Why Facebook is not killing my blogging

The idea behind sites like Facebook and Twitter is that they allow you to 'microblog' - that is, write short snippets that happen throughout the day. The downside for me is that because I thoroughly enjoy Facebook, I say whatever pops in my head on there and then can't think of what it is I want to talk about over here.

I've read several articles about the death of full-fledged blogging as a means of personal communication. I don't agree that quickfire microblogging will be the death of longer blog entries. Here's why: Facebook does not let you get everything down you might wish to say, especially if the topic is a hotbed of thought and discussion. Twitter can't even come close - it only allows for 140 characters to say what you want to say.

Right now, I can update my status and say something like, "played baseball outside with Emily then busted out the weedwacker for a round of grassicide." Most likely, I will have several friends choose to 'like' my status and some may even post a response to it. But what you miss out on is the whole story behind the baseball game we played. And that is why I will continue to post here. It lets me write out long, sometimes humorous, ramblings that I am hoping someone out there reads. then again, if no one does, well, I know I posted it for me so that I can look back on it later and amuse myself.

So, for your enjoyment, here is what baseball in the front yard is like:

Emily comes into the living room from the playroom. She is carrying a plastic, oversized golf club, a beanbag-style fuzzy toy baseball, and a faux leather glove with velcro in it to aide with catching the ball. "Do you want to play inside or outside," she asks, not giving the choice of whether or not I *want* to play, but *where* to play.

Before we head outside, I suggest that we might want to use her t-ball bat and ball instead of the golf club. We look through the playroom for the ball, but cannot find one. We head outside to the storage shed to get her pink t-ball bat and to see if there were any balls we could use. While we did not find any, we did find plenty of spiders, webs, and ants. Once we were done playing wild kingdom, we settled on using the squishy ball with the t-ball bat.

When we set up to play, I told Emily to go get the play bases from the house so we could run the bases when we hit the ball. What I neglected to pay any attention to was the temperature outside. It was hot. Not just hot, but also very still. We hadn't even begun yet, and already I was starting to sweat. This was not good.

Emily brings the bases outside and I step off a compact baseball diamond. Emily is up to bat first. She does not like to play with "ghost runners" so the game is played such that the pitcher returns to the mound and the runner tries to outwit the pitcher in order to run to the next base. Each team either has to score 5 runs in an inning or get three outs before the other team can bat.

Did I mention it was hot? After two at-bats, the front of my shirt was showing the signs and I could feel beads of sweat starting to roll down my back. Emily had scored two runs and I had chased her around the bases the whole time. She hasn't picked up a bat since t-ball, and she did great. I did manage to get her out three times, but not before she scored four runs.

I did not fair so well. Between trying to hit the wild pitches she hurled at me, by me, and near me, and running my out-of-shape self around the bases when I did manage to get a hit, I felt like I was going to fall over any minute! Emily, on the other hand, was having a blast - giggling, running around, chasing me.

She won the game, having scored five runs in the next two innings. A few of the runs were my 'helping her' by doing things like dropping the ball, throwing the ball away from the play, etc. But, most of the runs were my own inability to catch the girl. She is fast, heat or no heat! I called the game after three innings so I could break out the weedeater and finish the yard work. I told her to get her brother and tell him I said they needed to play baseball together. I'm not sure how that went, but after I was done with yard work, Emily wanted to come in and get cleaned off.

I was for that!