My fascination with people's lives.....and my weekend

I have a fascination with people's lives.  I suppose it's the fiction writer in me, always looking for ideas for characters, picking up on ideas for character traits, dialogue, settings, scenarios.

I love to read people's updates on Facebook and Twitter.  I love to read blogs about people's every day lives, the things they do, the places they go, their funny stories.  I love to look at pictures, even of people I don't know.  Is that weird?  Really I don't think so, I mean, why write a blog if you don't want people to read it, right?  Why update your status on Facebook or send out a tweet if you don't want people to know what's going on in your life?

I guess part of the appeal to me is getting to live vicariously through other people.  Don't get me wrong, I love my life, I'm happier right now than I've ever been, but my life isn't exactly exciting and it's not all I want it to be either.  I wish I had more money so I could travel a lot and do more fun things, I wish I had someone special in my life to love and cuddle and share things with and eventually marry and have children with.  So the people I tend to live vicariously through are the ones who are happily married, have children, get to travel, or have fun, crazy adventures...all the things I want.

I'd rather read a blog about a stranger's life than hear the latest celebrity gossip.  Something about real people being honest about their lives is just so interesting to me.  So, while I should have been writing this morning, I was going through the forums at Suite101 and looking at fellow writer's personal blogs.  I've found a bunch that I plan to follow - most of them are just blogs like mine, a little view into someone's life, and some of them are niche-type blogs - cooking, arts, etc.  I figure I'm supporting my fellow writers by taking an interest, as well as satisfying my own insatiable curiosity about how other people live.

So onto more personal things...yesterday, I saw a friend, Sarah, who I hadn't seen since college and hadn't really spent time with since the summer after high school graduation 8 years ago.  We weren't really close in high school, we had a few common friends and classes, but didn't hang out outside of school except for the summer after graduation when a bunch of us spent a lot of time together before all going our separate ways.  We got to talking on Facebook earlier this year and we're both dealing with some similar things and started talking fairly regularly, and finally after months of talking, we saw each other yesterday.  We went over to the high school track and walked for a little over an hour and talked about a bunch of stuff, right from high school to present.  It was great and we're going to do it again next Saturday.  Yay!

Tonight was the local Santa Clause parade.  This past week has been gorgeous weather-wise, comfortable temperatures, sunshine every day, yesterday while Sarah and I were walking, I just had a sweater on, so of course today was cloudy all day and it started raining the minute Jamie, Amanda, Noah and Logan were on their way to pick us up.  By the time we got our spots on the parade route, it was pouring.  Luckily it wasn't cold or we all would have been human popsicles - we had huge umbrellas, hoods on our coats and Logan has a plastic cover for his stroller, but we all still got pretty wet.  It was interesting though - I think I've been to the parade once in the last 13 or so years, and it was fun.  Logan's first parade!  He did remarkably well for a 9-month old but eventually Jamie took him to the van where it was dry and warm and he fell asleep.

Overall, it was a really good weekend, other than the fact that my Grama is having some health issues...I'm too exhausted both physically and emotionally to go into detail right now, but we're hoping and praying she gets better soon.  I mentioned in a previous blog that we're getting ready to celebrate her 99th birthday on the 28th, so we're hoping she's better by then.  I just sort of panic whenever she's sick because she almost died two years ago and it was an absolute nightmare, I hate the thought of going through that again and even just the thought of her dying makes me want to burst into hysterical tears.  So, if anyone reads this and you're the praying sort, please say a little prayer for my gram. ♥

Good night!