So...
I use to be on several social networking sites. You know, the fancy name for websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Yahoo! 360, Netlog... you get the point. And as everyone knows, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. There are cyber bullies, cyber stalkers, sexual predators, and US congressmen. I, myself, had problems in the stalker area (not me as a stalker but the other way around). So I decided just to shut them all down.
Awhile later I would get friends asking me if was on this site or the other site. I would say no and after a moment of their disbelief, shock, and inability to comprehend why anyone would not be on a social networking website, I would briefly explain what happened. Their answer was always the same: they have protections set up for that. Sure they do. I know it. But even if you cannot access that person's page without their permission, you can still discover if they are a member of that site. So then I got an idea.
It's not that I was in withdrawal of not being able to read stupid status updates of who was doing what every minute of their day. It's not that I hadn't just lived more than a year and survived without being on any social networking website. It's just that it appeared that no one else was willing to go back to the days of emails and phone calls to send info anymore. It appeared that if I wanted to know what was going on about a few things, I had to be a part of the group. Still, I didn't want my name popping up on a search, so my big idea was to make one up.
I created an alter ego complete with profile picture, date of birth, and hometown. I, of course, had to let my friends know what I was up to so they would accept this stranger as a friend. It felt kinda good to be in the loop again and it was kinda fun to do it with an alter ego. Then I heard about a contest.
A local radio station was giving away tickets to an event if you went to their page and submitted a poem. Others could read them and vote on them. The one with the most votes won. Pretty simple. I thought, "why not" and submitted a poem. Then I got to thinking, what if I win? How am I going to claim the tickets when I am not the person I said I was when I submitted the poem?
Luckily for me, I didn't win so I didn't have to figure out how to remedy the situation. But it did get me thinking about the possible limitations I may have placed on myself with my brilliant idea of this alter ego. I suppose there maybe things I miss out on to protect my identity, then again, I missed out on them for over a year not being on the sites in the first place. Not a bad trade off I suppose. I guess there's always a virtual farm that needs tending somewhere.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
A Couple of Lucky Ducks
So...
I married a woman with allergies. We're talking seasonal, environmental, animal, and food. So I suppose it should not have been that much of a surprise when my children were born with all of these allergies. Now, as parents, we've handled the food allergies. We've taken care of the environmental and seasonal allergies with pills. It's the animal allergies that present the most difficulty for us. Obviously we don't have a house filled with animals or even any animals at all. And that's where the problem is. That's exactly what my kids want; a house full of animals.
They beg, they cry, they plea for pets and we have to remind them that their allergies just don't permit us to bring animals into the house. They counter with the fact that their grandmother has a cat and that doesn't bother them when they are over there. We counter with the fact that every time we enter someone else's home who has an animal, it's instant red eyes and runny noses. And so the debate continues.
A week ago Saturday, my son was signed up to attend a program at the local animal shelter. The program was designed for children to read books to dogs, make a craft and get a free a book. Scratch that. The program was designed to get children into the animal shelter so that they could see all the animals there and pester their parents into buying them a pet. But it seemed like a neat activity and it was free. Double bonus. I couldn't attend so I sent the rest of my family knowing in the pit of my stomach that the next time I saw them, they would be accompanied by a pet.
Later that day, I did see my family again and much to my surprise they were pet-less. Not drama-less, but pet-less. It seems that they did find a cat that they would like to take home. My wife explained that the cat was a older cat, but very friendly. He was de-clawed and neutered and only needed his rabies shots. In addition, he was free. So my family opted to have a visit with the cat in a visitation room were animals and their potential new families have some quality time together. These rooms see a lot of animals in them each day and are not cleaned between visits, meaning a lot of animal hair and dander lying around. So they go into the room with the cat and a few minutes later my son is screaming that his eyes are burning as if someone just splashed his eyes with Louisiana hot sauce.
Now my wife has a situation on her hands. The kids think that by seeing the cat, they are going to get the cat, my son's running around, clawing at his eyes, begging for the pain stop, the animal shelter lady is frozen in shock not sure what to do, and my wife does not know if his allergies are acting up because of this cat or the dog hair in the room. The animal shelter lady offers my wife the option of taking the cat's blanket home to see how our son does with it. If he's okay, then he could be reacting to the dog hair. If not, then it's most certainly not the right cat for us. The problem is that my wife decided to wait to see me and tell me about it, forcing me to make a decision on the issue.
The kids are crying, begging for an opportunity to have a pet. I try to use the allergy argument again but that doesn't help. I decide to visit the cat myself to see how bad it really was. We entered another visitation room and they brought in the cat. He was cute enough but was shedding as if he had a severe thyroid issue. The animal shelter lady explained that it was that time of year when animals shed and we could get a special brush to help with it. The problem I saw was that the cat was black and white and his hair appeared to be magnetized to my children's clothing. Not only could we have animal allergies on out hands, we could also have my wife running around the house vacuuming three times a day. Which ultimately means more work for me as well.
So, to make a long story short, I agreed to take the blanket home, left it in the car, convinced my son that this was not the right cat for us and returned the blanket the next day. My son worked through his feelings about the cat and started talking about the day he would find "the right cat." He eventually stopped talking about pets altogether and I thought the issue was done. I was wrong. Flash forward to this weekend.
My family and I were about town and we stopped in to look at a tractor supply store just for the heck of it. It's the type of store that can meet all of your hardware or lawn care needs. This particular weekend, they also offered a little something extra. In the middle of the store sat several pens filled with baby chicks, baby geese, baby ducks and baby turkeys all for sale and waiting to be taken home. Now we don't live on a farm and I was not sure if I needed a permit to even buy one of these animals but after talking to some of the other families looking at the baby birds it became clear that I did not. I don't remember walking into someone's home to find a pet duck waddling around the living room so I was confused as to what it was that you did with a pet duck. They explained that they would raise the duck for a month or two and then release it in the park.
Now this made sense. There would not be any allergy related issues, the ducks would stay in the garage and we would release them in a couple of months. They did tell us to buy at least two of them as they would get lonely and squawk all night if they were by themselves. So, of course, my children were excited. We were not in a position to purchase them immediately, but discussed the possibility of returning later that weekend and sealing the deal. I fully expected our family to be the proud owners of two ducks by Easter.
As Saturday was drawing to a close, I asked my wife when we were going to get the ducks. She pointed out that neither of the children had brought up the issue and had seemed to have forgotten about it. She was right. Not a peep. Another bullet dodged. But this is surly not the last of it. Right now their attention spans are something we can manipulate but later, I'm sure, I may be writing about the newest member of the household, and God only knows if it will have fur, feathers, or scales.
I married a woman with allergies. We're talking seasonal, environmental, animal, and food. So I suppose it should not have been that much of a surprise when my children were born with all of these allergies. Now, as parents, we've handled the food allergies. We've taken care of the environmental and seasonal allergies with pills. It's the animal allergies that present the most difficulty for us. Obviously we don't have a house filled with animals or even any animals at all. And that's where the problem is. That's exactly what my kids want; a house full of animals.
They beg, they cry, they plea for pets and we have to remind them that their allergies just don't permit us to bring animals into the house. They counter with the fact that their grandmother has a cat and that doesn't bother them when they are over there. We counter with the fact that every time we enter someone else's home who has an animal, it's instant red eyes and runny noses. And so the debate continues.
A week ago Saturday, my son was signed up to attend a program at the local animal shelter. The program was designed for children to read books to dogs, make a craft and get a free a book. Scratch that. The program was designed to get children into the animal shelter so that they could see all the animals there and pester their parents into buying them a pet. But it seemed like a neat activity and it was free. Double bonus. I couldn't attend so I sent the rest of my family knowing in the pit of my stomach that the next time I saw them, they would be accompanied by a pet.
Later that day, I did see my family again and much to my surprise they were pet-less. Not drama-less, but pet-less. It seems that they did find a cat that they would like to take home. My wife explained that the cat was a older cat, but very friendly. He was de-clawed and neutered and only needed his rabies shots. In addition, he was free. So my family opted to have a visit with the cat in a visitation room were animals and their potential new families have some quality time together. These rooms see a lot of animals in them each day and are not cleaned between visits, meaning a lot of animal hair and dander lying around. So they go into the room with the cat and a few minutes later my son is screaming that his eyes are burning as if someone just splashed his eyes with Louisiana hot sauce.
Now my wife has a situation on her hands. The kids think that by seeing the cat, they are going to get the cat, my son's running around, clawing at his eyes, begging for the pain stop, the animal shelter lady is frozen in shock not sure what to do, and my wife does not know if his allergies are acting up because of this cat or the dog hair in the room. The animal shelter lady offers my wife the option of taking the cat's blanket home to see how our son does with it. If he's okay, then he could be reacting to the dog hair. If not, then it's most certainly not the right cat for us. The problem is that my wife decided to wait to see me and tell me about it, forcing me to make a decision on the issue.
The kids are crying, begging for an opportunity to have a pet. I try to use the allergy argument again but that doesn't help. I decide to visit the cat myself to see how bad it really was. We entered another visitation room and they brought in the cat. He was cute enough but was shedding as if he had a severe thyroid issue. The animal shelter lady explained that it was that time of year when animals shed and we could get a special brush to help with it. The problem I saw was that the cat was black and white and his hair appeared to be magnetized to my children's clothing. Not only could we have animal allergies on out hands, we could also have my wife running around the house vacuuming three times a day. Which ultimately means more work for me as well.
So, to make a long story short, I agreed to take the blanket home, left it in the car, convinced my son that this was not the right cat for us and returned the blanket the next day. My son worked through his feelings about the cat and started talking about the day he would find "the right cat." He eventually stopped talking about pets altogether and I thought the issue was done. I was wrong. Flash forward to this weekend.
My family and I were about town and we stopped in to look at a tractor supply store just for the heck of it. It's the type of store that can meet all of your hardware or lawn care needs. This particular weekend, they also offered a little something extra. In the middle of the store sat several pens filled with baby chicks, baby geese, baby ducks and baby turkeys all for sale and waiting to be taken home. Now we don't live on a farm and I was not sure if I needed a permit to even buy one of these animals but after talking to some of the other families looking at the baby birds it became clear that I did not. I don't remember walking into someone's home to find a pet duck waddling around the living room so I was confused as to what it was that you did with a pet duck. They explained that they would raise the duck for a month or two and then release it in the park.
Now this made sense. There would not be any allergy related issues, the ducks would stay in the garage and we would release them in a couple of months. They did tell us to buy at least two of them as they would get lonely and squawk all night if they were by themselves. So, of course, my children were excited. We were not in a position to purchase them immediately, but discussed the possibility of returning later that weekend and sealing the deal. I fully expected our family to be the proud owners of two ducks by Easter.
As Saturday was drawing to a close, I asked my wife when we were going to get the ducks. She pointed out that neither of the children had brought up the issue and had seemed to have forgotten about it. She was right. Not a peep. Another bullet dodged. But this is surly not the last of it. Right now their attention spans are something we can manipulate but later, I'm sure, I may be writing about the newest member of the household, and God only knows if it will have fur, feathers, or scales.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Almost a Flasher
So...
Last night was the big concert. My wife and daughter went out and got their hair done as well as purchased new outfits for the occasion. I'm assuming that the outfits are due to the fact that the mega superstar they were going to see had already seen them in all of their other outfits. Whatever. It was my daughter's first big concert so more power to 'em. Any hoo, this left me and my son with a boys' night out. But what should we do?
I had learned, earlier in the week, about an establishment in town who was organizing a flash mob for this very night. For those of you who don't know much about flash mobs, they are a group of hundreds of random people who ascend on a predetermined place at a predetermined time. They'll stay for a short period of time, maybe doing something maybe not, and then just leave as quickly as they showed up. This group was hoping for about 500 people to show up outside of the big concert before it started, have everyone freeze in random poses, hold those poses for three minutes, and then just jet. Basically, the whole idea is to amuse and confuse. And trust me, if I could have a motto that would sum up my goal in life, amuse and confuse would be it.
So at this point I'm excited. I've never been a part of a flash mob. Plus, it provided an opportunity to be, in a small way, part of the big concert the rest of my family was going to. I was concerned that my son would not be able stand still for three minutes, however. He barely can stay still for three minutes when he's asleep. He was talking about the different poses he was thinking about freezing in for a couple of days though, so I figured he was psyched about it. Then my wife reminded me of another option we could do with our time.
My son's school was hosting a fathers reading to their kids program that very night at the very same time the flash mob would be doing their thing. There would be cafeteria hot dogs and the kids would get a free book. My son, of course, was pretty excited about the free book. So now I'm stuck with a decision that could further my goal of amusing and confusing but leaving me looking like an ass of a father, or sharing a cold hot dog and a cheap book with my son because I know that's what he'd rather do. I know you're probably thinking that this was no choice at all. It was a no-brainer and the fact that I even had to think about it makes me look like a bad dad. Well I did think about it, so sue me. Deep down in my heart though, I knew how we would be spending our evening.
So we go get our hot dogs, bag of chips, and warm bottles of water. We pick out a book from a table filled with Clifford, Dora, and Scooby-Doo related reading material. We do our craft and head out. My son, who's not quite old enough to get the whole flash mob thing, asks if there is still time to do the freezing thing. I explain that it's already over and he tries to console me by saying that next time we can skip the book and go freezing.
The rest of the night offered ice cream from Dairy Queen, a rented copy of Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel (whatever the hell a "squeakquel" is), bath night, jamma time, and off to bed. So in the end, the choice was simple. Either three minutes of standing in place or a whole evening of interaction with my son. Almost a flasher but always a dad.
Last night was the big concert. My wife and daughter went out and got their hair done as well as purchased new outfits for the occasion. I'm assuming that the outfits are due to the fact that the mega superstar they were going to see had already seen them in all of their other outfits. Whatever. It was my daughter's first big concert so more power to 'em. Any hoo, this left me and my son with a boys' night out. But what should we do?
I had learned, earlier in the week, about an establishment in town who was organizing a flash mob for this very night. For those of you who don't know much about flash mobs, they are a group of hundreds of random people who ascend on a predetermined place at a predetermined time. They'll stay for a short period of time, maybe doing something maybe not, and then just leave as quickly as they showed up. This group was hoping for about 500 people to show up outside of the big concert before it started, have everyone freeze in random poses, hold those poses for three minutes, and then just jet. Basically, the whole idea is to amuse and confuse. And trust me, if I could have a motto that would sum up my goal in life, amuse and confuse would be it.
So at this point I'm excited. I've never been a part of a flash mob. Plus, it provided an opportunity to be, in a small way, part of the big concert the rest of my family was going to. I was concerned that my son would not be able stand still for three minutes, however. He barely can stay still for three minutes when he's asleep. He was talking about the different poses he was thinking about freezing in for a couple of days though, so I figured he was psyched about it. Then my wife reminded me of another option we could do with our time.
My son's school was hosting a fathers reading to their kids program that very night at the very same time the flash mob would be doing their thing. There would be cafeteria hot dogs and the kids would get a free book. My son, of course, was pretty excited about the free book. So now I'm stuck with a decision that could further my goal of amusing and confusing but leaving me looking like an ass of a father, or sharing a cold hot dog and a cheap book with my son because I know that's what he'd rather do. I know you're probably thinking that this was no choice at all. It was a no-brainer and the fact that I even had to think about it makes me look like a bad dad. Well I did think about it, so sue me. Deep down in my heart though, I knew how we would be spending our evening.
So we go get our hot dogs, bag of chips, and warm bottles of water. We pick out a book from a table filled with Clifford, Dora, and Scooby-Doo related reading material. We do our craft and head out. My son, who's not quite old enough to get the whole flash mob thing, asks if there is still time to do the freezing thing. I explain that it's already over and he tries to console me by saying that next time we can skip the book and go freezing.
The rest of the night offered ice cream from Dairy Queen, a rented copy of Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel (whatever the hell a "squeakquel" is), bath night, jamma time, and off to bed. So in the end, the choice was simple. Either three minutes of standing in place or a whole evening of interaction with my son. Almost a flasher but always a dad.
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