Wednesday, 14 February 2001

Published 23 years, 1 month past

Happy Valentine’s Day, or whatever.

Okay, I’m not actually bitter this year (for once!), but the holiday still drags at me a bit.  I think it’s the obligatory nature of the whole thing, the sense that if I don’t observe the holiday then I will suffer mightily for it.  And that’s not even coming from Kat, who is perfectly happy to buy herself a present and then say, “Look what you got me!”  I love her for that (and a whole lot more).  What I’m talking about is the general all-pervasive air of expectation which the holiday creates all on its own.  It isn’t nearly so bad as the anti-joy field which Christmas seems to generate, but it’s still there, taunting me.  Like, I don’t know, some kind of taunting thing.  Hm, apparently today is not a day for brilliance in letters.

Anyway, time to fill in the blanks in what’s been a very blankless life.  Kat started a new job two days ago, working as a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital in Bedford, and is interviewing for midwifery positions in and around the Cleveland area.  So she’s exchanged the stress of having no job for the stress of having to get up early in the morning.  She’s also been doing some volunteer work which takes two nights a week, so some days are fifteen hours long.  You’d think she was in my line of work.  Not that I pull fifteen-hour days, of course, but I hear that some people do.  She’s also been asked to write an article on Kangaroo Care for an online resource, and I suspect that once it’s done we’ll be reprinting it here on the site.

Speaking of writing, I’m wrapping up two books in the next week.  The easy one is the CSS Pocket Reference for O’Reilly & Associates, which required not much more than repackaging portions of the first book, polishing the text a bit, and running with it.  The second, the CSS2.0 Programmer’s Reference for Osborne/McGraw-Hill, required substantially more work in many ways.  For example, I had to figure out some of the nuances of parts of CSS2 which I’ve never really visited.  Since it isn’t a tutorial, though, it meant that I could just concentrate on explaining properties and values and not worrying about stuff like illustrations.  I suspect they’ll both hit shelves within a month of each other.  And, of course, there’s the start of my HWG-sponsored CSS2 class this coming Monday.  Is this too much Eric all at once?  You decide.


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