Larissa is taking a break from updating her status

Much has been written recently about the way technological advances have changed the way we as humans communicate with and relate to each other. What I've been affected by most recently is the increase in status updating on facebook. (I know I'm behind the times, but I'm not a twitter-er, so I can't comment on that).

When I first joined facebook a couple of years ago I loved rediscovering old friends. Now I use it to keep tabs on my friends. Honestly. There are only a few things I "check" on facebook: my inbox, my notifications, and my friends' statuses.

I have to admit, it's the status feature that is my favourite. I used to find it both annoying and odd that people would advertise their current state in a single line, but I find people are getting more creative and I've gotten hooked. I find out the most random things about my friends and acquaintances because of their status updates. Darren's even worse than me - he has an application that lists all his friends' statuses so he can read them and comment on those he deems comment-worthy (or teasing-worthy, Chrissy!)

I recently discovered - much to my horror - that due to this facebook status checking, I now *think* in statuses. I had this realization while brushing my teeth in our hotel room in Istanbul. I was just standing there, cleaning my teeth as Darren finished up a blog post about the day before. That's it - just standing there, brushing and thinking, "Larissa gets to experience Istanbul twice - once in real life and once through Darren's posts". Yes, I had a thought of myself in the third person. It freaked me out. So I stopped updating my status for a few days.

The same thing happened to me this afternoon as I was walking across campus toward the bus. For the second day in a row I got notification that "personal mail" had just been delivered for me. My personal mail is usually a QNB statement or a Q-Tel bill, but for the second day in a row I received a Christmas card!

After opening the card and reading it, I though "Larissa loves that Christmas just keeps on coming". Yikes! Status thoughts again! I guess it's time for another break from updating.

(But Larissa really does love that Christmas keeps on coming! Thanks for the Christmas cards, everyone!) ;)