five thousand is a rather arbitrary number.  sure, it’s the largest isogrammic number in the english language, meaning that the letters that make up the name “five thousand” don’t repeat.  a five thousand dollar bill, should you ever be so lucky to have one, will delight you with a picture of the fourth united states president james madison–you would have to be awfully lucky because that bill is no longer in circulation.  and for facebook?  five thousand friends means you are no longer a person.

this morning, i was surprised to discover that i am “an interest”. . . .

this is my profile picture as ArLynn Leiber Presser interest. i can "like" this page but i can't post on this page. i am completely clueless as to what this means. . . . can i be somebody's hobby?

i have no idea who created the page but it is accompanied by a wikipedia biography.  i have a facebook friend who has created a “public figure” Arlynn Leiber Presser page.  apparently, this will become massively important if i ever end up with five thousand friends.  over the course of the last year, as i have visited the original 325 friends i have acquired some more new friends.  but i’m really unclear as to why that means i have to be a public figure.

i'd rather be an action figure but i'll settle for being a barbie doll. i find this really confusing. . . .

today i went to lunch with f2fb friend #304 tracy lynn deis, who IS a public figure because she is a photographer with more than five thousand “fans”.  and yet, she seems like a really nice friend.  she works out of her home, designing online courses for professors who work out of their homes for students who will learn out of their homes. . . . probably everybody lives next door to each other they just don’t know it.  tracy and i talked about how sometimes it feels like we can spend days without leaving the house and . . . it feels okay.  it’s a choice.  but then it’s hard to work up the energy to get out of the house.  i was grateful she did. . . i was grateful i did.

my car is fixed so i can travel. i have a full backseat. at five o'clock i sort of had to fish or cut bait on seeing tracy lynn and i had the usual plethora of excuses for weaseling out and staying home. . . . so was tracy lynn!

and she told me the most insane facebook romance story ever. . . and i’ve heard a lot!