Random Facebook Summer

For a very, very rare change, I'm caught up! As in - if it's in, it's graded. I had a 24 hour period of immense productivity - even turned in final grades for my real job!

So what caused this? A trip to Seattle. Yep - I'm outta here in a few hours. Kids are gone again for a week, and in one of the more ingenious moves of this summer - the summer where I have six weeks without my kids - I am living one of many random facebook moments.

What is a random facebook moment? Well, as every aspect of my life seems to have converged upon facebook (high school friends, an elementary friend, college friends, sorority sisters, former students, current students, former coworkers, current coworkers, family members, etc), status updates can lead to things happening. For instance - last November I posted on my status that I was headed to Atlanta. A friend from high school whom I don't ever remember doing anything with responded and said, "hey, let's meet for lunch!" So we did.

Since that time I have met up with people I would not have otherwise - all thanks to Facebook. Examples:

• Going to a 4oth birthday party of someone I went to HS with and seeing lots of people I wouldn't normally;
  
• Finding someone I ran a race with in Eatonton only to have the opportunity to run with him again at the Peachtree;
• Arranging dinner with old HS friends at fun place in Atlanta;
• Deciding with a sorority sister (whom I had spent a whopping 2 hours with previously) to go to the beach for four days - she flew down from Michigan and we drove to Florida together;
• Meeting up with a guy I was a counselor with at camp 19 years ago for lunch, which led to seeing him perform in one of his bands.

Which leads to what I consider to be thus far the most random of my facebook moments:

As I looked at the calendar for summer, I tried to make sure that I stayed pretty busy while my kids were gone. To make the most of it, certainly, but also to distract me from the fact that they aren't nearby. I did great while they were at camp. But this one week... this ONE week - July 18-25 - I couldn't fill to save my life. I tried to arrange beach trips with four different sets of folks... it just wasn't happening. I finally just decided that it would be ok - I could get a lot of work done on tenure and promotion during this week (something I STILL haven't touched, but will, pretty soon).

Then one evening, a sorority sister whose name I know, I know I've met, but I honestly don't know that I've ever really spent any time with her, posted something on her status on facebook about needing to get away. I randomly commented that I could be a travel partner. She took me up on it! We started planning - dreaming big - out of the country, a cruise, etc, and finally settled on five days in Seattle.

So, tomorrow morning, I will head to South Carolina to stay with her an evening prior to us leaving for Seattle on Sunday morning.

Yes - very random. Nothing I could have planned if I had tried. And frankly, it feels really good to be making these connections with people who, by sharing just a little bit of time with thanks to the internet, are becoming people who are important to me.

The only downside is that when I get home, I'll have grading that I need to do.

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