Wife & Life: To Facebook or Not to Facebook

So, over a year ago now, I decided to deactivate my Facebook account.  To be honest, I didn't miss it at all.

My reasons were many and ones you have probably heard before. My top concern was privacy.  About a year ago was the final straw when I learned that stuff I had made private from my beginning on Facebook was available for everyone to see.  I had decided that I didn't want others to see things I was tagged in, since I cannot control what other people post or say.  I don't need to be associated with anything hateful or stupid or mean or whatever and instead of worrying about untagging myself and creating drama ("why did you untag yourself? We're not friends anymore. blah blah blah") I decided I would just make that private for only me to see and not have to worry about offending anyone.  Then I realized that somewhere in the five years I had had a Facebook account, all of that stuff went public, which wasn't a huge deal in itself.  But not knowing this, and having my settings changed without my knowledge, made me mad.

The truth is, Facebook has always played dirty.  And with beliefs like nothing is private anymore, its not surprising the way they deal.  But, that wasn't the only issue.  I am a relatively drama free person.  I like truthfulness and honesty, so backstabbing and infighting are sort of pet peeves for me.  And amongst friends, that isn't really an issue for me.  But in my family, this stuff is pervasive.  There is so much digging and trying to upset people and taking things personal that aren't.  And I was tired of that.

Two other smaller reasons included using Facebook to evade real social interaction (like Facebook stalking could make up for actual conversations) and the way people find themselves in trouble with work and everything else.

So, I still hate Facebook, and don't really miss it, so why am I blogging about it...? Because I find myself in a situation where I am going back.  As much as I hate what Facebook is about, there are definitely upsides.  Facebook makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family and does so like no other social network on the market.  And with a NTC rotation and a deployment coming up, I find that it will make keeping in touch much easier than trying to email everyone I want to stay in contact with.  Especially since I won't have a cell phone and quick texts are completely out of the question.  However, after I get back from Afghanistan and finish my block leave, I intend to deactivate my account once again.

I intend to continue blogging and using Facebook as a way to share my blog posts.  It will be easier to keep everything consolidated in one place and I want to continue using my blog to share longer posts with stories and anecdotes.  Plus, since I intend to leave Facebook again, I want to make sure I do most of my posting in a place I intend to keep.  But, I will use Facebook as a way to send personal messages and receive them in easy ways.  To cut down on drama, I will delete or block anyone who creates it.  For security reasons, I intend to make it so no one can tag me in anything. (Unfortunately, terrorists have Facebook too and they have used it in the past). &nbsp

So there it is, I am coming back to Facebook and I am sure my parents will be thrilled!

Health & Exercise: Climbing Pikes Peak

So, we finally did it! We hiked Pike's Peak.  And it was... it just was.  It was awesome and difficult and long and crazy and so much more.
Let me explain, Pike's Peak is one of many Colorado 14-ers (A mountain over 14,000 ft).  The difficulty with Pikes Peak is that it is the greatest altitude change in Colorado.  It gains ~7,300 ft in elevation from the start of Barr Trail and is almost 13 miles up.  The average person takes around 8 hours to complete it.

It is broken down by most hikers into fourths.  The first fourth is the second most difficult which sucks since that is the start of your hike. We started at 5:50 a.m.  (before the sun was up) and made it a point to stop and take breaks even though we had energy.  We didn't want to burn out.

The second third is like just walking through woods, super easy and it comes out at the halfway point, called Barr Camp.  This was where we did our fastest miles was really enjoyable.  We spent much of our time enjoying the beautiful White Aspens and their brightly colored leaves.  It was a perfect first day of fall.

The third fourth is the third most difficult.  It doesn't involve much climbing over rocks, but it was a steady grade up the whole time.  By that point, all you want is to hit the tree line and feel like you are close to the top, since you know you are only halfway.  The White Aspens started becoming more scarce, but we could look down the valleys at them.

 

The fourth part of the journey was just terrible.  We
still had over 2,000 ft in elevation to gain and it was all climbing over rocks and staring down gorges.

But once we got to the top, we decided that are joints wouldn't handle the decent well, plus it would take hours more.  Doing a marathon length hike sounded awful and we were already tired. So we decided to take the Cog Railway down to the bottom.

  

Ultimately, we hiked 13 miles up in 7 hours 23 minutes and burned somewhere over 3,000 calories.