Dangers of Social Media

 Call me naive.

The advent of viciousness on social media isn't new.  But you'd think it was, if you were me.  I trust way too many people.

You can't have a messenger conversation now without the threat of someone with issues, who might be really quite predatory or a control freak, screenshoting every conversation and sending it off to others, either to steal your stories, because they are jealous, or want to be part of everything even though they're not part of it, or to backstab you with others.

The worst is when you've thought of that person as a friend.   Or how about telling someone you think is a friend why you are not friends with someone else, when they ask, and then they talk to that person, and then mention to you that they discussed that person and your relationship.  Only control freaks do that, someone who wants to control you and the information about you out there.

I've blocked a lot of people and I need to block more and be so much more careful online.  

Akesha's post about unfriending family got me to thinking about how mean people can be to other people.  People who do these things to me, online, are not people I want to call friends.   These are people who can't keep their mouths shut and are often narcissists.

I went to the coast Wednesday, with a friend I met originally in Waterloo.  No, not the no pants guy, lol.

We got there just before noon and were home before 5:00.  The drive was far faster than I'd thought it would be.  The road to the coast has been vastly improved since I drove it last.  This time I was a passenger which suited me fine.  This wasn't the north coast, where I go with cats, that is a three hour drive.  This was Newport, straight shot west from me, in the valley, through the coast range.  Our first stop was Nye Beach.  This beach stretches long and flat with access points that often involve a lot of stairs.  But the main access point does not require too much climbing up and down.  She had her knee replaced in June, so she couldn't do the long stair descents or climbs.  Not yet.  She's healing even faster than my brother I think.  He still is experiencing a lot of pain in his replaced knee.

Nye Beach access

I bet my friend will be stair climbing with the best stair climbers very soon.

She wanted to walk in the ocean water, but the weather, although sunny, was windy and under 70 degrees.  It got much cooler as the day progressed.  She waded ankle deep in the water and quickly exited.   After that we went down to the bay front, looking for Mo's clam chowder restaurant, but the line outside it was very long.

Newport store sign

We drove north looking for somewhere to eat and stopped to gawk near Devils Punch bowl.  The cliff eye view was beautiful, of the punch bowl, empty, as the tide was out, and the beach to the south, where a few wetsuit clad surfers waited on their boards, hoping for waves.  There were no waves coming.  To the north, we looked down on rocky exposed tidepools, dark blue green kelp fields in otherwise a light blue green colored ocean.  What beauty!

Devil's Punch Bowl, empty and full of tourists only because the tide is out.  When the tide is in and ocean raging, there are spectacular photos to be had of water shooting up and out of the bowl.

North of the Punch Bowl view point.

Beach to south of the Punch Bowl viewpoint

A few surfers but no waves

We finally found a place to eat in Depoe Bay.  It was a small diner style chowder house.  The other places had lines backed up but we got right in at the small place.  We both ordered chowder with garlic bread and enjoyed it.  

We headed back to Newport and stopped in for a bathroom break at a beach parking lot but didn't walk to the beach.  The wind by this time was buffeting and cold.  My friend was in shorts and had not brought a jacket.  It was to be 100 in the valley so she hadn't imagined it could be cold on the coast.  The fog rolled in, to blot out ocean views and moments later would vanish.  In and out, it came and went.  We hit the valley heat moments after cresting the coast range.  Like an oven.

My throat was scratchy by the time I got home.  I thought it was just from talking so much.  I rarely see people so I don't really talk out loud very often.  But I had caught a cold somewhere.  Yesterday and especially today have been rather not fun, with all the sneezing and drainage and face nerves on fire from open mouth breathing and sneezing.

Nevertheless yesterday in 90 some degree heat, I put up a barbecue gazebo in the cat yard.  Not to cover a barbecue, but I thought, when I saw it online, it would be perfect for the cat yard, and a cheap remedy to hold up the cat yard wire, that sags pathetically now, without a tree to hold it up.  As a bonus, it provides a space out of either sun or rain.   This was so much an easier solution that digging post holes and putting up a rail along their top.  I'm so pleased with it, but its assembly, in the heat, with all its tiny parts and vague instructions, wore me out yesterday.

I still have the shelves to install and leveling to do, but those can wait.  I had to get the huge box it came in out of the garage, so I'm very pleased to get that done and with the product.