I like Facebook as much as the next girl – especially since most people’s photos are still available for the viewing – but while we’re on the topic of Too Much Information…

Facebook friending (as we’ve discussed before) is not a science by any means. There are few rules and if you’re of a certain age and went to a large-enough high school or college, you’re bound to have roughly 150 past acquaintances that now hold the title Friend. It’s all pretty innocent of course. So what if that guy from your AP Environmental Science has access to your pictures and status updates? No harm, no foul. I’m too am guilty of logging on the pages of once forgotten high school classmates to see how they turned out.

My recent issue is with the Facebook Chat. It breaks down the safety-barrier of the skillfully tagged/untagged pictures and allows for real-time, unedited personal conversations with the people that you can’t remember having conversations with back when you spent hours upon hours in the same building.

Here’s what happened…

Back in August, I was minding my own business (well, not really) on Facebook and all of sudden a window pops up and I hear that little “blip.” It’s this guy I went to elementary, middle and high school with. I hardly remember us having interaction over those 13 years (and mind you, I was in the marching band, so it’s not like I was too cool for school).

My mind immediately starts racing through the reasons he could want to catch-up via live chat. According to his profile, he lives in Canada, so I’m guessing he doesn’t want to go out. After the initial “hello, how are you doing” chat, he drops “I’m engaged.”

Now I get it. He’s so excited about his pending nuptials that he wants all of his Facebook friends to know and he is devoted enough to chat with each of us personally. So the conversations goes like this (exactly like this, actually):

S.A.G. “nice! congratulations, when are you getting married?”

Random high school guy: “it’s ok, she’s far away right now. Maybe next summer, not really sure yet”

S.A.G. “oh. where is she?”

Random high school guy: “She’s from Sweden. I met her in Boston. Sometimes I miss the single life though. It’s a big leap that’s for sure.”

S.A.G. “well…sometimes I miss having someone. The grass is always greener”

Random high school guy: “Yeah. I had no idea what a change it would be”

S.A.G. “Being engaged?”

Random high school guy: “Yeah. I had the best single life living in Boston.”

S.A.G. “So…is she living in Sweden right now?” (a quick change of subject, followed shortly by a “my computer battery is about to die” excuse)

Since this Facebook chat, he has chatted with me before every major holiday to ask if I’m going to be home and if I would like to get a drink. Each time I inquired about the engagement and each time it was still on. So sad.

I didn’t think too much about this isolated incident, but then this happened…

Same situation – a “blip” from a random guy that lives far away, but this time he is from college and he is so obscure that when he originally asked to be Facebook friends I had to look at all his pictures and our mutual friends before deciding it would be bad form not to accept.

At the very start of the chat I mentioned that I needed to be going to get to my dinner plans. He asked if it was a date and I said yes (it’s true, the sabbatical is over) and then he starts telling me about his ex-girlfriend…

S.A.G. “how long since the breakup?”

Random college guy: “well, about 6 months…but we kind of didn’t stop being physically exclusive until about a week ago.”

S.A.G. “wow. So one week.”

Random college guy: “it was a weird breakup…no bitterness but we stayed physically exclusive which was great. Oh no no…we have been broken up.”

S.A.G. “that’s nice…but I bet it’s hard to be unemotional about sex when it used to emotional”

Random college guy: “we just…ya know…stayed in touch physically!”

S.A.G. “I hear you. For sure. I’m sorry, but it’s time that I get out of here so that I’m not more late than usual.”

Random college guy: “Yeah that’s the problem…I like the emotional sex so much more though”

S.A.G. “It’s good to have a mix, I’m sure. Have a great saint patrick’s day!”

Random college guy: “I feel like if there is emotion I can make her feel better and take her to places she wouldn’t normally go…if you get my drift.”

S.A.G. (in my mind) “Your subtlety makes it difficult, but I think I get it…”

BTW – This was the FIRST conversation we’d had in 5 years and it took place over a total of 5 minutes

Anywho, I’m now officially “Offline.” For those of you that have experienced something similar, here’s how you change the setting:

It started out innocently enough. I was working late on a project at work and a co-worker invited me to be her neighbor on Facebook FarmVille. Little did I know what I was getting into. One minute I’m passing the late-night hours learning how to plow and plant seeds and the next thing you know I’m scheduling my sleeping patterns around a crop of pumpkins, which take 8 hours to grow and will wither and die if I do not harvest them in time.

Then there was the other night when I came home from work, ready to harvest my fresh crop of chili peppers only to find, to my horror, that my home internet was down. “These chili peppers will never make it through the night!!” It was going to be a loss of well over 10,000 fake, farming coins! Luckily, the internet came back on just as I was dialing up the cable company and I bought a pink tractor with the chili-pepper profit.

Well, I was carrying on to one of my friends about collecting truffles from my pig and my plans to expand my farm, and to my disappointment, her facial expression turned more and more concerned, instead of more and more interested. She interrupted me by saying, “we have got to get you a date.”

It’s then when I realized how long it had actually been since I’d been on a date…and even more upsetting, how long it had been since I had something blog-worthy to write about. She was most definitely right. My farm was receiving far too much attention because was receiving none. Later that week, the hits just kept on coming when I was mistaken by a boy at a bar as the “butch half” in a lipstick-lesbian relationship. Clearly I need to turn this dry-spell around.

Now, I’m not ready to say goodbye to my aspirations for the plantation just yet – or the ability to grow grapes once I achieve level 19 status – but I did accept two date invitations for this week. Maybe if it starts raining men, my farm will experience its first dust bowl.

P.S. – If I make it to level 30 farming status (like my neighbor’s farm shown below), I’m signing up for e-Harmony.

When did it become appropriate to Facebook friend someone that you met at a bar the night before? I’m fully aware that there is very little science to who you should and should not Facebook, but there’s a difference between keeping tabs on a person that you knew in high school and allowing a total stranger to peer into your life via your personal Facebook page.

Since Facebook was hardly around the last time I was single, I was not prepared when I learned of this maneuver only one week after the breakup. I was at a Karaoke bar and was approached by an attractive black guy after singing Marvin Gaye. At some point during the night he asked me my last name. I gave it willingly (rookie mistake?) only to find a Facebook friend request the next day.

I ignored his request and to be nice I sent a note back saying that I’m sure he would understand why I do not “befriend” people that I just met. To that, I received the following reply:

“I am intrigued by your Facebook exclusivity. Give me a call if you ever want to take a chocolate dip”

…needless to say, I now ignore such friend requests, sans personal note.

In LA, most people have friends that are actors. The actors are typically “up-and-coming” and therefore, also waiters. Transitive property would lead to: most people in LA have friends that are waiters (I apologize, servers).

I should not have been surprised with The Texter (whose persistence finally got me on a first date) took me to a restaurant where a friend of his just happened to be our server. I can’t really blame him, since I came to learn over the dinner that not only has Texter only lived in LA for one year but he is only one year out of college (dear God). I give him props for finding a way to take a date to a nice restaurant affordably.

Texter was pretty sly about it, I will admit. He had given me two options for dinner and I had chosen this particular restaurant over the other. When asked if he had friends at both restaurants, he said no, and emphasized that this was “less of a friend” and more of “an acquaintance.”

As I came to learn, having your date’s acquaintance as a waiter can be a good or bad thing, depending on how well you like your date. For example, had I liked Texter, the extra tasting of wine before the meal, complimentary dessert and then surprise nightcap drink after dessert would have been a delightful way to spend a long, conversation-filled first date. Since our conversation was riddled with pauses followed by filler, such as “where do your siblings live?” I would have to say that the waiter friend freebies made for one loooong dinner.

That same night, when Texter tried to befriend me on Facebook, I found on his open Facebook page that his serving “acquaintance” was in 50%-75% of his posted pictures.

I promise not to keep score with with every dating event, but it just so happened that a month after I went 2 for 4 on planes, I went out on Valentine’s Day with 7 boys, and went 4 for 7.

I did not have any plans on Valentines Day and my next door neighbor – a cute, single 30-year-old – invited me to come out with he and his friends.

As it happened, his friends were 6 single guys between the ages of 30 and 40. So there I am, a girl with no Valentine’s Day plans, out to dinner at a local bar with 7 single guys. And since it was v-day, it’s not like there were lots of single girls out and about to distract them.

I felt like I was on a group date on The Bachelorette. Since I was the only girl, the attention was on me and as the night progressed, I found myself spending one-on-one time with each guy. We went to another bar where there was dancing and I would be dancing with one of them and then turn around to realize that another had cut in and I was now dancing with him.

This was a perfect example why the guys all fall for the bachelorette on that show. Guys are competitive by nature and when there is only one girl to focus attention on, they are immediately more and more interested in winning her over, if for no other reason then to be the guy that did.

So, when I say I went 4 for 7, I do not mean that in the crazy-slutty way. I just mean that of the 7 guys:

One asked for my number that night and texted immediately

One asked me to dinner and movie the next night

One found befriended me on Facebook the next day

One (the drunk one) invited himself to come to bed with me. That conversation went something like this…

Me: “I’m going to go to bed, see you all later.”

Drunk guy: “I think I’m going to go to sleep too…unless you would like me to join you.”

Me: “I’m good. But thanks (?)” – voice trailing up