Social Networking

My facebook page reached its all time high earlier today when I befriended my 421st closest bff. Perhaps because my newest and long lost bff claiming to have graduated from my high school the same year as me is a complete mystery, or perhaps because I'm wanting to become more private, I deleted 64 of my 421 bffs. Additionally, I've taken the first (and second and third steps) to cancel my myspace page.

The myspace page is not as big a deal, except that now I realize I'll have lost all my blog posts there. Ugh. Well, it takes 48 hours to cancel, so I'm going to do a whole lot of copying and pasting, even though I don't think I have any right to my posts per myspace's agreement with its users.

Okay, I've now verified that my myspace page is gone. Yup.

I was told the cancellation would take 48 hours, but I guess they were able to rush that order. Ironically I was going to write that perhaps I was being a bit impulsive... and clearly, I was. I guess what will be missed the most is that I used to re read my posts and have a nice chuckle from time to time. One of my favorites was a fake email I wrote to a guy I had briefly dated. He didn't call me back so I went so far as to create a fake email address for him so I could send him an email and bcc my friends so they would see my charming neuroses. I made sure to include my 7 working email addresses, went out of my way to excuse him for not having returned my email saying he probably got the calendar date confused, so Of Course! I could reschedule, and even included a google map to my apartment in case he wanted to chat in person and perhaps forget where I lived. Sigh. The best part of that was my bcc'd friends were horrified I'd do that, until I revealed it was a joke. Good times. Another one that made me laugh was my Good Hair Day post. Vain? Yes. Entertaining? To me, yes.

In any event, I guess I thought it'd be a good idea to sort of "clean house" on facebook, but it's so political. Do I delete certain high school friends? Some of whom I might walk past on the street and maybe not recognize. And I can't delete anyone from the rugby group or a theater affiliation because I'll start popping up as a person s/he may know. I'm probably giving this way too much thought. And, clearly, the whole idea of maintaining more privacy is shot now that I'm writing about it.

The true test will come when I'm at work next and can't look at those 64 deleted friends' pages or search for music on myspace. So... what other sites will be the object of my distraction?

Local Woman has Mixed Reaction about Company Decorations

In a long time coming of events, resident woman, Elena Mamlok is premiering her first person blog.

So, I came into work today and was surprised by the abundance of holiday decorations. My building is just for my company -- not an office building comprised of several companies.

Without decorations, the building is gorgeous. It's about 5 years old, it's won awards for being a green building, it's bright, colorful -- as far as corporate offices go, I think this is the best in which I could be immersed.

Anyway, the first floor which is sort of a large open atrium has a Christmas tree, the large banisters on our huge stairwell leading up the open plan second floor are wrapped in lights and greenery. There's a huge poinsettia at the top of that stairwell. Every floor has its own poinsettia by the coffee station and an ornament-clad wreath by the elevators.

So.

The decorations are all beautiful... I'm just not sold on their complete appropriateness for the workplace (I say as I'm posting this during work). I always have a hard time with "holiday" decorations because they're never inclusive of all holidays. They're not winter decorations. If they were, then we'd have spring decorations, too. And we don't. And we didn't have autumn inspired wreaths... or posters of swimming pools and ice cream cones in the summer (really, what would be a summer time decoration?)

Am I hyper sensitive? Perhaps. But I've always believed companies shouldn't have religious symbols or decorations. Inevitably, someone is excluded. (Would I be happy if there was a menorah? No. Because it would only be added to acknowledge a holiday that's not as significant to Judaism as Christmas is to Christianity.)

I do plan on attending company holiday parties, but I have the choice to attend or not. And I'm actually planning one for my department. I guess, somewhat lucky for us, since we have no budget, there will be no decorations.