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ed_rexShock! Horror! Young Geoffrey Goes Shopping
And says he enjoyed himself
Laura and I have been involved for something like 9 months now and continues to amaze me, in large ways and small. (As a fer'instance, neither of us is particularly concerned about the fact we're not sure of the exact date we met - though we could look it up, of course.)
By no means a stereotypical "shopping girl", Laura nevertheless enjoys picking up a piece of clothing now and then. What's wonderful (to me) is that she has never thought that I would enjoy the process, and so has spared me the ordeal of accompanying her on one of her infrequent expeditions.
Still, and despite her preference that I be hirsute and not lost that nagging 15 or 20 pounds (I acquiesce more or less happily to not shaving or cutting my hair, but she'll have to put up with my sveltness should I succeed at the latter), both of us noticed that my wardrobe had become - shall we put it politely, Gentle Readers? - well, somewhat threadbare. Most of my pants' cuffs are ragged and frayed, my favourite purple shirt has developed a hole on the right elbow and others have recently been tossed as altogether indecent in the recent past.
To make a long story short, following drinks with some of my co-workers on Friday evening (during which she barely groped me at all - thank you, sweetie), and a subsequent night of lust, laughter and Chinese food later on, we found ourselves Saturday afternoon taking a long walk in the unseasonable warmth to the charming environs of Bloor and Landsdowne and that neighbourhood's Value Village.
Gentle Readers, it was likely the most pleasant shopping experience of my life. I came away with several "new" pairs of pants and a few shirts and no rise whatsoever in my adreneline level. We strolled the aisles, mocked one another's taste and only occasionally offended our fellow customers with over public displays of affection.
Following which, we found a not-too-dismal coffee-shot and had a quiet snack before she made her way to the wilds of (former) subburbia, while I - too impatient to wait for a bus - walked back home to Queen and Roncesvalles, thinking many thoughts of the warm and fuzzy variety.
In Other News ...
I've removed a few people from my friends' list over the past couple of weeks - no big deal, I thought; their journals simply didn't interest me (for reasons unique to each one) and, once I realized I was simply skipping over them on a regular basis, I decided to take them off.
What I found strange was that, in each of the recent cases, I saw that they had removed my journal from their lists, literally within a few minutes. Leaving aside the geeky rapidity with which that happened (pot, kettle, and all that), I find myself somewhat baffled.
If these people didn't find my journal of interest, why didn't they remove me from theirs some time ago? If they did find my journal of interest, why not just keep reading it? After all, it's not as if the guy in San Francisco and I enjoyed a personal relationship and were constantly stopping into one anothers' apartment for tea.
In a similar vein, about a month back, someone asked me to remove them from my list (and, shortly thereafter, removed me from theirs). I was tempted to keep reading out of spite - "If you don't want strangers reading your words, my your fucking journal friends-only; it's not that hard!" - but good manners and a lack of interest in pointless battles prevented me from doing so.
I don't know, I just find it a strange example of, presumably, insecure egos in action.
As a general question, Gentle Readers, if we are mutual friends and I decide I no longer want us to be such, would you prefer that I sent you a detailed comment as to my reasons, or that I just take you off without a word?
And with that, I think I'll call it a day. I have emails to answer.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 09:52 pm (UTC)If my incessent babbling ever begins to annoy you, feel free to remove me from your list, with or without explination.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 09:58 pm (UTC)In any event, though some of your "babbling" escapes me (as I have little experience with anime or fandom, etc), I enjoy your posts, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 10:27 pm (UTC)Glad to know my babbling is amusing, if incoherent.
Strange, my friends who do know anime and fandom say the same thing....
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 09:53 pm (UTC)Other than that, my god is clothes shopping ever painful.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 10:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 11:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 11:12 pm (UTC)i don't comment either, but i love the way you write.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:45 am (UTC)*Kiss Lix*
Date: 2004-11-28 11:42 pm (UTC)Im extatic (yes, that's right, **extatic**) that you enjoyed the Ultimate Value Village Shopping Experience! with me :)
Please, please, please, please, PLEASE!! wear that dreadfully tacky shirt to work tomorrow...*flutters eyelashes at you* ...with the beige pants preferably, they seem to "compliment" eachother well.
As for people deleting you from their Friends List in a huff, I'd say it's to be expected. It is an ego thing-regardless of them liking your work or not. Although I suppose if they *really* liked it they might not of done that... They just felt like it was an uber insult, I suppose.
Have a good night dear (Last night I stayed in (for the first saturday in a loooong time) and did some closet organizing myself (im still not done... its taking a while..._) anyway, i found out that i have 24 pairs of pants!!! Naturally I don't wear all of them regularly and I recall throwing about 5 out but that number absolutely astounded me.... AND!!! it turns out that I have socks too, it was just a matter of matching them all...)
Ahems, that was a pretty long Post Scriptum (Although I didnt specify that being a P.S.)
*coughs* Erm, have a good week sweety...and (if you do go to hockey) I hope you play well.... ((Perhaps next weekend we'll get some new skates for you))
I'm out like your style
XO- Mucho Amore,
-laura
Re: *Kiss Lix*
Date: 2004-12-02 03:35 am (UTC)By The Way,...
Date: 2004-11-28 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 12:18 am (UTC)The only thing that irks me when someone just siddenly deletes me from their list for no reason, is the reason why...as if it is just the fact I post too much, so be it. But if it was somehow done because of me accidentally offending someone, then I like to know. Call me curious!
No hard feelings, but hey...why should I still allow them access to my personal thoughts, if they so obviously didn't care for them, proving so by deleting me first????
(and it is funny that I just happened to read your journal today, as I was bored...so don't worry, I am not one of those vindictive people who continues to read someone's journal after being defriended)
;)
Anyway, have a groovy existence, and hope life treats you well.
---Dilva---
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-30 02:32 am (UTC)Since you've asked (and despite the fact it contradicts the statement on your userinfo page, where you said, "My journal,my views... don't like it, leave"), the reason I de-friended you was not that you offended me, but that you posted too much and too much about your own life. Since we don't know each other in real life, I found myself skipping past your entries instead of reading them. It was a question of time-management more than anything else.
I'm glad there are no hard feelings and even more glad that you spoke up and explained your action. I hope life treats you well also.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-30 03:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:37 am (UTC)If I knew the person in person it would be different.
And, now that I think of it, we commented enough on one another's posts over the months, that we did know each other, if only a little.
Hmm ... Now that I think of it that way, maybe I did owe you an explanation.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 02:22 am (UTC)9 times out of 10 I assume that someone defriended me because I was offensive or boring, and why would I want to read someone who considers me offensive and/or boring?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 02:56 am (UTC)I have friends who actually track down people who've defriended them and ask them why, and the thing is, I don't usually want to know that.
There are people I friend because I just like to read their public entries or look at their photos, and whether they friend me back is immaterial. However, most of my friends put me on their list before I put them on mine, and thus don't fall into that category. There is a minor relationship there, an affiliation at least, and it feels kind of pathetic to me to stay associated with someone who's indicated he or she doesn't want to be associated with me.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:54 am (UTC)Well yeah, they'd have to be seriously neurotic if they de-friended you because they found you interesting and thought-provoking.
I was going to point to myself as an example of someone who happily reads people who don't read me back, but checking my friends' list, I realized I have maybe one or two journals there that haven't aren't mutual.
Could it be that Young Geoffrey is a self-righteous hypocrite?
By way of a long comment that should be its own post...
Date: 2004-11-29 03:03 am (UTC)Once that mutal friendship has been entered into willingly, its difficult for both parties to go their separate ways with out someone's nose getting bent out of shape. I have friended people in the past who I thought were interesting or entertaining, but after a while just grated on me to the point I found myself skimming their posts on my friend page. Both of the instances I am thinking about ended awkwardly when the people offered an amnesty to those wanting to stay in or get out. They basically posted a entry in their journal one day saying something to the effect - I am doing some house cleaning of my friends list, comment to stay or feel free to leave - no hard feelings. Personally I think they were looking for confirmation that people on their friends lists were reading their journals and they wanted the reassurance via comments. I say this because the moment I took them up on their offer to leave with no hard feelings I got the "How dare you!" attitude.
In the scenario you give where you suggest if you find the person's journal interesting enough to continue to read even though there has been a one-way unfriending, then I would stay as long as I felt welcome and assuming the posts were public in the first place. I think the sensation though of someone unfriending a person but expecting them to stay around is a bit like you inviting me over for coffee, but then running out to do errands and leaving me sitting there by myself. I think it makes the other person feel a little neglected/unwanted.
To answer your question though I think a curt note would be appreciated. A simple note saying, "I am trying to narrow down my friends list to a few journals I have time to comment on. I have enjoyed your posts and I wish you all the best."
Best of luck on the wardrobe issues.
Re: By way of a long comment that should be its own post...
Date: 2004-12-02 02:58 am (UTC)My journal is also almost entirely public - which I guess implicitly invites the world in without necessarily offering to return the favour.
But this medium is interactive and I'm going to try to be more sensitive to that.
As for the wardrobe, I think I'm looking good, even if certain people apparently believe the cause is a hopeless one.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 03:48 am (UTC)What do I perfer? Whatever you'd like. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 08:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 03:06 am (UTC)"Anyone else can just rot." *Young Geoffrey giggles like a school-girl*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 03:14 pm (UTC)When I am newly "friended" I feel it is on a trial basis. I friended someone who I ended up not digging at all -- So I left a note explaining my decision and wished them the best of luck.
For the most part, I think that people know why they have been defriended. When you let someone know that you have defriended them, they can say "Well -- Screw you! For being nice about it, Loo-ser..."
I have noticed the norm seems to be that people leave a post saying they have done some "cleaning up" etc...Which makes me feel like people wait until they a whack of dud friends to dump all at once so that no one takes offense.
I dunno -- I feel like I'm breaking up with someone sometimes :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 03:10 am (UTC)Have I ever mentioned what lovely, er, icons you have?
Ahem.
Yes, I have plans for a novel. Hideously long-term, I'm afraid (I have completed two full drafts over *gulp* more than 10 years), but they do exist.
I've noticed that "cleaning up" norm as well. But it would seem awfully silly in a public journal, I think.
I feel like I'm breaking up with someone sometimes :)
As I am coming to realize, on a minor scale, de-friending on LJ is a little like dumping a friend in real life - and I've learned that, in some times, that is harder than dumping a lover.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 06:55 pm (UTC)Strangely though, no one's defriended me yet--even people I've taken off my list, though there's definitely been people who I've friended who haven't friended me back.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-29 11:40 pm (UTC)or maybe i'm just selfish. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-30 03:56 am (UTC)For me it depends on who it was that unfriended me. If it isn't someone I have met in real life (e.g. most of the non-Ottawa people on my friends list), then I don't take it as personally, and I am reading their journal out of interest. I do tend to mutual-friend anyone who friends me first, although there have been a couple of exceptions in cases where I found the journals in question so illiterate I could not read them. In both cases they had dropped me the next day (*shrug*).
For people I am friends or acquaintances with outside of LJ, there is a definite ego-insecure factor, and in these cases I have sometimes dropped the journal if I was only reading it because of the existing real-life link. My journal is almost never friend-locked, so my friends list reflects the people whose journals I want to read regularly. I use friends' friend's lists (wonder if that was apostrophied correctly?) to read some less regular journals when I am procrastinating on things like housework.
hey!
Date: 2004-11-30 03:44 pm (UTC)that's not cool.
Re: hey!
Date: 2004-12-02 02:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-01 03:24 am (UTC)As for the egos.. let sleeping egos lie.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-02 02:48 am (UTC)GEOFFYYYYY
Date: 2004-12-02 01:51 am (UTC)How do i reverse it, if that's possible??
xoxo it was nice seeing you sweetheart *muah*
-laura
Re: GEOFFYYYYY
Date: 2004-12-02 02:47 am (UTC)(It was wonderful seeing you too, my darling.)
Re: GEOFFYYYYY
Date: 2004-12-02 02:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-12 02:06 am (UTC)I run my journal on a filter system--my local friends don't get to read the private entries, simply because they enjoy my wrath firsthand. My opinions, ad nauseam ad infinitum, are a bit much for most.
For the record, I'm befriending you because your prose delights me greatly, and I'll likely forget your username if I don't make a note of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 12:53 am (UTC)I've used filters only a few times, when posting something extremely personal that I thought might make someone else uncomfortable. I suppose I figure that if people don't like my opinions to the extent they get offended, they can just stop reading them.
Mind you, as my list grows to include more people I knew in real life first (a cousin recently started lurking, for instance), I may have to re-think my non-policy.