Namaskar, Ms D. Thank you.

Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
by Sir Thomas Moore

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear;
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.

Happy, Happy New Year (tomorrow), Ms D! Thank you for giving me a little lovely light at the end of this one. Have fun!

PS: nearly forgot genealogy trivia: Tom Cruise is playing his 21st cousin, 5 times removed, Claus Schenk von Stauffenburg in Valkyrie. That's the 2nd actor I know of off hand whose played a relative (the other's Alec Baldwin who played both Jimmy Doolittle in Pearl Harbor and Robert Jackson in Nuremberg). BTW, Tom's 1st cousin is William Mapother who played Ethan on Lost, and Buddhist scholar Dr. Robert Thurman (7th cousin, 1x removed) and thus 8th cousin to the good doctor's daughter, Uma. Could I have let 2008 slip by without just one more bit of trivia? Maybe, but then maybe the would would have stopped spinning, or the sun stopped burning--who knows what would have happened? Would you have wanted me to take that chance? JK!!!! Honestly, I hope you have a lovely day, a fun night, and a great next year, Ms D!

Aww...that's cute.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.

And my own take on this, have yourself a Merry little Christmas every day.

Its an interesting way to start college again, the geology with lab, intro to forensics and Italian (I assume you'll also have a language lab there, too). I started college while I was still in high school taking trig between my junior & senior years, then the summer right after graduating hs (when you were a few weeks old!), I jumped in with psych. I made the dean's list in fall 1989, then wound up dropping out in the spring. I also went from a bio major (I really had no choice but to find something else, since I was screwing up in math left & right), and changed majors to psych/behavioral science. In a way, I guess, its similar to you taking forensics, but where you're going to look at the physical remains to find a cause of death, I was (and still am) interested in the underlying motives (a big part of me would have loved, I think, to have been an analyst for the CIA or a criminal profiler for the FBI, even if I'm well to the left). In either case, though, you gather clues to form a hypothesis, test it and if it proves sound, you form a theory, then seek out more evidence and test that to see if you've deduced properly. And taking a foreign language is just really cool! I loved taking Spanish in hs, and sort of regret having not taken it that final year (I took it frosh through junior years), but I'm trying to dig some of what I knew up, but I know my tenses are off and my sentences are really fragments, but its a start and its good for the synapses to get a workout, ya dig? Hasta la vista, Ms D! Tienes un dia magnifica! (lord, I hope I got that right!)

I think I heard somewhere that there is a 3000 wmv option...or maybe I'm just imagining things...I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to stuff like that. I'm am actually super excited about the Forensic Pathology class...though it is a basic class so I won't be dissecting anybody. Ugo (and the rest of my Italian fans) is one of the reasons why I decided to take Italian.

Good morning! (or is it afternoon? evening? the middle of the night?!!?). Yeah, from what I can see from the public areas of the site, the whole thing looks really sweet. I haven't joined the premium site (yet)--it took me the better part of 6 mos to stash aside the scratch to join FTV, and between the holidays and a birthday coming up in Jan, it may take me until spring to set aside the funds needed (and hopefully Rob will indulge those of us with older machines and "dumb down" the videos to the 3000 WMV quality, since mine can't handle 6000 or 8000 WMVs). The courses look interesting--and you'll maybe get to do a turnabout on Ugo and get him to help you with Italian while you (and the rest of us) help him with his English. Personally I'm not sure I could handle the forensic class--I had enough trouble in AP bio when we took a field trip all the way to the jr. college (next to the hs) and observed an anatomy class--gross watching people eat lunch while dissecting dead people, and I hate--loathe!--the smell of formaldehyde!). But, I am wicked super hyper mega maxi proud of you for taking so much on at once and enjoying the heck out of it! Big, big (BIG) cheers to you, Ms D!!!

Awww...you are too sweet. I'm glad you like everything and yep it has been pretty hard to juggle everything...but it's great! I'm having the time of my life right now doing all the website stuff and shooting.

VVVVrrrrooooooooommmmmm! Drive by saying hi!

Wow! I'll say it again, and louder, WOW!!!! I come to the site this PM, and everything's so different--I actually had to pay attention when I came to the forum because I coulda swore the link was on the opposite side of the page. Actually, tell the truth, I clicked on a left-side link first (I was watching Hardball on MSNBC, too)--silly me! Seriously though, you have been so busy! I scrolled through all your video and photo shoots, and, here it comes again ...WOWEE!!! I don;t know when you find the time, or when Rob finds the time, to shoot for FTV, work with Lia, and come here and gab with us yobbos (but thanks). In all honesty, the site looks gorgeous (just like its hostess). !!!!