But I digress...

I love that phrase. Because I digress. A lot.

I’m not quite to my daughter’s level. This girl can take a half an hour to tell us about getting her hair cut. The tangents. Oh, lord, the tangents.

But I definitely digress too. Probably makes me a good storyteller. It makes me a slow, somewhat scattered story writer sometimes though. And there’s social media. I can take ten minutes to compose a tweet. Let me tell you why…

I have this phobia of posting something wrong online. It’s not like I never have or never will again, but with social media you can be retweeted, reposted, linked to and, of course, publicly mocked. (Don’t even get me started on the tweet stream called #romfail). And with my tendency to type too fast and not read things over before I hit “send” I’ve developed this weird tick.

I’ll be in the midst of typing a response to a tweet or a reply on Facebook or a comment on a blog, etc. and suddenly I freeze. “Is that really how you spell that?” “Is that the right tense?” “Is that the proper term for that?” “Is that even a word?” So I find myself pausing in the midst of the reply and Googling things to be sure. I have Dictionary.com in my favorites (it also has a thesaurus—very handy :)). What did we ever do before Google? Oh yeah, we had to know stuff. Or we were content to look like idiots perhaps. Either way, I’m a major Googler. (As an aside—I tend to find that I’m right about most of the stuff I was going to post prior to checking myself. Not always, but enough to put me closer to the not-an-idiot end of the spectrum *g*).

Oh, by the way, I Googled “Googler” to see if it was a real term and here are the three offered definitions at urbandictionary.com.
1. An employee working at Google. Employee benefits include free massages, gourmet food, no set working hours, constant talks from presidential candidates and tons of other famous people, and really high salary.
2. A person that appears to be very smart to when you talk online , but you find out that he just uses google to find out everything
3. A person who uses Google.com often.

I also saw the term “Googler’s remorse” which led me to click and find this definition: When, after googling something, you come up with offensive and/or vulgar results that are irrelevant to what you wanted to find in the first place.

There is also, unfortunately, the word "Googlerhea" which you don’t want the definition to, as well as Googlery: the act of using Google. But I digress.

See? Told you.

Yes, this why I sometimes (often) can’t get any writing done. Though I’ve never considered myself attention deficit.

Not only do I waste horrible amounts of time following links I don’t really/actually care about when trying to simply tweet back to someone, but when I’m writing I also have to look terms and words up as I go. I know some (maybe most?) authors just put a symbol or blank line in and then find the information later so as not to disrupt their flow. Hmm. They might be on to something. But I just can’t leave it blank. I just can’t. And I’ve never considered myself a perfectionist either. At all. But holy crap, I have to have all the words in place and right before I can go on. Drives me crazy if I don’t.

So, for fun (and because I have nothing serious to say today) here are ten of the most recent reasons I’ve visited Google. Well, ten of the non-embarrassing ones. Because I’m not about to admit to you all that I Googled “What year did Doogie Howser start”—which led to reading all about eidetic memory—which I don’t need to know about right now. Oh, and no Doogie Howser has nothing to with the book I’m working on. Feel free to guess which ones are and which aren’t related to the WIP. Or feel free to share the things you Google so you don’t look like an idiot online.

In no particular order, exactly what I typed in Google—except for the ones where I went straight to Dictionary.com
1. How to make red velvet cake
2. Distance between Alliance and Stuart, Nebraska
3. Outdoor music festivals, Nashville
4. Handcuffs, toys, bulk
5. Dictionary.com- derriere(I always want to put the I in the wrong place)
6. Fruits, aphrodisiacs
7. Dictionary.com—aphrodisiacs
8. RVs, bed size
9. Shades of blue
10. Waterfalls in Nebraska

Happy Googling! Join me, won’t you?

Answers to above:
1. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sara-moulton/southern-red-velvet-cake-recipe/index.html
2. 246 miles
3. http://www.nashville.world-guides.com/nashville_events.html
4. http://www.windycitynovelties.com/6404p/and-a-half-thumbcuffs-key-chains.html
5. Derriere
6. http://www.windycitynovelties.com/6404p/and-a-half-thumbcuffs-key-chains.html
7. Aphrodisiacs
8. http://reviews.ebay.com/Bed-Sheets-for-Campers-RV-apos-s-amp-Travel-Trailers_W0QQugidZ10000000000024357
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_blue
10. http://www.nebraskatravels.com/tallest-waterfall-smith-falls-niobrara-river-ne.html