Birthdays and other forms of social networking
Saturday was Sh.’s 30th birthday, so we had people over; something we ought to do more often. It ended up being a pretty good crowd including some people we hadn’t see in a while, and the night was even reasonably bilingual: a few people attended who spoke English but not French or vice versa but enough conversations were happening in both those languages (plus occasionally a few others) at any given time that it all worked out, which was nice to see. Serendipitously, friends now living in Boston just happened to be passing through town on short notice that weekend, and Sh. just happened to be planning to travel to NYC to see a friend on Sunday, so they attended our party and Sh. left in their car yesterday instead of taking the bus.
In other news about my social life, I gave up and joined Facebook, after realizing how many people I knew had accounts there. I only have one complaint about it so far — because I joined using my usual @alumni.uwaterloo.ca email address, I was automatically placed in the University of Waterloo ’network’, meaning that information I had posted about myself was visible not just to friends but anyone who’s ever studied or worked at UW. That was definitely not my intention, and I’ve now changed my privacy options despite not having plans to post anything personal, but with such ridiculous default settings I now understand why so many stupid college students have been expelled after proof of their underage drinking was found on that site. Anyways, it’s been interesting to hear from a few people I don’t see much these days, including a few I lost touch with after high school.
There are so many opportunities to make friends online! Really, it’s a wonder anyone ever leaves the house anymore.