OMG - I joined Facebook! Like, can you believe it?

OMG is such a teen thing to say -- it stands for "Oh my God", derived from the abbreviated writing in messaging or texting. But teens now even speak in these abbreviations! Other examples are BTW means "By the Way", LOL "Laugh out loud"... I don't know many more.

It amazes me how young people not only learn to use technology so easily (admit it, your 3rd-grader can reset the timer on the new microwave or other electronic faster than you can), but they become so comfortable with them, well, instantly. i-pods & i-phones, Skype and u-tube have become second nature as if they've drank it in their mother's milk, and mind you, these were not even invented yet when these kids were weaned, which, come to think of it, was "ages" ago, if you ask them (but to me that was just yesterday)!

So here I am, an old lady, and I today I joined Facebook, when a friend in Germany emailed inviting me to be her "friend" on Facebook, so I can see pictures of her family. Before this invitation, I thought only college kids did Facebook or MySpace (Eldest in college uses it to stay in touch w/ Highschool friends).
I'm only just now learning how this works: I think you need an invitation to be able to go to somebody's Facebook, but if you haven't been invited, you can "poke" them, right? Our local newspaper just had a feature on Facebook recently -- how parents are not supposed to embarrass their teens and college-aged kids by "poking" their kid's friends -- how Facebook is their generation's social net-working world, and we (old folks) need to respect that -- it's freaky to have your mom "poke" your roommate or boyfriend... (Don't worry, Eldest!)

So here I am, just having started this blog recently: an entirely new world I only started exploring within the last year. And I started blogging to keep in touch with friends and family, and in the process am discovering a world of other fascinating bloggers. I'm slowly figuring out some of the blogging lingo -- I now know what a "meme" is, but what is a NoBloPoMo? --I have no idea!

The internet is just an amazing tool for communication. It allows a Hausfrau in Alaska to chat with people all over the world, any time of day; it allows her to publish her own commentaries on Alaskan & World politics, if she wishes; it allows young people to shoot their own videos/movies and post them on u-tube; it allows people to reconnect with old friends, with whom they've lost contact, and find them via alumni sites or Facebook, even if they now live in Alaska or Timbuktu.