I’m still trying to get the hang of this whole blogging thing. I feel a bit like a fish out of water (gasping, rather angry …). So I’m trying to justify this in my own mind. Many people my age do not blog, and they do not read other people’s blogs. So who does?

Well, younger people, for one. They’re way more Internet savvy than the older generation and can spend hours online sending e-mails, instant messages, and probably other things that I’m not even aware of (just hear the term “meme” the other day; still don’t know what it means). But I figure if ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I brought in a team of specialists, and there are two things I’m apparently overlooking in my stubborn and old-fashioned adherence to the correct (at least in the US) use of the English language – chat speak and emoticons. If you thought our industry was already too full of alphabet soup, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. For those of you (like my boss Bill) who thought that “LOL” stood for “little old lady,” I promise to unravel some of the myths of chat speak courtesy of our “online princess,” Lindsay Goodier. And for those of you who can’t understand why someone puts a seemingly random series of punctuation marks at the end of a sentence or e-mail, a shout-out goes to my daughter Anna, the emoticon queen.

But you’ll have to wait until next week for the translation. For now I just want to immerse myself in the moment and see if I can shave 30 years off my life in the process. Here goes:

OMG! just herd about dis way kool tech WAZ :) lyk they take dese botes u no, n lyk, IDK, they sail dem rond n mak noiz (sry, wals! >D) n lyk get dese way cool pix ndr da groond!!! 0-0 so, lyk, newayz, PSDM n AVO r so 20th cnturi, u no ;D BTW, IMHO, dis may be TMI (>.<) for ne1 ndr 30 LOL n TTYL Rhonda