Welcome to Facebook!

Wow! I'm loving this! There's a whole new world out there on Facebook......

Okay, so I may be getting over-excited about this, but Hey - why not? In the week or so since my first blog, I've been running around on the net (virtually, of course, no actual calories burned!), discovering all sorts of fun stuff that I'd only ever heard about before. And it's SUCH GOOD FUN!!!

My first stop was Facebook. It was simplicity itself to open an account and log-in.

I immediately sent friends request (easy to do - there's a button beside each persons name which says "request as friend") to each of my two brothers, one living in Holland, and one living about three minutes walk away from me. The next step was to search through their "friends" lists and post friends requests to be friends  with people I already know. This included our cousins, and a few family friends.

So far, so good.

And then it started getting a bit weird........

I had only put in the most basic information about myself (having listened to all those identity theft warnings everywhere), such as date of birth (obligatory for the account, though being a typical woman, I decided against putting it up for public view!), the name of the school I attended, and my current location (resisting the urge to put "sitting room"). By the time I had made friends with my brothers and cousins, I noticed that I was getting messages from Facebook of who else I might like to send Friend requests to. And then there she was..... Cathy, a school friend who I haven't seen in many years and who, coincidentally, had been on my mind over the last few weeks. HERE SHE WAS, JUST A SIMPLE CLICK AWAY! So of course I clicked. Within minutes, Cathy had accepted my friends request and had sent me a message. What was more, after several years of trying to contact her through various methods, it turns out she lives only about an hour away from me IN THE SCOTTISH BORDERS! Even more than that, Cathy was already Facebook friends with a whole load of our ex-classmates!!! I found myself catching-up with a whole pile of people who I had thought about, but hadn't seen in years.......the World and (apparently) my whole life, past and present, at my fingertips! Amazing!

The god that is Facebook, having searched for, and presented me with, people who had gone to the same school as me, then decided that I might like to try becoming friends with people who live in my vicinity, so it started throwing-up profiles of people who live in Trumpton* (*I have decided to use "Trumpton" as the pseudonym for where I live - keeping the mystery of my actual location intact for you, dear readers, to ponder upon, whilst hoping that anyone who actually knows me won't blow my cover in the "comments" section!!!). Now, here's a strange thing.... you would think that, living in a relatively small community, it would be pretty easy to keep in touch with people I know who live here. Not so.... the pressures of modern life manage to keep everyone busy, so even in a small place, you can go for days, weeks, months (you get the idea!) without seeing people whom you consider to be close friends. All this changes in the world of Facebook. Like texting ( that fabulously convenient way to keep contact with people without having to spend time actually HAVING A CONVERSATION with them), Facebook allows the user to log-in, upload an update of what they've been thinking/doing, check-out what their pals have been doing, then log-out, all within the space of a few minutes, slotted neatly in-between making your evening meal and eating it. Ta-Dah!

It's also very revealing to see, for example, what folk have uploaded as their profile picture (mine is a photo of a mixing bowl of what should have been peppermint creams in the making, which went disastrously wrong!), or what they've got listed as their favourite things - music, books, films, people - you get the drift.

And what videos they've uploaded from YouTube to share with others.

This could possibly become my favourite feature....

In the wee small hours of Sunday morning (the day England were due to play Germany for entry to the next level of the World Cup), I uploaded a YouTube video entitled "Methane Man's Farts The Blue Danube". For those of you who are not familiar with Methane Man, he is a tribute act based on the one-time world famous "Le Petomane" - the French Farter. This was a man who had a natural ability to suck air up into his ....uhm, lets say hind quarters, then eject it at will (Will wasn't to happy about it, hahaha! sorry, obligatory pun!), BUT ALSO IN TUNE, so he could actually fart any song, tune or melody, complete with key changes, just as if it were a wind instrument (which, in fact, it was hahahah!). Now, I consider myself to have a well-developed sense of humour, priding myself over appreciating the most subtle of dry wit (in keeping with the majority of my fellow Scots). Having said that, I am increasingly coming to the understanding and acknowledgement that my base level of humour is exactly that ..... base level. I LOVE playground humour, the stupider the better, and farting jokes do it for me. I thought the YouTube clip was both hilarious and appropriate for the occasion.

Minutes after posting the clip, I received a message from Luca, a good friend, living close by, who knows me well (possibly too well!). The message read simply "Get to bed."

Yup, Facebook allows you a window into the worlds of other people, a window which, I have discovered, also allows THEM a window into MY world.....

Have to go now, gotta check out what's happening in Facebookland (and possibly upload some more clips before Luca gets home from work)!