Saturday Slight

They promised us an inch of snow. They didn't deliver, and I'm SO SAD. Ha. Ha. This week, for once, the bad weather forecasts haven't materialized to quite the degree weather forecasters have promised us. Today is off to a good start with a lot of clear sky and no freezing overnight. So, it's a good Saturday.

North Carolina moves on in the dance, while the Zags fly home. I saw a photo on Huckleberries Online this morning that sums up exactly why so many of us love that team. After losing to North Carolina last night, rather than hanging their heads, the players lined up and saluted their fans. It's been a mutual admiration society for many years and will continue to be that way.

North Carolina was good, and that's an understatement. They seemed almost superhuman last night as nearly every shot dropped in the basket. They made few errors, and their team talent runs deep. They deserve to move on, and we here in Zag Land salute them in their bid to win the NCAA tournament.

As for the ZAGS, we'll let them rest as we move on to other pursuits which won't keep us glued to the television set. That's the way it should be in spring, summer and fall when you live in North Idaho.

Our good times are beginning, and we'll be all ready for another season of "Go ZAGS" come November. For now, we're proud of them and we thank them for their continued gift to their admirers across the Northwest and the country.

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The demographics show that Facebook users over 50 have tripled in just the past few months. I read a feature in the Spokesman Review this morning about Facebook, and that was just after I told Bill that younger brother Jim's face appeared as a friend of one of my newest Facebook friends. So, of course, I invited him to be my friend.

Talk about going full circle. If Jim hadn't had cartoons under the banner of "Slight Detour," I never would have started a blog. He left www.slightdetour.com about a year into the blog, and I kept going. Now, we've reconnected on the latest Internet phenomenon to attract curious folks wondering what this Facebook stuff is all about anyway.

I was one of those, and I remember chuckling a lot when people would ask me how to find my "BLOB." I think the population now has the "blog" idea down, and I think huge numbers have joined the movement. I, too, wondered what Facebook was all about and why anyone would want to spend any time reading daily mundane details about others' lives, but I joined anyway.

At last count, I had 273 friends on Facebook; that's pretty much since Christmas, when my "older" friend Betsy Walker asked me to be her friend. Since then, many of my contemporaries have joined and have asked me to be their friends.

According to the newspaper piece, Facebook started at Harvard and was pretty much limited to college students. Then, it moved on to the teeny bopper set, and now its fastest growing age group comes from the Baby Boomers, like me.

I cannot really describe yet what keeps me interested, except for the thrill of each new day when new faces show up and ask me to be their friends. I also have grown to like the voyeuristic aspect, which encourages users to write a sentence or two about what's on their minds. Their responses all appear on the home page when you first sign on.

I always go there first and then switch to my personal wall, where I see comments below my latest twitters. Last night I asked for Facebookers to think positive about the ZAGS, and from across the country came three or four comments, including one from Keith who lives in South Carolina just across the border from the Tar Heels.

This phenomenon does tend to grow on one. And, to see friends with local connections like Denise Huguenin, Gina Emory, Nancy Renk, Merriam Merriman, Ann Gehring, Gale Hamby, et. al. joining in on the fun makes it all the more fulfilling. I'm fortunate also in that my Facebook friends include lots of former students and several members of my family.

Again, I'll use the microwave analogy: I always wondered who would ever need a microwave before buying my own. They seemed a bit frivolous. Now, I wonder how I ever lived life without one.

We move through this life always wondering about the strange new phenomena that seem to make those around us just a little bit crazy. Then, we try them ourselves and wonder why we waited so long. That's how it's been with computers, with signing on to the Internet, with using email rather than the telephone, with maintaining a "BLOB," and now with the newest craze, Facebook.

We move on, and if we embrace these things rather than resisting them or pooh poohing them as if they're dumb, our world opens up to yet another dimension that makes life oh so interesting.

So, I'll end with a blob twitter for the day: I'll be checking my Facebook later today and looking to see if you'll be my friend. After all, it's a happy crowd, and the more the merrier!