Social Networking-What am I Missing?

I absolutely do not understand the popularity of these social networking sites and I can’t be the only person who thinks this way. Would someone please explain what I am missing?

Years ago, I remember getting my first email account and how it gave me a good excuse for not returning messages right away, “Sorry, didn’t get your message… haven’t checked my email in a few days.” Don’t get me wrong, I like my friends as much as the next guy, and there’s nothing better than keeping in touch with acquaintances from the past.

However, this new phenomenon of hearing about every little detail of what friends are doing every second of the day is mind-boggling... I get little blurbs all day long, saying: “Getting coffee now… Traffic sucks… I am so tired.”

Ninety-nine percent of the time I could have an automated response that says, “Who Cares!?” If that other 1% of the time you need me to take you to the hospital for an emergency, you’re probably better off calling an ambulance (I pass out easily).

I feel like I may need to make an appointment with a psychologist. When she asks me what’s wrong, I’ll say, “Well, actually, I was feeling great, but reading all these constant complaints about nothing all day long gets depressing. What can I take?”

The best are the ones that say, “I am SO busy.” Well then, please take the twenty seconds you decided it was so important to tell me you’re busy and just relax. I’m still waiting for someone to send me at least one message deserving of a response. “Heading over to sleep with Steve’s wife” or “Just realized I am out of toilet paper and it’s not a good time.”

Nope, not me -- I get messages about what John is debating about having for lunch.

It’s actually amazing that people do this all day long through their phones. “At the beach swimming with my girlfriend.” NO, YOU'RE NOT SWIMMING WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND. YOU'RE UPDATING YOUR STATUS. Have we gotten to the point where people can’t enjoy life without telling everyone else how interesting they perceive their own life to be?

Maybe I will start a new site, mytwitteringface.com and it will work opposite of the others. Your site doesn’t become active until you have a substantial number of friends in your connections. With my site, each time you get a dumb message, that person gets deleted. The object would be to stay on as many sites as you can -- the messages therefore would obviously have to be more meaningful.

On my site a conversation might look more like this.
Message from John: “Heading to the bathroom.”
Response: You’re deleted and go see a doctor, that’s the fourth time this morning!” Of course, I may not have any friends left by the end of a day…

I know I’m in the minority, as the popularity of these sites is growing by leaps and bounds.

But as of today, I am done. I am officially signing off and going old school.

If you decide you’ve got something you want to tell me, just pick up the phone and give me a call. And whatever you do, please don’t call just to say you’re busy!

A Nursery Rhyme to Forget

If something odd, different or unexpected is going to happen, it is going to happen to me. They say what won’t kill you will make you stronger. I am not sure if someone is testing me, however if they are, I wish they would stop.

Saturday was a beautiful day and I decided to take my daughter for a walk in the stroller. As we were walking down the sidewalk next to the road singing, "Old McDonald Had A Farm, And On His Farm He Had A," well let’s just hope little Jordyn thought I said, Duck, rather than *uck, as I noticed a large Fox walking along the road a few hundred feet behind us an picking up speed.

Suddenly looking like I was one of those speed walking Mothers with the big wheeled strollers trying to get my exercise, I realized I had only a Blackberry to throw at the rabid Fox. Is that covered in my blackberry warranty?

I am now in a panic as to what to do and am picking up speed and so is the fox. I thought maybe I should take off my bright red shirt I was wearing and pitch it into the road then thought, “Mark, it’s a fox not a bull you idiot.”

Suddenly as I looked back and pondered my next move, a police car came darting up and “boom,” right over the fox, flipped his lights on, did a u turn and “boom,” back over the fox again. Then the officer stopped the car and got out with his gun drawn.

I turned around and said to the officer, “Thanks, great driving!” Nothing like running over the fox 6 times before shooting it to liven up the afternoon. I was fairly confident that fox wasn’t going to be biting me now. “Saw him coming after you, had to get him a second time, just to make sure I got him good," he said with a big grin. At least he didn’t ask me to stay and clean off the squad car…

Needless to say I am a little edgy about taking walks again. If you are driving through my neighborhood and see a guy pushing a stroller armed and in full military gear, you will know it is me.

As for Jordyn, I am just afraid when she gets to stories like the Big Bad Wolf and others where the evil character resembles the Fox, she is going to just say, “Well why didn’t they just run it over with the car?”

Handy Man?

It would be more than appropriate to never use my name and the word ‘handyman’ together in the same sentence. Giving a guy like myself a tool set as a gift is like herding 50 bulls into a jewelry store and thinking nothing will get damaged. It’s just not a good idea.

Recently, though, I got that itch to attempt things that a normal person should be fully capable of and, not surprisingly, I failed miserably.

First, I blew out a tire on the car and figured, even though I pay for a service to come for just this situation, I should be able to manage to change it myself. In auto racing, they accomplish this task in seven seconds -- surely I could manage it in ten minutes. So, I got out all the tools: the jack, the spare, loosened the wheel nuts. Next, I cranked the car up until there was just enough clearance to get the tire off. At this point, I even started to think, hey maybe on weekends, Auto Racing might need a tire man with my obvious natural talents….

However, my luck would suddenly run out.

Ever wonder what goes through someone’s head as they see their car fall off the jack? Just ask me. It isn’t bad enough that you screw up your tire in the first place; explaining your mangled attempt to fix it to the guys who bail you out... that’s the real challenge.

First, the call to the automobile service: “Well, yes, I did blow a tire.” “So you need someone to put on a spare?” “Well, sort of…after they lift that side of the car off the grounds, they’ll have to see if the crushed metal will still accommodate a tire.”

Finally, the real defeat comes when the service guys shows up and flashes me the same look I saw on the faces of my high school teachers whenever they’d hand me back a test. You know the look: why didn’t you just ask for help?

I was going to sell the car anyway, or so I thought, so a couple hundred to fix the damage, a little embarrassment, it was all par for the course, at this point. Could have been a lot worse. So, I then spent the rest of my day cleaning the outside of the car to make sure it was sparking, when suddenly the idea came over me, why don’t I power was the engine before selling it? That way, the stuff under the hood will look as clean as the outside!

So, I headed up the street to one of those self-cleaning bays, lifted the hood, and cranked up the washer to the maximum power. Got to get this looking sharp, I though.

By the time I was finished, the engine looked brand new, and finally, a sense of pride washed over me. If I had four arms, I’d have patted myself on the back with two, while holding up a trophy with the others.

Beaming, I slid into the driver’s seat and started up the car. Hmm... For some reason, the engine now sounded a lot closer to my lawn mower than what use to be my car. Except, my lawn mower doesn’t groan to a stop, like my car just did. The check engine light flashed on. The car wouldn’t start. And I suddenly felt that same sinking feeling I had before…

When the automobile service arrived, I experienced what had to be the worst déjà vu of all time: it was the same guy from the tire incident. Upon hearing of my idea, he simply shook his head, and $1,000 later, after replacing the wiring, I’d managed to short out, he concluded by asking me, “Who told you to power wash your engine?”

The last straw in my attempts to become a handyman came last week when I decided to tune up my wife’s bicycle, which hadn’t been used for awhile.

I insisted that the bike didn’t need an expensive trip to the bike shop, that I’d be perfectly able to pump up the tires, oil the chain, and get it running like new again, all by myself.

To make a long story short, the wheels have plenty of air now. Just can’t seem to get them back on the bike.

While I’m pretty disappointed in my skills as a handyman, the bright side is I’ll never have to spend my weekends helping friends repair things, and no one will ever ask me to borrow tools I don’t have. So, it’s turning out to be a good thing. Last weekend, I suggested I might rent a chainsaw to cut some branches down in the backyard. Luckily for me, my wife insisted she’d find somebody else to take care of it.

I think I’m going to like not being a handyman...