Are you this awesome? Because I am not. But I am awesome enough to appreciate this awesomeness.

That is my new daily affirmation.

So sometimes I feel bad for my husband (yeah, I said HUSBAND–I am totally married now. maybe I’ll post about it later…) because his friends’ girlfriends are SO MUCH COOLER than me. Like really. I totally feel like I come off as Fregley when I’m around them (I have to remind myself “please don’t show the freckle please don’t show the freckle”).

How I appear when I'm around cool people.

Trust me. I know. I have hung out with these cool people and I usually sit in the corner and smile silently and hope that they won’t even remember that I was there and that I blurted out something random about my wand while they were discussing their latest poetry project or something (hmm when they read this, they will probably be like “what poetry project?! but that is how I choose to remember it. sidenote: I took a poetry class once–I wrote a poem about Buffalo Bill’s brother being buried in the Long Grove cemetery. big surprise.)

ANYWAYS the whole point of this post was to show you the proof of their awesomeness– –awesomeness that I appreciate, mind you– –as in I saw this video on facebook made by one of Steve’s best friend’s girlfriend’s best friends for Steve’s best friend’s girlfriend and clicked the “LIKE” button:

AHHH I know. totally adorable and brilliant and… like really high quality, right?!

Not to say that the video of me filming Lindsay doing the States of Matter Dance wasn’t high quality, but it is obvious that it wasn’t. (Still being used in middle school science classes around the country BOOYAH **high five with Lindsay** ELBOWS )

Wanna know what I’m thinking right now? I’m thinking that the sounds in the car commercial playing on the TV in the other room sound like the beginning of Britney Spears’ song Stronger. LOVE that song.

Amber

Why I Quit Facebook

A couple of weeks ago I quit facebook.  And I don’t mean that I quit checking it, or made a pledge to myself to limit my time.  I mean I up and deleted (not deactivated) my account.  Now that it’s been over 2 weeks (the grace period), my account is officially gone.  I’m actually relieved that it’s gone.  I always worried that I was putting things that were too personal on my profile, or that someone would post an inappropriate picture of me (I don’t think there are any of these, but you never know).

You all probably remember back a month or so ago when Facebook started getting all weird about it’s privacy settings.  You know, when they kept changing them like everything freaking day, and when they made you link all your interests and favorites?  I really really didn’t like that.  Facebook also didn’t seem to care about my settings.  I kept putting my settings to unsearchable, only viewable to friends, etc.  But Facebook was all like, hey let’s let all these unconnected people be able to search for her and friend her.

CNN had a few articles about people getting upset over Facebook privacy policies that I started reading.  Then I saw some related articles about how hard it was to delete your facebook account.  Surely it wouldn’t be that hard I thought.  So I decided to look around for myself.  I’m a freaking engineer.  I know my way around the internet.  Of course I could figure out how to delete my account.  Oh no, wait.  I couldn’t figure it out.  After a few days of mindlessly clicking on links in the help section of facebook, I finally got ticked off enough to google how to delete my facebook account.  Apparently it is possible to get to the delete section, but it seemed like you’d have to stumble upon it by sheer dumb luck.  The page I had found through google included an automatic link to the delete page.  I was so upset that I couldn’t delete my account on my own that I went ahead and clicked on the link and deleted my facebook right there and then.

I know that about two weeks after I deleted my account, Facebook revamped it’s privacy settings and now everybody is pretty much hunky dory with everything again, but I still can’t get over the fact that they hid their delete page so well.  Deactivation was instantly findable, and I think that Facebook wanted everyone to think that deactivating your account was the same as deleting it.  But it’s not.  If you deactivate, I believe that Facebook gets to hold onto all of your account information.  So if you ever want to get rid of your account too, remember: Delete not deactivate.

I am a bit worried about what will happen when my school reunions roll around (if I decide I actually want to go.  You never know, right?).  Will my classmates decide that all they need to do is make a facebook page (like they did for the 5 year reunion)?  Will they try to get email addresses?  Phone numbers?  I remember who my senior year class officials were, and I am not willing to hedge my bets that they will actually try to do anything beyond facebook.  But on the other hand, I am not worried about keeping in touch with people.  All the people I want to get in touch with, I will get in touch with over email or phone.  And all the ones that care about me will do likewise.  Sure I’ll miss out on things, but I can handle it.

<3, lindsay

P.S.  Please enjoy this lovely video about D&D.  I enjoyed it very much.  Especially the cheetos guy.

Best Facebook Pic?

Tomorrow night I’m doing a program called Facebook for Parents.  One part of it is to demo Facebook live and show off the privacy settings and how to change them.  The original plan was for a real live teen to help me out and show off why he/she uses FB, but none of them know me well enough yet to agree to do this.  So I’ll just be showing off my profile.  That’s fine.  I took a look at my profile earlier to see if there’s anything I need to take care of (ahem, delete before showing it off to a bunch of parents in a library setting).  There’s not.

I also thought about what my profile picture should be.  I’m pretty sure the current one is the most appropriate picture I could come up with for showing off FB in a library.  In case you’re not friends with me, here’s the picture:

Three librarians, someone who’s practically a librarian because of the huge amount of books she reads, and a YA author.  That’s appropriate, right?

(NGs, if you would prefer not to have your picture shown to strangers, just let me know!)

– Jill

P.S.  Sometimes I’m still in awe that I’ve met Meg Cabot.  I’m glad I have the photo as proof.