11/24/2001, 12:27 am

Strawberry Fields.

That's the new color of my hair. It's not Strawberry Fields...Forever. The tube says it "lasts up to 40 washes".

All part of Family Fun Day.

That's about all I'm going to say about the day here. That, and I can't wait to get off these friggin' crutches!

11/23/2001, 2:00 am

A nice Thanksgiving. Hope you had one. I had one.

We went to my cousins' place. They live on the same block as I do on the east side of the city. And yet, we basically see them once a year. And we really enjoy it. It's a little odd, I suppose, but that's what it is.

My cousin Anthony (who now lives in San Fran) and I speak more frequently than that and see each other in his city or mine a few times a year. I had touched base with him last week to check in and all was well. Between then and today, though, he was laid off from his job at a big video game company. Bummer. But, as he noted, it's becoming something of a rite of passage for our generation.

This Thanksgiving, he brought his girlfriend Sasha home with him. I wasn't sure what to expect of a woman Anthony would bring home, but now I know: a very cool girl. She grew up in Hawaii and it turns out that she knows our family friend Craig Couglar's son Gulliver. I asked her because I dimly remember Gully from my visit to the big island in third grade, and figured that big island kids around the same age have probably met. Max's girlfriend seems great, too. She's pitching a show to MTV and seems pretty optimistic about her chances of getting it produced.

Several people have asked recently what a vegetarian like me eats on Thanksgiving, so I'll try to recount this evening's bounteous plate: sweet potato, broccoli rabe, vegan stuffing, portobello mushroom, cranberry sauce and seitan with peppers and onions. Dessert was (this is all made without refined sugar or dairy) two pieces of pumpkin pie, a piece of chocolate tofu creme pie, a bit of chocolate walnut pie, and a jelly drop cookie. Wow, I feel full again just writing that.

Before Thanksgiving, we visited my mom's dad on the upper east side, who we don't have a very close relationship with. We don't see him much. so Mom makes it a point to pay a visit every Thanksgiving while everyone's together. While there, we talked a bunch about our experiences on September 11th. People are going to be thinking and talking about that for years to come. I think WhereWereYou.org is a cool idea.

Closed out the night on Long Island playing some guitar with Willie and Monica singing along to Tangled Up In Blue, Mom doing vocals on Long Black Veil and Isabella and Jessie making up new words to Billy Bragg/Woody Guthrie's Against The Law. Good motivation to learn some more tunes.

Now it's time to rest up for a big brunch tomorrow. The music is stacked high and the food plays on...

Thanksgiving 2001, 2:06 am

Thanksgiving 2001, 2:06 am

This Thanksgiving, I'm most grateful for passion, health, sincerity, fun, joy, laughing, smiling, good friends, girlfriends, computers, volleyball, being paid to do a job I enjoy, inline skates, art, delicious food, the people that dedicate their lives to helping others (including our firefighters and police), foot doctors, water, natural medicine, frequent flyer miles, photography, language, eyes, family and free will.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving full of appreciation and joy!

11/20/2001, 10:06 am

It's just like the NY Times said: "Monday has become the new Thursday, which replaced the old Friday, but now often resembles the current Saturday."

It's especially true when your beleagured volleyball team wins 3 outta 3 games on a Monday night. What else are you to do but travel 10 blocks on your crutches to celebrate at an Irish pub? Early Tuesday morning was reminiscent of early Friday mornings I have known, with Rich sending a stream of not-quite-straight-thinkin' emails (Taylor called them Faulknerian!) between and 2 and 4 am. Of course, he's on vacation starting today. Me, on the other hand, I have a long busy day ahead. As soon as my Dad returns with a new rubber tip for the bottom of my crutch (along with Rich's email self-discipline, another casualty of the evening), I'll begin it.

Had some good talks last night with Anthony and with Cher, and then later with my Dad. Helped me put some things in perspective on the romantic side of things.

Dad's back in town. He's thinking of moving to NYC. It would be great to have him close by. He's a very centering element in my life in his own peripatetic way.

11/19/2001, 12:04 am

Early one mornin' the sun was shinin',
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red
Her folks they said our lives together
Sure was gonna be rough
They never did like Mama's homemade dress
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough
And I was standin' on the side of the road
Rain fallin' on my shoes
Heading out for the East Coast
Lord knows I've paid some dues gettin' through
Tangled up in blue
-Bob Dylan

11/18/2001, 3:12 am

End of a long day of nothing.

I left my apartment twice today. To the trash chute both times. My apartment is clean, my bills are paid, my tummy is full, my foot's feeling better, my guitar has improved, and this site's front page has a slideshow-style lead image.

Alec Berlin came by this afternoon and we followed through on our plan. He taught me guitar basics for an hour and then I taught him perl basics for an hour. I'm learning Tangled Up in Blue. He's learning syntax, CGI, and that There's More Than One Way To Do It. Barter is great. And bartering when both the giving and the receiving are fun and you're sharing it with a friend is even better.

Thursday night, I ordered a couple of travel books on Thailand and Laos and a digital camera the other night in anticipation of my trip. I'm really looking forward to having the camera. It's going to be great for the trip, but I also expect it will let me spice up this blog with visuals more regularly.

Talked to three out of four sisters today. All are doing well. All my siblings will be around for Thanksgiving, as will my cousin Anthony, who's living in San Fran now. I think Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday.

So... the slideshow. The image up top has always been a random image, but I got tired of refreshing the page to see what a new image I posted would look like. The way it works (warning: geek mode approaching... you might want to stop here) is some php code looks in a particular directory for images. It puts them all in an array and then shuffles the array (yes, "shuffle" is a function in php -- it's got a built-in for everything). Finally it writes the image paths out into a javascript array. Then, on page-load, javascript preloads some of the images and makes the first call to a image-swapping function that calls itself with set-timeout. On IE 5 for Windows, I decided to take advantage of a proprietary cross-fade filter to transition between images. I wrestled philosophically with this one, because it's certainly not a W3C standard. In the end, I decided to do it because it's so friggin' slick. The server only includes the relevant javascript lines to IE5/Win browsers, so there's no danger of incompatibility. I kept it slow as to not be annoying. I'm starting to feel like something should happen when you click it. But I'm not sure what yet. If you have an idea, let me know and I'll build a comment feature so you can reply to my blog entry. [smiles] Goodnight.