Livingston, I Presume

The cat came back

Apparently I should always send Chip to the vet—with the cat, I mean, not for his own medical care.

I say this because when he came home from the cat’s annual checkup, Chip was blissfully free of the guilt—and accessories—that usually accompany me back to the house from the vet’s office. Although I think we take fine care of our cat—an indoor cat, she gets quality pet food, yearly well-cat visits, and plenty of exercise running away from the newly mobile toddler in the house—there just seems to be a higher standard than there used to be for what constitutes good pet ownership.

Let’s start with the cat teeth brushing. I’m going to admit up front that there is about as much chance of my brushing the cat’s teeth as there is of the cat deciding to yack her hairball on the laminate upstairs instead of the carpet downstairs. That is to say that it could happen, but it probably won’t.

I have two children, both of whom require my care in many things, not the least of which is attention to their dental hygiene. At 15 months, Emerson has more tiny, sharp chompers than my son did when he was twice her age, and, as ZZ Top would say, she knows how to use them. Brushing her teeth with one of those handy-dandy fingertip toothbrushes would be about as smart as curling up for a nap in a bear enclosure, and even the toddler-friendly brushes require some serious wrangling. Connery, at almost 6, is much more cooperative these days, but I still can’t just hand him the tools and walk away.

Since they are my children, I will fight with them and force them to take care of their teeth. But by the time it’s the cat’s turn for Battle Fang, I just don’t have the stamina. And yet, each year at the vet’s office I dutifully take (and pay for!) the kitty toothbrush and salmon-flavored toothpaste. Then they both sit in a junk drawer, waiting for me to have the inclination to risk life and limb to stick my finger in a mouth best suited for ripping apart flesh.

I have also often been sent home with probiotics and vitamins and other supplements that are supposed to be necessary for my cat’s wellbeing. And, you know, if Sotek would sit docilely and lap up these formulations, that would be one thing. But administering anything more complicated than kibble to a cat generally involves two adults, an oversized beach towel and possibly a trip to the emergency room. I just can’t justify the expense and danger.

I guess I feel a little resentful about these new, higher standards of responsible pet care. My parents never had to brush our pets’ collective teeth or supplement their diet with designer nutri-ceuticals. (And I should mention that those cats lived to 21 and 22!) Our pets were valued members of the household, but they weren’t getting oral surgery if we didn’t have the means to get yearly cleanings. That used to be accepted. Now, there seems to be an expectation that if a treatment is available, it’s not really optional. If you really loved your pet—the new standard goes—you would find the money and the time, no matter how much money or time is involved.

Luckily, Chip seemed untroubled by the pressure. He returned home with no One-A-Day For Cats, no Feline WaterPik, no Kitty Kaviar—just a healthy, middle-aged cat anxious to get out of the travel carrier and back into the basement. I presume I’ll be finding the hairball with my bare feet any time now.

(Adapted from a column in today's Business to Business.)

Car-mic difficulties, please stand by

NB: This column originally appeared in Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

I’m a big believer in driving cars until they just won’t go anymore—and sometimes a while beyond that. In college, I drove a 1978 Peugeot for several years, and the last nine months I had it, the transmission was on its way out. Reverse was the first gear I lost. A word to the wise (and broke): It is possible to drive in Missoula with a car that cannot go backwards, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The fact is that I would rather spend my money on almost anything other than a car. New cars are shiny and pretty and smell nice, but I just don’t have the hunger that some people do to replace one perfectly good automobile with another. It’s never been a priority or, really, an option. I am, in short, the car industry’s worst nightmare.

That doesn’t mean I neglect the cars I have—far from it. I want them to last as long as possible, so I make sure they get the routine care and maintenance that makes longevity more likely. Unfortunately, all that care and concern are worth nothing when your minivan hits a deer at 75 miles per hour or when someone hits you in an intersection. It’s almost as if someone out there doesn’t want us to keep driving our cars forever. (Lee Iacocca? Is that you?)

In both cases, nobody was hurt and thank heavens for that. Both accidents had the potential for serious injury—or worse—so I concentrate as much as I can on that small miracle. However, both accidents also resulted in insurance companies—first ours, in the case of the deer collision, and the other driver’s in the second—telling us that our cars were so decrepit that they didn’t merit repair.

Not to us.

Our minivan, a lovely, late 1990s lilac Chrysler Town & Country, was judged a total loss, and the settlement the insurance company offered us wasn’t even enough to pay off the loan we had on it—let alone give us a down payment for a new (used) car. After a little haggling, the offer improved slightly, but the out-of-pocket costs for that accident ran well into the thousands of dollars, and we had to again depend upon the gracious help of family to bail us out. I sure would rather have spent that kind of money on something else. (Although, in hindsight, it’s probably better I didn’t invest it in a college fund or something. At least we got a car that runs most of the time out of the deal.)

In the more recent accident, the other driver’s insurance company also wanted to total our beloved Saturn—which we have had since 1997 and actually stored for the four years we lived overseas because we liked and trusted it so much—but we balked. For what the insurance company was willing to give us for the car, we would barely have been able to afford a Yugo. Instead, we turned it over to the body shop we trust—believe me when I say that I never, ever wanted to be on a first-name basis with the owner of a body shop, but here I am, and thank goodness for Dalen—and are paying extra to have the car repaired.

By fixing our car, we know better what we’re getting. Even in this age of Carfax and other electronic record-keeping, there’s no substitute for personal knowledge about what a car has been through. And after having mixed results with the new (used) car we bought after the first accident, we knew the pitfalls of buying someone else’s problem.

Once we get the Saturn back—good as new, Dalen assures us—we can continue to take care of it and hope that it will last us a good long time, deer and dodgy intersections notwithstanding. Sorry, Mr. Iacocca.

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No winners in 'biggest loser' competitions

This month marks the endpoint of many a workplace-sponsored weight loss competition. Twelve weeks seems to be the magic number when it comes to encouraging competitive dieting in the name of health, and such competitions always have to begin in January, to coincide with the national post-holiday shaming season.

For those of you whose workplaces have not adopted “biggest loser” competitions or who have not watched the NBC “reality” show from after which the contests are modeled, let me clue you in: The “winner” is the won who loses the most weight during the span of the contest. How you do it is unimportant. And therein lies the problem with these contests as an encouragement of “workplace wellness”—rapid, unsupervised weight loss is no ticket to health.

I know of one local company where the “biggest loser”—a man who was, by the way, barely ‘overweight’ by BMI standards before the contest started—literally starved himself for the two weeks prior to the final weigh-in so that he could win the cash . How productive do you suppose he was in those two weeks? And how healthy?

It’s no wonder that employers are launching such programs, though. Health insurance premiums continue to climb, and encouraging employee weight loss is often presented as one way of containing costs. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for these kinds of interventions.

Some argue that weight loss contests even present dangers to employers and employees. Employees who choose not to participate—for whatever reason, including not having any actual need to lose weight—can argue that such incentives are discriminatory. Peer pressure can lead to behaviors—like the abovementioned biggest loser’s—that are ultimately counterproductive not only to health but also to morale. Not to mention that anyone recovering from an eating disorder could find a company-wide emphasis on weight loss to be triggering, possibly touching off a relapse of his or her dangerous condition.

To these very serious consequences I’ll add one less grave: People obsessed with dieting become very boring. Forget discussing current events or even the weekend ski conditions: Everyone participating in the contest is going to be discussing their fat grams and how many calories they can burn on the slopes. Not exactly fodder for sparking creativity.

There are ways to encourage employees to be healthier that don’t involve weekly weigh-ins. I heard about one Bozeman company that sponsors gym memberships for its employees—but only pays for those memberships if each employee can show that he or she is actually using it. That makes sense. On-site exercise options are another great helper for busy employees. Having healthy snack options available makes a lot of sense as well, especially because quality foods like nuts, vegetables and fruits provide much better energy for stamina and brainpower than do such office staples as doughnuts. Oh, and don’t forget insurance coverage that encourages preventative health screenings such as well-child visits, mammograms and pap smears, and regular physicals.

Of course, all of those options involve considerably more of an investment in terms of time and money than sponsoring a weight loss contest. On the other hand, they also give everyone an equal chance to be a winner—with no losers in sight.

A version of this column appeared in the March 10th issue of Business to Business.

Husband, may I?

Some days I think that Chip's identity is too safe. Yes, I know that identity theft is a huge and growing problem and that privacy safeguards are supposed to protect against such nefarious schemes, but is it really necessary that he be protected from me?

I’m talking specifically about the designation within joint accounts of one person or the other as the “primary account holder.” And while I don’t want to cry sexism where it’s not deserved, it seems to me that primary account holder status generally defaults to the possessor of the penis in the relationship. (Or, as I have started thinking of it, the holder of the magical wang.)

I guess “joint” just doesn’t mean what I think it means. To my mind, a joint account implies that two people have chosen to enter into a contract--together--with a bank or a cable company or a credit card company and that both people are responsible, reliable adults. Instead, this new phenomenon creates a sort of junior partner status in which the non-primary person cannot do even simple things without the senior partner’s “approval.”

Here’s an example. Over the weekend, I went to a mobile phone store to look at some options for an upgrade. When I asked the helpful salesperson which phones were discounted for me, he couldn’t access my account to tell me because I was not there with the primary account holder, i.e. Chip. Only by producing a code could I prove my worthiness.

You know, I don’t want to launch the space shuttle. I just want to look at mobile phones. To my mind, that should not involve a single code. But I called Chip anyway, to ask if he had the code. He didn’t.

Then, today, I got a credit card statement in the mail with an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. Seems that the payment I sent out from our Internet bill payer service before New Year’s didn’t quite get to Delaware in time, and we’d been assessed a $39 late fee. So I called the company.

I gave our account number and answered the security question and then explained my problem, asking her to take off the charge. But the friendly woman could not help me with that because I am not the primary account holder. Only Chip, she explained, could make a request of that nature. Right. Because clearly I might be calling for my own nefarious purposes and thwarting Chip’s desires to wrack up maximum late charges.

Look, I get that these measures are supposed to be for our own privacy and safety, but I’m not asking to up our credit limit because I went out and bought a few too many dresses without asking “permission” from my husband like some bad episode of a 1950s sitcom. I’m trying to accomplish something that he would doubtless do on his own, if he had picked up the mail first today. It’s ridiculous to think that he is the only one on our “joint account” who can take care of these sorts of things—especially when I’m the one in our relationship who usually does.

Our money is just that: our money; we both put into the accounts, and those are our names—signed together—on the dotted lines when we apply for credit. Just because his name comes first doesn’t make it more important. Or at least it didn’t, before the age of the “primary account holder.”

NB: A version of this piece--sans the bit about the magical wang, natch--appeared in this morning's Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Tempest in a D-Cup

Missoula is known to Montanans to be full of hippies and other licentious types, but that hasn't stopped yet another breast-related controversy from breaking out. The kerfuffle that erupted when a Hooters restaurant opened there several months back received statewide coverage. (And really, of all the cities in Montana, doesn’t Missoula seem the least likely destination for that particular “theme” restaurant? But I digress.) The latest debate, however, finds not Hooters but another national restaurant chain in the headlights—er, spotlight.

According to an article posted at Missoulian.com in early January, two sisters and their children were having lunch at Red Robin—a franchised burger restaurant—when Sonnie Atwood’s three-week-old son got hungry, too. Luckily, she had plenty of food with her. On her, even.

Atwood chose to breastfeed her son, openly, at her table in the restaurant, and some of the other patrons—apparently having missed the memo about Missoula being a bastion of tolerance—complained to the management. Atwood told the Missoula daily that the Red Robin manager then directed her to cover herself because “several customers had complained that they were losing their appetites.”

What Atwood and the manager did not know—and what most business owners don’t know, I would daresay—is that nursing mothers are actually protected under Montana law. Montana’s “Nursing mother and infant protection” statute (MCA 50-19-501) states that a mother “has a right to breastfeed (her) child in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are otherwise authorized to be present.” Montana’s law is in fact one of the strongest in the country: Montana is one of only nine states that protect a mother’s right to nurse “irrespective of whether or not the mother's breast is covered during or incidental to the breastfeeding.”

Red Robin has apologized to Atwood for the incident, but the battle rages on in the comments that accompany the article at the Missoulian’s website. A surprising (to me) number of commenters have been quite hostile to the idea of anyone nursing outside of the confines of their own home.

As a currently nursing mother who has sometimes needed to nurse in public in Bozeman, I’ve been following the conversation with interest. I’ve never been challenged here, in supposedly more conservative Bozeman. Granted, much of the breastfeeding I do takes place in my car—I really prefer to use my Boppy nursing pillow but don’t particularly want to haul it around with me—but I certainly have had occasions when I’ve been, ahem, exposed.

I did a lot more public nursing when I was living in Prague. What everyone says about nudity being less of a big deal in Europe is true, and beyond that, I always felt more at ease with the anonymity of a big city. I was unlikely to run into a colleague or business acquaintance while I was out and about there—in Bozeman and especially Livingston, it’s a virtual certainty.

Wherever I’ve been though, it has never been my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I would imagine that Ms. Atwood feels the same. Still, when it comes right down to it, my first priority is going to be my baby. An adult, seeing the situation, may feel uncomfortable but should have the intellectual capacity to understand the situation: A baby is hungry, and mom’s got the goods. Good luck explaining social norms and the overwrought eroticization of the female anatomy to an infant.

NB: A version of this column was published in today's Business to Business, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Webkinz of lies

Lately, Connery has been receiving Webkinz—stuffed animal toys that come with special codes that give entry to an Internet site where the toys can be “adopted” and “cared for” virtually. Now, as far as he knows, the present is the stuffed animal. We have not volunteered information about the online component.

The question has become whether we should tell him about it and then allow him to use the computer and the Internet to check it out. It is the first of what I predict will be many dilemmas we will have about exposing our kids to the electronic media, and I am—so far—advocating against telling him.

As a dutiful parent, I checked out the Webkinz site before making up my mind. And while I’m sure I’ll get many letters to the contrary about the educational and social developments possible at the Webkinz site, it seemed to me little more than a training tool for future online shopping.

When Connery makes his first purchase from Amazon—or whatever the online superstore of the roaring 2020s is—I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to do it by blinking his eyes in a certain pattern or something. He’s not going to need to be trained in it, any more than most of us have had to learn how to buy things from our favorite online haunts. I daresay most parents will agree with me on that, their views on Webkinz notwithstanding.

But as far as I’m concerned, that’s also the case with the bulk of the non-consumer computer skills that most of us use on a daily basis. I really don’t think that it’s necessary to teach Connery how to use a mouse, for example. I predict that when he needs to use one, he will figure it out in 30 seconds flat. Kids are very intuitive when it comes to technology. In my opinion, the same is true with video games—also banned for the moment in my house.

The main reason for my hard line on this is that once these technologies are introduced, it’s impossible to put them back in the Xbox, so to speak. We already argue with him quite a bit about how much television he gets to watch; add in the lure of an interactive online “world” and we might never get him away from the various screens without a fight.

As it is, our son loves books and Legos and drawing. (In fact, he often draws “video games”, which I think is sweet and my own parents—who, by the way, resolutely refused to buy me an Atari way back when—decry as evidence that I am overly protective.) I don’t know how long those would hold up next to the Internet and a Wii console.

It’s not that I don’t ever plan to allow these kinds of toys into our lives. I’d just like to hold off on it as long as I possibly can. Sooner or later he’s going to need to have a computer and desperately want to have video games to belong among his peers. When one or both of those days come, I guess I’ll tell him about the Webkinz. Until then, I’m going to keep my mouth shut and exclaim loudly about adorable stuffed animals.

NB: A version of this essay appeared in this morning's Business to Business, a monthly publication of the Bozeman Chronicle.

Life insurance and registration, please

Shopping for life insurance by its very nature involves some significant unpleasantness. Very few of us, I imagine, get up one morning and think, “This is a great day to contemplate my own demise!” Still, there comes a time when you can no longer put it off and you find yourself on the phone discussing your monetary worth with a total stranger.

That day recently occurred in my family, when Chip and I decided that it would be irresponsible not to get some additional life insurance. We each bought policies after we first got married and got additional insurance through Chip's employer as well, but now that we’re parents of two, we knew we needed more.

Being a rabid comparison shopper, I have sought out quotes from more than one company. That means we have endured multiple probing interviews, sometimes involving questions that would have made me blush and/or sweat in a doctor’s office, never mind over the phone with someone I’ve never met.

One Friday evening, I spent a wholly unpleasant hour being interrogated by a women whose sense of humor had been surgically removed or perhaps just lost in a tragic accident. When I told her that my last medical appointment had been a six-week post-partum checkup, she asked me if my “health problem” had been resolved by the visit. “Well,” I said, “if by resolved you mean that the baby was totally out, then, yes.” Crickets.

When she asked if I had lost or gained more than ten pounds in the past year, I said that I had been pregnant—a condition known in most circles to cause weight gain and, occasionally, subsequent loss. I explained that I had gained 15 pounds and then lost those 15 pounds within a few weeks of giving birth. “Which was it?” she wanted to know. “Did you gain or lose weight?” It didn’t seem a hard concept to me that I could have done both, but that clearly did not fit into whatever box it was that she was supposed to be checking. Doesn’t it seem like there should be a choice for that, or a variation on the question?

No matter, we were off and running again, right up until she demanded my bank details for automatic withdrawal of my premiums. Since I was only in the research phase, I refused and then wondered if I could have said no to other of her requests. Her demands for the health histories of my second cousins, for example. Or her nagging insistence that I cough up the dates of that time I was hospitalized for bronchitis when I was a toddler.

By the time she was finished with me and the phone was safely back on its cradle, I was a crabby mess, ranting and raving about underwriting and privacy and anything else that came to mind. It took two episodes of “Weeds” to calm me down, and any insurance agent reading this should not infer anything based on that viewing choice.

The most unnerving thing is that the real unpleasantness is yet to come, when a paramedic is dispatched to my home to take my blood and make me pee in a cup and otherwise weigh and measure me up—and, presumably, get me to answer another round of questioning. I can hardly wait. The end result, I hope, will all be worth it—assuming that the companies decide that Chip and I are worthy.

In the meantime, we’ll be the ones driving very slowly, consuming mostly veggies and generally trying to stay alive and well.

NB: A version of this appeared in today's Business to Business journal, a publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

Montana's universities benefit everyone

Apparently it’s time for me to go back to college. After all, if the opponents of the 6-mill levy—the property tax that provides about $13 million a year to the University System at large—are to be believed, it’s all champagne wishes and caviar dreams on Montana’s university campuses. And I love me some champagne.

But things must have changed a lot in the decade or so since I left the University of Montana, because I never experienced “grandiose country club gyms” in “billion-dollar empires” or any of the other excesses that those who would have Montanans cut off a key source of funding to its higher education sector have described.

In fact, things must have changed a lot in just a few months, since the last time I visited my alma mater. The professors I visited with in Missoula were still working hard for a lot less pay than they would receive elsewhere; the administrators were still making do with less, and the students continued to work way more hours than they should have to while trying to get their education. Guess they missed the memo about the lifestyle they’re supposed to be living.

Putting aside the sarcasm for a moment, I have to say in all seriousness that I don’t buy the idea that Montana’s universities are living high on the hog on the taxpayers’ dime. The “fat” that could be trimmed has been. And the share of the higher ed budget provided by the Montana taxpayer has shrunk dramatically. In just the time since I graduated, the state’s share of the bill has fallen from 73 percent to 39 percent, according to the nonprofit coalition Stand Up For Education and a recent Chronicle article. Moreover, the Montana Legislative Fiscal Division found that among its peer states, Montana makes the lowest investment in the per-student cost for higher education—in fact, nearly 40 percent less than the average.

The idea that facilities—“fancy” buildings—should stand as proxy for excessive funding is, quite simply, ludicrous. Many new construction projects are funded by donor bequest or by grants, or—in the case of the so-called “country club gyms”—by the students themselves through voted-in fees.

I will grant the levy opponents one thing: They are absolutely correct when they say that Montana’s universities are not “bare-bones, modest colleges,” as they might have at one time been envisioned. Nor should they be. Students seeking higher education in the Montana university system expect and deserve better than that. When they graduate, they will have to compete not only nationally but internationally, and I can guarantee that universities in Asia and Europe are not scaling back to return to some romantic notion of history when higher education required nothing more than a lecturer and some slate tablets for note-taking.

Higher education in Montana requires taxpayer support to survive, but Montana’s future depends on maintaining quality colleges and universities. Luckily, the investments we make in the system pay dividends quickly. Stand Up For Education noted that the university system attracts more than $100 million annually in “externally funded grants and research that help businesses and agriculture,” adding that “technologies developed at Montana universities have helped create over 30 Montana businesses in recent years.” One need only look at Bozeman’s high-tech and biotech sectors to see examples of such cross-pollination.

In fact, when I look around, it’s a lot easier to find examples of ways that Montana’s universities benefit the state as a whole than it is to find the abuses and waste (or the oppressed conservative professors and students) that opponents claim are rife in the university system. Perhaps those who would have us vote against the levy could stand to take spend some time in the Economics department—and step away from the Mythology classes.

Annoying customer, Aisle 3

NB: A version of this column appeared in Tuesday's Business to Business, a monthly publication of the Bozeman Chronicle.

I apologize to the three grocery store customers behind me on Sunday who had to wait while the checker ran back to see whether I was telling the truth that the new Ruby Red lettuce salad was included in the two-for-five special. And I apologize to the other four customers just a few days later who endured an extended perusal of the tabloids while the bread price check was concluded.

I’m the woman that the supermarket checkers don’t want to see coming, and I’m sorry for that as well. I know I’m a pain, with my incessant coupons and my challenges of the scanned prices. And did you get my credit for the canvas bags? Because that $.05 off is going to magically take the pain away from the $15.99 I just paid for 60 diapers.

I can’t help it. I was raised this way. And if I do say so myself, I am—annoyingness notwithstanding—quite good at grocery shopping. Unfortunately, it’s a talent appreciated by only a select few—and never by those who must endure me hunched over checking the per-item price to make sure that I’m getting the best deal on my six-count double rolls of TP.

Frankly, though, the game of late has become far less fun. As hard as I try, I can’t seem to get the bills as low as I used to. The coupons are harder to find, and the staples don’t seem to be on sale as often. What’s worse, I have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what things “used” to cost—whether that was last week or four years ago when we moved back to the United States. I can tell you that canned beans and canned tomatoes were routinely available two-for-a-dollar near the end of 2004. Now, I can barely find them at 10-for-$10.

This leads to a lot of grumbling while I shop, which my husband good-naturedly puts up with, all the while reminding me that it does precious little good to remember that I used to be able to get organic milk for $3.19. It’s not as if any of these stores are going to give me a special nostalgia price break just because I can remember what their cheese went for last week. (It was $1.79! Now it’s $2.09. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?)

I’m also being driven slowly mad by the downsizing of products combined with the upsizing of their prices. In my world, it’s not a compliment to note that a product has lost weight. (You are looking thinner, Ms. Not-a-Half Gallon of Butter Brickle! And so are you, Mr. Oat-ring Cereal that Claims to Lower Cholesterol!) How is it that I must pay more for the 12-ounce “pound” of coffee than I used to pay for a real pound?

I recognize that prices have had to go up. Those paper towels don’t get to the stores themselves, after all, and shipping things cross-country is not exactly cheap with diesel prices oftentimes higher than regular gasoline. Certainly manufacturers and shippers and retailers deserve to make their profits. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

It does mean that I’m being extra-vigilant these days—hence the price-checking and rabid comparison shopping—so be on guard not to get in line behind me. I’ll be the one making the checkers fumble for their lane closing signs.

Rebel without a page

In 1998, my mother refused to see Titanic. It was simply too big and too popular to live up to the outsized expectations, and after a while it became a point of pride for her. Sure, she missed out on all the inside references—she was never the “king of the world!”—but she coped.

Ten years later, I’m feeling rather Titanic-y about FaceBook. It seems like everyone but me has a page. And while I didn’t start out wanting to rebel against a trend, I am now starting to feel like a real outlier, an anti-social badass. Bring on the leather jacket and motorcycle, because I am not joining FaceBook today—I don’t care how many of you are using “friend” as a verb.

As a consequence, I have no idea what Chip is talking about when he tells me that his girlfriend from eighth grade has been poking him. (Should I be worried?) I’m confused at his talk of being attacked by his college friend’s zombies. And he keeps insisting that if I really loved him, I’d write it on his Wall. Isn’t graffiti illegal?

I’m no Luddite when it comes to computers. In fact, at the risk of sounding like a hoary ancient, I’ve been connecting to the Internet since the times when you needed a Gandalf box—and a verifiable reason at a university—to do so. The first email program I used required a hard carriage return at the end of each line and did not allow for editing beyond the line of text currently in process. I had a favorite BBS. (Nerd alert!) In all, I don’t think I’ve been without Internet access for longer than a couple of months since 1991, and that’s the way I like it.

But truth be told, it’s actually because of my affection for the Internet that I’m resisting FaceBook so mightily. The sheer number of time-sucking activities that I can undertake when I sit down at a series-of-tubes-connected computer are mind-boggling. Signing up for Facebook—with its millions of members and interactive programs and, from what I’m told, so much more—would multiply my ability to waste time, and I’m already unproductive enough when I’m not careful.

I’m also prone to a little Internet addiction, if I’m honest with myself. When I first “discovered” the Internet—please note I am not claiming to have invented it—I spent many long hours doing all the things that the Internet makes possible. (No, not that.) I chatted with people I’d never met. I emailed people I knew. I read about subjects that interested me. And I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning in the computer lab in my college residence hall to do it. I can’t say I ever skipped a class because of the Internet, but I certainly missed opportunities to engage in the actual world because I was so caught up in the virtual.

That’s what I want to avoid as much as possible, keeping in mind that I spend my workweeks on an Internet-connected computer and use my home’s wi-fi capability to its fullest many evenings and weekends. How long I’ll be able to resist adding FaceBook into the mix of my regular Internet activities is anyone’s guess, but by proclaiming my resistance in this space, I should have the motivation of public humiliation if I fold.

For the record, my mom still has yet to see Titanic.

NB: A version of this appeared in this morning's Business to Business journal in the Bozeman Chronicle.