Facebooking Facts

My name is Hilary and I'm a Facebookaholic! Phew, feel better I've admitted it. I've been a member of Facebook for about a year now, and to be honest I never used it much. I had a couple of friends on it, some whom I actually knew, and would occasionally send the odd 'gift' in the form of an icon. If you haven't seen it, you can read about my personal version of it on the blog February 12th 2008. Like most people with adult children, I joined to find out what they were up to.
But I don't know what's happened lately. I suddenly find myself with 91 friends and I'm on there all the time. I would like to point out for the uninitiated that I'm not quoting this number of friends to boast. My kids have about 300 friends and counting. Yesterday I joined my favourite author's page and saw she has about 34,000 friends, although I bet she doesn't know them all by name.
I'm friends with people at my synagogue I never see at services, media people like the ABC weather girl and long lost relatives from around the world. I feel like a nosy neighbour peeking at their status's. Orphan No 2's friends seem to spend a lot of time being bored and rtg in txt spk, while some of my American friends like to post cryptic messages which make them sound fascinating and highly educated. (Obviously more highly educated than I am because I can't understand them).
In the past few weeks I've discovered I can actually chat with these people on line. That's really interesting. Interesting because it's amazing how many of my 'friends' I actually have no desire to actually speak to, just spy on.
Today was particularly eventful. In one day alone I discovered that my former next door neighbour has been awarded a CBE (he'll be presented with a medal by the Queen!), have been able to chat in real time with my sister in Australia (she was finishing tomorrow's breakfast while I was making dinner) and found my first boyfriend (don't tell my last!)