25CentLife.com

And what’s it take for a blogger to get a little love from her friends? Seriously. I delete more spam every day than I get emails (and I’m not talking email promotion kinds) from friends. Yeah. I totally was not just begging for insightful and friendly comments right now.

What’s a friend anyway? In the age of Web 2.0 and all things social media, the word ‘friend’ has become dilute. Originally a noun, it’s now taken on the form of verb as well. We friend people on MySpace, Facebook, Friendster (still a huge hit in the Philippines and countries other than the US). We add friends to our buddy lists on AIM, meebo, Gchat, and other instant messenger programs. We friend each other on LiveJournal (and all other clones). In blogs, we add friends (regardless of whether or not we’ve actually met these people IRL or otherwise) to our blogrolls — even though we try to make it seem more sophisticated than it is by saying ‘blogroll’. There are friend lists on World of Warcraft, Puzzle Pirates and other assorted MMORPGs (did I spell that right? Friends? Help!).

Who are our friends? When I was younger, friends were the people who you had things in common with, shared the same jokes, the same classes — essentially the people who you didn’t want to throttle on a daily basis. As I grew, friends were shuttled into different categories: best friends, close friends, friends of convenience (parental term, not mine) and acquaintances.

Now we have networking friends. MySpace friends. Facebook friends (which now seem to span everything from elementary school contacts you’ve fallen out of touch with, one night stands that don’t seem to understand ‘one night’, to business contacts, and family members). Friendster friends (who in the US of A still uses this?). Business associates. The list goes on and on.

But who, out of your 400+ friends, do you still talk to as actual friends? Since when did the word ‘friend’ need so many descriptive adjectives?

… is buried in a bowl of rice. Someone was nice enough to give me a link on what to do if your phone goes for a swim. The rice thing makes sense, since rice is rather absorbent. It’s been one day. 2 more days to wait.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Bleh. But I got some nice flowers, and my boyfriend over for a small pasta dinner. I’ll try to remember to get pictures of the flowers, including this most curious green chrysanthemum. At least I think it’s a mum.

I’ve gone and misplaced my camera. I had some gorgeous post-snowfall shots from earlier this week. It shouldn’t be too hard to recover. It’s not like I went and took it out of the house or something.

I discovered I hate people who call themselves and their work the ‘creme de la creme’. I think if your work is THAT good, then the work should speak for itself.

I met someone in the Philippines who could not stop calling herself and her work the ‘creme de la creme’. It totally turned me off from actually investigating her work for herself. I was impressed enough with her awards and such… but her repetition just turned me off from her and whatever else she’s done.

So, I’m not really impressed anymore. And I found it highly ironic that someone who had been divorced a few times could write a book on how to make one’s marriage/relationship work.

I have too many blogs. I have a smattering of private ones. One or two public ones. I even had a corporate one for a time… I’m not sure what’s become of that one.

2008 brings my own domain (finally!). With another blog. Usually, people’s blogs have a focus. What’s mine? Anything I can pull from my brain, I guess. I talk a lot. Might as well put it somewhere.

Right now, I’m still recovering from Christmas (if you can believe that)… Too much food, too many places to go, just too much all at once. The party started at my house — Christmas eve… and we just kept going till the next day.

New Years was a bit more reserved — just as much food. Only one place to be (uncle’s place). Maybe I’m getting too old. But seriously, I don’t get what the big deal is about getting crazy drunk on New Years. Maybe it’s my belief that the way you spend New Years is the way you spend the rest of your year. I’m perfectly happy spending it with family (and my boyfriend). Nice, chill, and relaxing.

At any rate, time to do more work on this — I refuse to work a blog that has WordPress’ default theme on it! I’ll let people know when I finally officially launch.