washwords

Sorry for the delay.  There’s been a lot going on!

ta da! here's washwords

BTW: stop yer complainin. You just saw washwords (till I take it down. the interweb is a scary place.)

And speaking of the interweb…it IS a crazy place, and mostly not in a scary, but just in a fascinating way.  And nowhere did I see this more than in sharing my very good news.

In 1997, if you became engaged, you called people you wanted to know. Those people usually asked who they should/could tell and the word spread to exactly those people. I think I did send a few emails to the friends of friends. My email address was v01269b3×7@.  I’d heard of cell phones. Old people and wealthy people had them in their cars. Sometimes.

In 2008, when you tell the world you’re engaged, you TELL THE WORLD. At once.  Meaning my long-lost elementary school playmates found out about the same time as my bestest DC bud’s hubby, my former coop pal,  former colleagues from a few different cities,  guys I’d gone on a few dates with years ago, and my new BFFs since the George Michael concert a few weeks ago.

All found out online from my “status” line in facebook and instant messenger. The people who aren’t tethered to their  computers day and night wired?  Well they didn’t hear the news till the next day, OR TWO DAYS LATER!!!!, which in my manic, internet-fueled world seems like FOREVER. In my world, email is practically snail mail. Snail mail might as well be pony express.

Okay, granted this was me - I couldn’t contain my glee. So maybe I did things like put the word on my facebook page and on my instant message status. and Twitter and  umm this blog. But still…

In the high-tech proposal world, my mom (in Cape Cod for vacation) could see the ring only minutes after my sister (literally down the street from my fiance’) did, my former neighbor in LA saw it before my current neighbor. I did hold off (or try to) long as I could on the blog, because we had barely told our relatives yet.

And rings aren’t the only news spreading differently nowadays.

I learned of the death of Tim Russert from a buildingmate’s IM status.

I learned my same former-neighbor-friend who was one of the first to hear of my engagement in LA was okay after the earthquake by asking her on IM literally a minute after hearing.

I’ve found former college pals and writing colleagues, seconds after they join Linked In or other professional writing groups - my feed reader tells me, not to mention when new posts, important tools, things I NEED to be reading are out there.

I met bloggy friends, writing and thinking about the same thing I am by seeking for that word in twitter and I’ve had folks find me by posting in online forums and seeing my name there asking a similar question before.

It’s a modern world, a crazy one, a wired one. And I love it.

Being IN love doesn’t hurt either and I am so very much that. Now… how many characters does it take to describe bliss?  Answer: zero. It’s already there.