We first met in person 10 years ago today. 10 years ago today, I was smitten by your beauty, your humor, your ability to hack into your roommates computer and the fact that you owned a Joe Satriani CD.

I picked you up outside of your dorm for our first date on a cold and foggy Friday night in November (much like today, in fact). We went to The Ground Round for dinner and then, because we couldn’t think of anything better to do, we went back to your room. Early the next morning after a sleepless night of conversation and laughs we shared our first kiss. After a couple hours of sleep, I drove back home and I haven’t stopped thinking of you since.

Robyn, thank you for being you and for loving me.

After about two years of reading, I am finally finished with Stephen King’s Gunslinger series. I remember beginning the first book at one of Robyn’s many pre-fertility treatment appointments back in 2005. I wish I could remember just what procedure it was, but there were so many, I just don’t recall. Overall, the series was pretty good although there were some really slow parts that I slogged through. At about half-way point, I decided I needed to take a break and I read a couple of other books to change things up, so it’s not totally fair to say that this took me more than two years.

The concept of ([b]this is a spoiler – select the text with your mouse to see it[/b]) [color=white] Stephen King being a character in the series[/color] was pretty unique and not something I saw coming until about the half way point when [color=white] Father Callahan was introduced and his part in Salem’s Lot explained[/color]. The sudden introduction of a few important characters in the final book was an odd choice, but they served their purposes in the coming together of the plotlines and overall story. The story definitely went places that I did not expect and touched on the varied genres in which King has written (What? He’s not a “horror” writer? If that’s what you think, then you are not a Stephen King fan, my friend!).

And of course, there is the ending and then THE ENDING which King asks, no begs us not to read through. Of course, I did and I think, overall, I would have been happy without having read it even though it did serve to bring the whole saga to a close…or did it? heheheheh.

If you’ve not read the books, I recommend that you do as long as you’ve got some time to kill and enjoy . Of course, you’ll read them in order, but the best of the bunch was undoubtedly book IV: [i]Wizard and Glass[/i]. The subplot that delved into Roland’s past would have made a fantastic story unto itself. I also really enjoyed the next book [i]Wolves of the Calla[/i] with it’s [b]Seven Samurai[/b]-esque action.

So, what am I onto now?
[list]
[*][url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553804715/bujinkanmartia0b/]Baltimore,: Or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire[/url] – The cover illustration by Mike Mignola caught my eye as I was browsing through Border’s a month or so ago and I was excited to see that this tome is peppered with Mignola’s dark visions! I am borrowing this from the library and have read about 30 pages so far. It’s quite and interesting story….
[*][url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933392797/bujinkanmartia0b/104-2095994-0695668]The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot[/url] – There are so many political books critical of the Bush administration being released now that I spent about two hours a few weeks ago perusing them at Barne’s & Noble. This pamphlet style book was chock full of interesting and frightening facts about the current administration’s slow, but steady erosion of the American democracy and freedoms.
[*][url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345494768/bujinkanmartia0b/]The Making of Star Wars[/url] – Worth the price of admission for the photos and artwork alone. If you are a Star Wars fan, you MUST own this book! It goes into never before seen detail about the making of the film including which scenes were shot on what days and also features great descriptions of the various screenplay drafts that Lucas wrote prior to the film’s production.
[/list]

Per John’s comments in my Thickbox post, I have been playing around with [url=http://vikjavev.no/highslide/#examples]Highslide[/url] for image display. I gotta say that there are some nice bells and whistles in this script.
[list]
[*]Click and drag the opened image around the browser window.
[*]Open more than one image and move them all around the screen at the same time. I did experience a little wierd behavior when trying this with [url=http://www.opera.com]Opera[/url], though.
[*]Keyboard shortcuts for navigating to the next image in a series.
[/list]
Anyway, click the pic of Crazy Don below and give it a whirl.

This is a crazy photo of Don seemingly screaming…but he’s actually trying to distract one of the kids from crying….

Yesterday morning, I drove Shannon and George and the kids to EWR so they could hop a plane to visit their families in Sunnyland. On the way back, after getting cofee at 7-11, I stopped at the library to pick up a book I had reserved. Walking up the stairs, I held the door for a woman and her toddler who were on their way out of the building with arms full of books. As I stood at the desk inside, a woman came running back into the lobby saying “We need some help out here. A woman just fell down the stairs and she thinks she broke her ankle!”

I went out the door and saw the woman I had passed sitting on the bottom stair holding her screaming child. Their books were scattered all around on the ground. I asked if she was okay as several others came out of the library to help. She said that she was but that her ankle was really painful and she thought that it might be broken. We offered to help her stand so that she could go back inside while we waited for the police and ambulance to show up. Wisely, I think, she decided to stay put and try to calm her child who had fallen with her but appeared to be more scared than anything else. Someone grabbed a warm blanket from their car and covered the woman as she phoned her husband. Luckily, he was nearby and was on his way and the little girl was calming down and no longer crying.

The small group of us stood around making smalltalk with the woman as we waited. She thanked us all profusely for helping and waiting with her. A few minutes later, the police showed up and started to take her information. I went back inside to retrieve my license and book and when I came back out, everything seemed under control. I wished her luck and headed back home.

Although it was a small thing and I didn’t render much assistance, I felt good about having helped out a bit in a difficult situation.

New look…same old content!

I took a stab at making a [url=http://www.bblog.com]bBlog[/url] template from a nice page layout and design I found somewhere. It’s a good exercise in learning [url=http://smarty.php.net]Smarty[/url] and the inner workings of bBlog. Does anyone know what is going on with the development of bBlog, by the way? It seems to be stuck in limbo with the forum shut down and no new updates on the site. Very sad.

Anyway, you’ll see some of the old features that I had are missing. Those will be coming back as I slowly update the code. In addition, I have a few new ideas that I am looking forward to implementing. One is the “read more…” message on longer posts on the main page. I’m thinking of using [url=http://jquery.com/]jquery[/url] to slide open the remainder of the post. Another issue I want to address is the lack of a “read older posts” link at the bottom of the page. I’m not sure why no one implemented that in bBlog, but I’m gonna do it!

Do you have any suggestions?

Check it out: [url=http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ninja_parade_slips_through_town]Annual Ninja Parade[/url]

A couple of fantastic creatures on this Hallow’s Eve:

Chloe said Gabriel’s name today. We’re pretty sure we’ve heard each of the kids say the other’s name in the last week or so, but today Chloe clearly said “Bay-bree-ul”. She says almost everything with a “b” sound at the beginning. “Baby” is Gabey. “Baba” is bottle but sometimes Mama, too.

Gabriel may also have said Chloe’s name a few times. Sometimes he’ll just come out with a pefectly clear word. One time he said “bottle” just like and adult. Another time it was “Chloe”. His favorite real word right now is “turtle”.

I’ve been playing around with [url=http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/]Thickbox[/url] a bit since it’s a nice lightweight implementation of the lightbox JS image displayers that everyone is using these days. As you can see, it’s built on the jQuery library which is also quite handy. Although the code is very spare, you can do a ton of great effects and some might even be usefule!

So, here is my first blog post that uses ThickBox to display images. Let me know if you have any issues.

[b][i]Click Away![/i][/b]