A Season for Everything

and maybe your boss, a perspective employer, your college, your bank, your insurance company and who-knows-who-else!? That’s the latest word on blogs and online social sites, like MySpace and Facebook, in particular. While people (teens and young adults are emphasized) use personal web sites to meet people with similar views/interests and most are at least fairly smart about privacy, there are those who use their sites as tell-ALL forums. It’s easy to find sites where the owner brags about drunken weekend (or weekday) binges, illegal activities, and heaven knows what else. Lots of people publish pictures to validate the stories. The thing is, what you put out on the internet is no longer completely private…no matter what you do! It used to be that all you had to worry about was a sexual preditor finding your kids. Now you need to warn them (and take the advice yourself) that colleges check these sites looking for information on applicants, so do some employers (and the number is growing). Insurance companies look for information to see if you have a drinking history before insuring you. So, basically, what the experts are saying is that you shouldn’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t want any of those people to know about. There’s a good article on this in today’s Tribune-Review if you’d like to read more about it.

And as for the weekend…

We drove down to visit Matt (who is getting a copy of the Trib article mailed to him) yesterday and take him grocery shopping. I should have taken it as an omen of how the day would go when Tim stopped at a convience store to buy drinks and Megan got red Gatorade, which she promptly spilled all over herself and the backseat. We had to whip into the next shopping center to 1) buy her a whole new outfit at Target and 2) buy cleaning supplies so Tim could work on the car. That just seemed to set the tone for Megan’s day. She alternated between being in a foul, whiney mood to being in one of her manic moods where she talks (literally) non-stop and pushes everyone’s buttons on purpose for the shear amusement (hers, not ours) of it. I thought I did a fairly good job of being patient at Sam’s Club while she kept kicking the shopping cart away or putting gargantuan boxes of stuff I had no intention of buying into it. It was Tim that finally lost it and since he and Megan are (frighteningly) alike, it was not good. I did my best to calm them both down and they made up on the way home. It just really ruined the time with Matt.

There are so many restaurants down by Matt’s apartment that whenever we go down, we usually try some place that’s new to at least one of us. Yesterday we tried Quakersteak & Lube. The food was good, but that was about all I’ll say for it. The garage decor is okay, but it was as drafty and cold as the real thing. We were seated at a table right near the soda fountain, napkins, silverware, etc., so waiters were congregated there the whole time. And yet, no one waited on us until I put my hand on the arm of one and asked if anyone actually waited on the table we were sitting at. Then there was the whole bathroom thing. It looked like a gas station bathroom. It smelled like a gas station bathroom. It was decorated with framed, glossy photos of men in Speedos (or less). Most disturbing, when you closed the stall door there was a little mirror, about 3″x8″, hung so as to be at eye-level while you’re uh, taking care of business. What? Do they think I’m going to put on make-up at the same time?

Today we’re heading up to our friends’ farm. We were supposed to be going to help install the new kitchen cabinets someone made, but he called them last night and said they weren’t quite done. So, now we get to go just for fun and to help celebrate the wife’s birthday (the cabinets were supposed to be done and get installed as her birthday present…so we’re not mentioning those). I made an awesome Angel Lush with Pineapple Cake