Not Cool Enough for Facebook: Social Media Manners

Dec 13, 13 Not Cool Enough for Facebook: Social Media Manners

Posted by in Dear Diary

I am a grown-up.  Well, most of the time.  But Facebook adds an element to my life sometimes that makes me feel like a gangling, unattractive 14 year old who wasn’t invited to the slumber party.  It is a weird phenomenon to read about a bunch of my friends who got together and didn’t invite me.  Now, I don’t intellectually think I need to be invited to everything.  In fact, if I was invited, I might have even declined because we have a lot going on.  And often on the weekends I am near socially phobic because I have talked to so many people that week in my professional life and I just want to chill. But when a bunch of “friends” post on Facebook about the great time they had together, and I wasn’t invited, it hurts my feelings sometimes.  But this isn’t an article about my feelings.  I’ll deal with my feeling on my own time. This is an article about this weird time we live in with social media and technology in general.  Our parents didn’t have to deal with this!  Their friends didn’t have Bridge parties and then post about it on Facebook.  Talking about it would have been impolite.  I can’t imagine one of my mom’s friends saying to her, “We had a party last night with about 20 people and we had a great time, but we just couldn’t invite you. But let me show you some pictures of us having fun.  You are friends with all of us, so I am sure you would like to see them, wouldn’t you?”  NO!  Because it would be bad manners.  But this is exactly what happens on Facebook all the time. I am not sure what our new etiquette around social media should be.  Should we all just toughen up? I have a friend who has lots of friends and she is also troubled by this.  When she invites a few people over, and they post on Facebook, her other...

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Restaurant Review: Restaurant La Tour

Sep 05, 13 Restaurant Review: Restaurant La Tour

Posted by in Restaurant Reviews, Travel

It was my first time dining in a Michelin star restaurant and La Tour has one.  We were in Sancerre for a language school and I wanted to have one really nice dinner in France before we left.  We booked a reservation for Thursday evening.  We talked about whether we should take the kids and we had a list of babysitters.  Mel thought we should take them so they could experience it too, and I am so glad we did. La Tour has 3 Prix Fixe Menus.  One of them comes with wine.  We opted for the middle one which was 58 Euros for 5 courses.  We ordered wine a la carte. We spent some time before we went for dinner, preparing the boys for what to expect.  We asked them if they would like to go to a really special dinner.  They said yes.  We told them they would need to eat with a knife and fork and would need really good manners.  We told them there would be dessert.  We told them the food would be really interesting  and they would need to try everything but they didn’t have to eat what they didn’t like.  They were interested to try it out. We had 5 courses plus an Amuse Bouche, a soup, and the tiny dessert at the end of the meal. The courses were: Amuse Bouche–a tiny square of water melon with goat cheese and mint and a homemade crisp with shrimp and sesame. Soup–Cuttlefish with soy broth Salad–simple greens with viniagrette Appetizer–Gambas croustillantes à la noix de coco, nouilles de sarrasin Fish Course–I don’t know what it was but it was gorgeous Main–Cochon de Mr Dougy, brocolis et piquillos (Mel and Emerson got this) Pigeon de Saint Quentin sur Nohain, fenouil et cuisses confites  (Xander and I had this) Assiette de fromages, grand classique Dessert–Île flottante, verveine et cerise  (Mel and I had this) Fraises melba (the kids had this) Petite Fours–tiny lemon tarts and tiny chocolate tarts We didn’t...

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