Sometimes people just blow me away completely.

By now you're probably getting a bit bored with my referring to the people I've met on the other side of the internet. I know it's hard to understand why I'm raving about it because you don't know what's going on. But tonight, I came home, checked the email and found someone had left a message for me.

I've been talking to this kid on and off for about 6 weeks on AIM, sometimes for hours at a time - because that's what I do. Anyway, here's the message he left for me...

You are a good guy and you know it, I can honestly say that I look to you for so much advice, you have made life substantially easier for me and I thank you for that. Brooke may be too far for my saving, but because of you I no longer hate myself at night. My hat is off to you my good friend.

How can I not love these people? Moreover, how can I not abandon myself to giving them as much time as I possibly can when this is what I get in return?

But it's more than that. Without any questions or hesitation, they've accepted me as another of their circle of friends and they value my contributions. Remember, this is not a comm thing like MSN, it's a circle of friends all with their own personal bits of space - like this blog - who all link back to eachothers bits of space and they also link back to mine.

I'll say it again, just to make you sick. I love them all so much.


In less personal news, I've managed to keep my newest blog updated on a daily basis every day since September 4th and that makes me happy too. It's the one I use so I can keep a watchful eye over the youngster I mentioned a couple of weeks ago but the added bonus is I'm actually happy with its progress and it's not too taxing to write.

Another great thing happened today too. A few years ago, I was encouraged by a chap for whom I didn't have a great deal of respect to keep little reminders of all sorts of things about which I may like to write when the opportunity arose. So for a short while I did that and stuck them to a corkboard in the kitchen, then when that corkboard was replaced by a larger one, the smaller one was slotted down the back of cabinet and promptly forgotten. Today I found it and the 40 odd bits of paper with my reminders still pinned to it. Sweeeeeet!


Now, if any of you are feeling in anyway benevolent and charitable, one of those people on the other side of whom I have been making frequent comments has a dream and a passion for architecture. He does, however, need a bit of assistance to realise a particular aspect of this dream and I would like to help out in this respect. But I don't expect anyone to just toss money down the drain and get nothing in return, so what I've done is mark up the price of The Swamp to $5 above the base price and in return for anyone purchasing the book - and getting a copy of the funniest book to be published in 2004 - I'll donate that $5 to this kid's dream of becoming an architect.

Here's the link...



You've seen an example of the gratitude these kids are able to show, if this particular kid knew how many people got behind this and supported his dream, how could his quest fail?

It sure beats having $40 disappear from one's bank account promptly on the first of the month to be used by Oxfam in deep and mysterious fashion on people who will never even be able to express their appreciation for the donation. What's more, all of those who do splash out the $16.98 for the book can have a tangible reminder of something nice they've done by proxy for someone they never knew existed.

Time to compose this entry: 67 mins.