Another Facebook Faux Pas?

Just search for this subject and you're going to hit a bunch of funny and perhaps stinging reads.   I know I've been guilty of a few of them on occasion.  The first article in that query link refers directly to me and warns others to not become my friend because of my musical ambitions.  OK, so I want you to listen to my music, how can I help it?

My personal opinion that most things that are considered faux pas are really just people with good intentions.  But I can't seem to wrap my head around this last event that occurred recently.  One of my online friends decided that he would prefer to keep personal and business contacts completely separated, a completely understandable desire.  But instead of using the lists feature to block certain content to certain people, or even creating a second profile, this person decided to create a personal page, something that a user "like"-s, such as an artist's or product's page.

I didn't follow along with this request.  I mean, I saw it as totally one-sided.  I "like" you and can follow all your updates but you can't and don't do the same with me.  That isn't the point, I don't think.  In the end, I think I saw this as just a slightly gentler way of saying, "Look, I don't want to be your friend here anymore."  But as with other gaffs, sometimes I think it still might just be more prudent to silently delete me if you don't want my online company.  Heck, I might never even notice that you did it if you're a quiet Facebooker.  Really, all of my attention to this seems kind of silly, but I think it's interesting how personal interactions have been molded and broken in the digital world.  We are, after all, human beings on the other side of our silly avatar pictures.

These Are The People

The trip back to Chicago went well. I even had an entire row on the plane to myself on the way out. It was good to get a chance to go out to dinner with some of my friends, too. There was a lot to do at the house to prepare. Between Curtis and myself, we shoveled the driveway which was full of snow, especially the end where to snowplows shove all the extra snow from the street. I think there was at least three feet piled up there. I also had to shovel out the garbage cans which were buried very deep next to the alley.

Once everything was loaded, I had about half an hour to wait until my ride to the airport arrived. It was really weird standing around waiting in the empty house. A little sad, a little exciting, there were lots of things to think about while I waited in silence. Every time I heard a creak, I would look around and expect to see Sid creeping around the corner or sitting on the stairs in between the banisters.

My reverie was enjoyable but then I remembered one of the reasons we wanted to leave that neighborhood in the first place when I heard a snow shovel outside. I lightly pulled open one of the slats in the blinds covering the side door window. One of the nearby alley neighbors was shoveling snow back into our driveway from the alley. I don't know why. Nothing was preventing him from getting in and out of his garage. It really was not a whole lot of snow. He glared at me and I closed the blinds. People there were nice enough but it really wasn't a neighborhood, just a collection of houses with people living inside of them. We lived there four years and only at the very end when a young couple moved in next to us to the east did we really meet anybody. They were very nice and we will miss them, but otherwise, there really isn't a whole lot I will miss about that neighborhood.

I'll Be Back

Or rather, I am back. My Facebook absence was short-lived. But it gave me the opportunity to really consider why I was there in the first place. I enjoy keeping in touch with some of the people I've met in my life who are no longer in close enough proximity to visit me in meat space. I think curiosity got the better of me more often than it should have and I allowed more people to become my "friend" than I should have. I just wasn't comfortable around many of them anymore, even as a digital avatar. It became a high school reunion rather than a way to stay in contact with better friends. Moving forward, I will try to be more selective and also a better human being now that I understand a few more things about myself.

I Did It!

I quit Facebook. I was always trying to cope with these old feelings of inadequacy. I'd check my profile to see if people were commenting on anything I had to say. When nobody was paying attention, I'd feel rejected. It was ridiculous. Those feelings are ridiculous and I'm better off without them. When I realized that I felt like I was fifteen again, I knew things were out of proportion. I know that nobody was ignoring me on purpose or trying to make me feel bad. That line of thought is also ridiculous. But somehow, I still kept coming back to those same feelings, my emotions kept getting the better of me.

It's going to be a little hard to leave it behind. I enjoyed the initial voyeuristic excitement of getting a new friend (ding, gratz!) and leafing through their profile. Was I comparing myself against them? Not outright. But after a while, in my own mind, I think it did become a game. It was a game to see who could maintain the most profile traffic. In that context, I was losing hardcore. That, in turn, made me feel bad about myself. Just like I did in high school. I don't need that. Nobody needs that.

Once I came to that conclusion, there really was only one clear option. It was time to shut the profile down. It's not that I don't like those people. I do. There was almost always a reason why I either proffered myself to be their friend or accepted their own offer. But I hadn't talked to most of the people on my friend list for probably a decade or more. Once we said, "Hello! What are doing these day?", what more was there to talk about?

More concerning to me were my feelings when a friend that I had always considered "a very good friend" didn't talk to me a whole lot. They had new friends, people who are actually a part of their daily lives. That made me feel bad until I realized that I did too. However, I'll admit that a big part of my fascination with Facebook stemmed from uprooting my entire life this past year. I craved something, anything familiar.

Yes, some of those old friends are still around. I still see certain people when I visit PA. Those of you old-timers who stop by here are certainly included on the list. But time moves on and for good reason. We're not who we were 10 or 20 years ago. That's as it's supposed to be and a "good thing". We're supposed to change. If we don't, why are we still living?

In the end, I certainly appreciate the people that I have around, even virtually, very much. The thing is, though, that circle can only be so wide before people start getting pushed out. I'm sure some were pushed out of mine just as I was pushed out of others. It's simply no big deal, though, and that was my problem with Facebook. Again, it wasn't Facebook's problem, but my problem. In the end, I learned something about myself and I hope that I can stay in touch with a small handful of the people that I (re) met.

An Overdue Apology

I used to be one of the thickest people I know. As evidence, I offer a true tale that takes place many years ago in which I went on a date. But, see, the thing is I didn't know it was a date. Now I'm getting ahead of myself.

The phone rang and when I picked it up, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to the movies. I asked her who else was going. She hesitated and replied that nobody else was going. I thought that was strange but maybe we'd run into some other friends there.

We didn't. The movie was Sister Act 2, a movie so abysmal that we should have been making out during the opening credits. We didn't. We watched the whole thing, mostly in silence. After the credits rolled, we chatted as I drove her home. I pulled into her driveway, thanked her for the offer of going to the movies, and politely said good night. She returned the pleasantry and seemed irritated as she got out of the car and went inside.

As the screen door slammed, I realized three hours too late what had just happened. It's been about fifteen years since that night and I never apologized. So, for what it's worth, if you ever read this, I'm sorry for being so dense and snubbing you so harshly. I don't think I could ever convince you that it was completely unintentional. I was just a dullard.

Homaha

Chris, Curtis, Jon, and Mike, four of my ex-cohorts in audio crimes against nature at my old job, came out for a visit this weekend. It was the most fun I've had since I can't remember when. They stayed downtown in the Old Market area and I met up with them Friday night after work. Curt cooked me up a Manhattan while we caught up on the past few months and then it was out on the town. Well, almost. Before going out we actually hit up the hotel's complimentary welcome package, which included free beer. Who passes up free beer?

Then we hit the town, had some dinner at M's Pub, and then headed over to The Dubliner, and Irish pub with some live music. The only strange thing that none of us were really used to was that everything closed up at one. So once we closed the bars, we headed back to the hotel and had a few more brews and some pizza until everyone crashed for the night.

The next day, I gave them a tour of my audio facilities and some of the school. Then, we met up with Amy for some dinner at Spaghetti Works. After dinner, we did some bar hopping, but things didn't really pick up at the first couple places we went to so we ended up right back at the Dubliner. It seemed like one of the more happening places to go. The crowd on Saturday was noticeable younger, though. Not a huge deal, but some young tempers were easily flared.

All in all, a great weekend. I'm totally flattered that they would drive all this way to party for two nights. It was a blast and I won't soon forget it.

Please Just Rip It Off

It's getting difficult now. Knowing that I'm leaving the day after tomorrow is agonizing, like pulling a bandage off slowly. Saying goodbye to coworkers and friends... not my favorite thing in the world. This is truly the first move I've made in my life where I haven't been happy about leaving things behind. The move to Chicago was hard, but I had nowhere to go but up. Not that I don't think this move is a step up, but by pursing greater things for my career, I'm now sacrificing friendships, too.

Also, the irony that one's house is only at its cleanest on the day it's left behind is striking.

Farewell, Chicago

So it's official. I've given my two-weeks notice to PIL today and have accepted a job as full-time music technology faculty at Iowa Western Community College outside of Omaha, Nebraska. I haven't posted much recently because, frankly, not much else has been on my mind and I couldn't talk about anything publicly until today. So much needs to be done on our end that there isn't time for anything besides thinking about moving and actually moving as I start August 4th. Amy will stay behind with Nick for a while to finish our business here and they will hopefully join me by the beginning of September.

I am sad to leave my coworkers behind. They have been a fun group and I will miss them. They've challenged me in ways I never expected and I feel I've become a better person because of it.

I've never been good at goodbyes. We've been seven years in the Chicago area now and we have hat a lot of fun here. But despite my penchant for personal comfort and stability, it is time for some new adventures. Onward.

Antisocial Networking

Social networking sites, places like MySpace and Facebook, seem to be all the rage right now, at least with my generation, the X'ers. The Millenials, those college students you can easily spot looking like they lived through the 1980s but were probably only born half way through them at best, have probably moved on to trendier, more hip sections of the internet. But that's OK. They haven't had enough time to really separate themselves from their roots yet. They don't use the social networking sites for the same reason I use them: to avoid social networking.

I, like so many others, get bitten by the nostalgia bug occasionally. I get the urge to want to say hello to someone I haven't seen in a couple of decades. Traditionally, I think the high school reunion was used for this purpose. Every willing person from the class comes home for one night to see how their old friends are doing and to put their measuring sticks up against their old classmates. How bald am I compared to John? How fat am I compared to Jane? How much have we really changed? How much, indeed. But places like Facebook eliminate the hassle for someone like me.

I was listening to a repeat podcast of This American Life about The Prom. One of the girls interviewed had an epiphany at the prom: she never needed to come back to high school after that night. I realized that she was absolutely right when I thought about my own senior prom. I wasn't an incredibly popular guy in high school but I wouldn't say I was on the bottom of the social ladder either. I was stranded in the middle, able to look down on the poor saps below me who hadn't figured out how to rise above their own stations but unable rise much higher due to my love of band, choir, and theater and my complete non-interest in sports. Because of this, or perhaps in spite of it, I invited a lot of people to my parent's house as one of the many after-prom locations. I was surprised when a lot of them showed up. Perhaps it was the table tennis. But maybe they liked me. After all the speculation, I'm pretty sure it was the table tennis. For the most part, the majority of people that came departed once they'd had enough of it. After all, mine was a party without alcohol, without drugs, without those rites of passage for so many teens. Also, I was still in the middle of the ladder. It's been great not really knowing you!

Which brings me back to Facebook. I could have called everyone that showed up to my house that night a friend at that moment. But were we really friends or was my place just somewhere to go before the real parties began? Do we have that much to relive? One night of Ping-Pong? I can log in to my Facebook account and say hello to almost any of the people that I'd like to see, say hello, ask how they're doing, and log out. It's completely voluntary. I don't have to spend time chatting up the guy who used to knock my books out of my hands about how he loves his job selling insurance or the jock who would yell at me for not really caring about the gym class basketball game. I know that we're (supposedly) all adults now, that we can see how ridiculously we treated each other as teenagers. But I don't feel like I need to prove that I'm grown up. I already did that by leaving in the first place. I don't want to hang around and forcibly, uncomfortably chat with anyone from the old days. But if you feel like it, look me up on Facebook.

P.S. I know I'm misusing the term antisocial with this post, but I couldn't resist because I love this song.

Helpful Visitors

We've had a couple of busy weekends since my last post. Amy's parents and grandmother were out for Easter weekend. Thankfully, they had already planned to stay Friday night near Toledo and come the rest of the way on Saturday morning because the weather, as you might have seen in my previous post, was not really conducive for travel. They gave us the best Easter present ever and watched Nick for a couple of hours that night while Amy and I went out to dinner, just the two of us. They actually trusted us to come back. Perhaps we'll take advantage of that in the future.

This weekend, Ian, Rachel, Lucian, and Joel are visiting and have also been a big moral support. On Saturday, Ian, Joel, and I headed up to Oconomowoc, WI for the Midwest Gaming Classic. I was a little disappointed that AtariAge wasn't there. Neither was another vendor who usually sells reconditioned Atari controllers. I was hoping to pick up a pair of paddle controllers this year, but it looks like Ebay for me. I did get to pick up a copy of Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey for a fiver as well as Hotel Dusk: Room 215, a game I wanted to get when it out, then didn't thinking it would be available for quite a while given the hype, then couldn't because it was no longer being distributed new and had disappeared from many used shelves after winning a handful of media awards at the end of last year.

Nick continues to do well. He no longer looks as slim as he did after he lost some of his birth weight. He's chubbing right up and looks as round as ever. He's also getting much better at tracking sights and sounds and it's nice to have him try to look in our direction when we say good morning. Amy's starting to pump so I'll get another baby task added to my list, which is not necessarily a bad thing and I'm glad to be able to help her. It's just that I'm not exempt anymore! Finally, I'm working through about an hour of video footage to compile into a DVD of his first few weeks. Lots of funny faces and lying about staring at lights... only recommended for family! ;)

Infantile Pendular Motion

During particularly difficult periods of the day (and night), I am reading to Amy aloud from The Second Nine Months by Vicki Glembocki. The first chapter mirrored our own experience so well that it compelled me to read it aloud instead of to ourselves, which I know wouldn't have happened for Amy until after those nine months are up. The screaming, the screaming, the never ending screaming. Both of us have had moments of pure joy tempered the next by feelings of total inadequacy and frustration and the author does a decent job of capturing and describing that swinging pendulum on both sides of the arc.

One thing the author said that struck me, and this must be a hundred times worse for the women than the men, is that to admit that you're sick of your kid, to admit that sometimes you just can't stand their existence, is (in my words) a cardinal sin of early parenthood. A new mother (or father) is just not supposed to say those things. Do you doubt me? You shouldn't.

To lighten the tone of this post just a little, I would like to thank all of our mother friends who have left advice here and elsewhere. It's important to have people by your side to give you support when you need it and we appreciate all of you and what you have to say. So far, though, nothing seems to work well for Nick's feeding time. It's impossible to keep him awake. But we're no longer worrying too much about it. He gained two pounds in the last two weeks and we don't expect that to diminish. Between that empirical confirmation of the doctor's scale that he is getting the food he needs and knowing that you, my dear readers, have our backs, we have enough support to get the job done and Amy thanks you vicariously through me.

Warp Five, Mr. Sulu

I've been pretty busy at home over the past couple of weeks. I repainted the second bedroom. I've also moved my studio into that bedroom as well to make way for a nursery. I was a bit reluctant to do that, but now that I have it in here, it feels pretty good. There's a TV with a DVD player in here so that we can watch movies or TV shows while working out, plus the audio to the TV is routed to a home stereo unit for better audio playback. I then ran the stereo unit to the mixer that's connected to my computer so that if I want to record from the radio or the DVD player into Pro Tools, I can. I feel like Captain Kirk in here. It rules.

We had our childbirth class at the hospital on Saturday and it really has me excited. Well, that and I put the stroller together, installed the car seat bases, and spent more time getting the nursery ready last weekend.

Sandy and Evan, thanks for the cookies. They were really good. Evan will be glad to know that I'm taking some time to install the Doom 3 expansion and Last Man Standing mod update.

All Apologies

I just wanted to take this public opportunity to apologize to Jen in case she got frustrated with me polluting her comments with jokes about squirrels! Sorry, Jen. As further penance, I offer this picture of a neighborhood in Pittsburgh where I used to live.


If memory serves me correctly, that is one of the two theaters that were within walking distance of our first apartment that we never went to because we were too poor to spend money going to the movies. Hooray for self-improvement. It's snowing here and I'm hungry. I actually feel like maybe putting up the Christmas tree tonight. See? I'm getting ready now.

A Happy Pre-Thanksgiving

Finally I'm on vacation. They let us go a couple hours early from work today but while I was there we had some fun. Curtis was scoring audio for a new product demo video, so I was able to sit in and play the bass track for it. If it ever shows up on the web somewhere, I'll link it. I know that it's just a small potatoes demo but I'm proud of it anyway. Despite the fact that I'm not much of a bass player, I can hold my own on simpler tracks.

Last weekend, we hosted a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for two couples, Autumn and Claudiu and Todd and Andi, with which we are friends. Amy and I spent most of last weekend either shopping for the food and cleaning the house or preparing the meal. When it comes to the meal, I like to help, but I like it better when Amy is in charge. I don't mind following orders in the kitchen, just don't leave it to me to decide what to do!

As for the meal, we made a pretty traditional feast with the standard foods like turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and some home cooked bread. The stuffing is my new favorite and has been since our first Thanksgiving in Chicago. Amy found the recipe which includes the standard ingredients plus carrots and apples and some other stuff that I'm probably forgetting. The salty/sweet combination of the spices and the apples is delicious and I look forward to it every year now.

After dinner, we forced Todd and Andi into a game of Bang!. From previous conversations with Todd, I know that they're not much for games because that's what I've been told, but I think they had a fun time anyway. As a reward for their graciousness in allowing me to subject them to a game like Bang!, we played a few rounds of Catch Phrase, too. I'm just that kind of guy!

To all that stop by here, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

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Now playing: Bob Dylan - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
via FoxyTunes

It's a Boy!

There's really not much else to say in that department. As the sonogram tech put it, "There's the little penis, er, big penis," correcting herself for my benefit. In other news, Amy cried when a second episode of America's Funniest Videos came right after the first one tonight. She loves that show. Three cheers for pregnancy!

Evan and Sandy visited for the weekend. We made another visit to Chinatown and had some dim sum at Phoenix on Saturday saving the meat coma of Red Apple, a local buffet that serves authentic Polish food, for Sunday. In between gigantic meals, we played a bunch of board and card games including Settlers of Catan, Bang!, and Munchkin. As a gift for the baby, they also brought a really cute unitard with Mr. Pokeylope on it. Oh, Mr. Pokeylope!

Laying Tracks

I went down to Curtis' studio yesterday to record some saxophone solos for a blues rock song he's producing. I like playing on rock songs because it forces me to reign in my tonal choices during the solo. I've been so trained in the jazz idiom that my instinct is to start getting creative by playing around a lot with the scale, a ninth there, maybe a sixth here, even trying to play out of the key. But rock songs don't want any of that and it can be refreshing to try to be rhythmically and melodically interesting without resorting to that level of jazz pretentiousness. Don't get me wrong. I love jazz. But there's a reason that it fell out of favor as a music for the average joe and into the hands of academics and I blame complexity with a dash of pretension.

After the recording session we went out to dinner at a nearby Italian place and had some great calamari and cavatelli (mine was in tomato cream sauce that was superb) and a fine bottle of merlot. All in all, we had a great Saturday afternoon and evening. Hopefully, they'll stop up this way and we can go to Pequod's pizza at some point.

Three Weeks, One Post

For whatever reason, October always seems to be loaded with things to do around our house. We get together we people we haven't seen for a while, out-of-town friends come for visits, and we start refilling our "to-do" list for the coming new year with some new items and all of the things we didn't get to do in this one. It's my assumption that we tend to get more visitors (and be visitors more often) during this time because all of the major summer vacation plans, not to mention budgets, have been exhausted. That's just a guess, though.

We started the month by traveling to PA for the wedding of Amy's cousin Sarah. They held the reception in an old pump station outside of Shippenville and it was a great choice. It might seem overly industrial, but it was really a great choice and was decorated well. The building itself was nestled in a small valley next to a stream and a grove of trees. The weather was beautiful and the all the huge doors and windows were wide open to let in the breeze. There was house across the road from the building that had a bed sheet tacked up to the garage wall that was spray painted in hunter's orange "Get Out of the FIELD!", which I assumed meant that they'd had some unwelcome visitors from previous festivities running across said FIELD. Country charm, indeed.

Last weekend, Ian, Rachel, and their nine-month-old son Lucian came for a visit. It was encouraging that he seemed to like me a lot. Well, it was more like he enjoyed my antics, but he loved the cat. Every time he'd see the cat, he'd squeal and smile and then struggle to be put down so he could give chase. Sid, being the nervous, curious one always tried to keep about six feet between himself and Lucian but would never quite run and hide. I keep telling Sid that he'd better get used to small, pink, loud things in the house, but I'm not sure he quite understands yet.

In other news, I've begun giving saxophone lessons from my home. I have one student for now, the daughter of one of Amy's coworkers. I think this might give me more inspiration to play a bit more often if for no other reason than to demonstrate concepts and techniques. I do miss it and have considered trying to find some local musician's ensembles to get back into playing. With the baby on the way, I'd have to see what kind of commitment the groups require, but I'd like to give it a shot if possible.

Finally, I can't neglect that I purchased the Orange Box when it came out last week. Ever since I'd heard of Portal, one of the titles included therein, I'd been holding off purchasing anything in the Half-Life 2 universe in case they bundled the game with any of the other offerings. They did and my patience paid off well. I pre-ordered it via Steam so I ended up with five games for $45, an excellent value for the amount of entertainment the box has to offer, although I will probably avoid Team Fortress 2 for the most part, though. Being sworn at by teenagers is no longer what I consider entertainment.

Sorry, I was talking about Portal. Please watch the trailer available through that link. It's worth seeing the game in action. Portal has been labeled by the zealots of the gaming publishers and press as a first-person, action-adventure puzzle game. I don't care what they call it. I just call it fun. It's the most fun I've had with any game since Puzzle Quest and if you are anything like me and are tired of the game design rut that the industry has dug for itself, Portal is another small glint of blue sky through the clouds.

Babies on the Cheap

We had another appointment with the obstetricians' office on Monday. Everything is progressing well and normally. The baby is about 9.5cm long and is moving around quite well. It has moved beyond the sort of microbiological twitching you might observe in earlier stages of development and has now progressed to moving arms and legs in very human, very natural looking motions. It's not voluntarily controlling those motions quite yet, but it's still a pretty amazing sight. We were unable to get a good picture of it this time as it was facing backwards, but we were able to view the spine and rib cage with superb clarity.

You may have read earlier posts about a couple of friends, Vern and Wendy, hosting board gaming nights in the recent past. Unfortunately, their short tenure in Illinois is coming to an end and they'll be moving back east again. We will be sad to see them go again, but if the past is any indicator, something tells me we'll meet up again. (For anyone unaware, we met Vern by coincidence in our first apartment building in Pittsburgh before he met Wendy and they moved to California.) Anyway, they were having a moving sale on Saturday that included many of their baby items. I think we probably ended up with about $600 worth of stuff for $225. We bought their crib, a swing, a playpen, a very nice high chair, and a Maya wrap for that price. Thanks, guys, and good luck!

Party Weekend

Went out to Huettenbar this past Friday to see Molly off as it was her last day at PIL. Lots of Spaten with a dash of Jägermeister. Yum. Everyone got a little crazy but it was a good time.

Sunday was my birthday and since the partying was already out of my system, I spent the day napping on the couch. All this fun and relaxation made it hard to go back to work today, but I dragged myself out of bed this morning despite my complete willingness to stay in bed.

Too Many Birthdays!

We've returned from PA over our long weekend celebrating both my mother's birthday and Amy's father's 60th birthday and retirement. Amy had planned a big surprise party for him across three states and it actually worked out really well. He seemed very surprised so that's what I would call success in this case. Brenda, a girl I knew in high school, ended up being there and I haven't seen her in probably six or seven years at a different friend's wedding so we said a quick hello and caught up before she had to leave. Her daughter was super cute and one of the only children I've met that isn't frightened to death of me.

I played tech support on Saturday and helped my dad figure out how to get his music scanned and resized with his new computer and peripherals. OK, dad, it's all up to you now! Just do it and unplug that old Win95a beast! We'll hold a remote retirement party over the internet for it if you want. I also set up my mom's new computer and peripherals which she considered part of her birthday gift, but really, it was just fun for me. I'm just glad I could help out. For her birthday, we took my mom out to dinner and gave her the annual double whammy of gifts for Mother's Day and her birthday.