love him and look forward to the rest of our journey together. To thank him for his love and support and to tell him how glad I am that we've held hands and jumped over the bumps in the road together. To say, Honey, I love you so much.

Wicked Nice

So I'm back in school and already overwhelmed with work and schoolwork (like I don't have enough excuses for not blogging) but had a really nice experience tonight. I ventured out of my regular program to take a class that's part of the school of education at UMass. What's a little amusing is that I didn't realize this course, that is approved by my program for Masters' level credit is part of the Doctoral program in education (yep, I'm a snotty CPPA student) so when I discovered that I expected to be completely out of my league and surrounded by brainiacs. In reality, I was just welcomed into the fold of a very tight group of people that are really smart, funny and wicked nice. They're all part of the same program and have taken lots of classes together so I was acknowleged as the outsider but treated like a new friend.

Also awesome was that I was assigned a group exercise with three other people (in a class of fifteen) and they were from three different countries - I'm feeling so diverse!

The best part - these are totally committed educators who are studying education policy (and all vowing to undue the damage of NCLB) - I just love that kids will benefit from these wonderful people. Truly inspiring.

I still have too much homework.