Light of my Life

We have been hit hard and are continuing to be hit hard by the ice storm passing across the midwest. Thanks be to God, we still have electricity (and therefore heat). Here are some pictures.

This is my Japanese cherry tree yesterday afternoon (and notice the frozen grill; oops!):

And here it was this morning (notice the split evergreen in the background):

And once more, after the snow started (this time from inside):

And some other pictures:

This tree has lost several more limbs since I took this picture:

Are you allowed to change the name of your blog?

I mean, I know I can, but is it, like, bad blogger etiquette? (blogiquette?)

Well, anyway, I’m tired of being untitled. I’ve decided to add a new name to go with my blog’s new look. I hope you like it. 🙂

Do you know that Alan Jackson song, “Where were you when the world stopped turning”? We all have our stories of what we were doing six years ago today when we heard the news. My story is not particularly interesting, but I’ll share it anyway, for my own benefit, because it’s therapeutic to talk about it.

I was working at Strong Funds at the time. I had gotten to work at the crack of dawn and was sitting at my desk, working away, when one of my coworkers came in and told me there was a fire at the World Trade Center. I think my exact response was, “Huh.” I went back to work. But she sat down at her desk next to mine and turned on the radio.

Then we listened in growing shock and horror as the reality of what was happening began to set in.

In another part of the building, there were televisions, and many people flocked to them to watch the horror unfold. But in my department we were urged to stay in the area, so we huddled around a few radios. I didn’t see the towers fall, but I remember hearing that it was happening. Later, I would see the footage as it was replayed over and over on television.

I felt powerless, and I wanted desperately to know who – who would do such a thing? I wanted information. I tried to search the web for whatever it could tell me, but the information superhighway was in the midst of its biggest ever traffic jam. I couldn’t get to a single major news website.

At lunchtime, I had to go to my apartment to meet the cable guy. The drive home was eerie. Everybody drove slowly, cautiously, carefully. Nobody cut anybody off, made rude gestures, or blasted loud music. We drove wide-eyed, listening to our radios, knowing that something was happening that would change us forever. We felt a strange camaraderie with each other, the beginnings of that fierce American Pride that would shine forth for several months to come.

That night, David was 70 miles away in Madison, so I sat at home alone, glued to the television. For hours I soaked up as much coverage as I could, until finally, it was too much. I turned off the news and went to bed.

So, where were you?

For years, my friend’s home computer has been the server for my website, www.erinmarielee.com. The perks have been fantastic – free, virtually unlimited space; free, friendly tech support; no pop-ups or advertising of any kind. Then this past week, he had the audacity to move, which of course necessitated the shutting down of his computer. Bye-bye, www.erinmarielee.com. How dare he? Nah, I’m kidding, of course. But as I wait anxiously for the computer to be turned back on, the suspense eats away at me. How many people will go to www.erinmarielee.com, get an error message, and give up on my domain name for all eternity? How many old friends will come back to the site to look at the latest pictures of my kids, and think I’ve shut it down? Will they know that we’re all okay? If only they knew about this blog, they could know that all is not lost! But alas, no one knows about this blog yet. It sits quietly in an obscure corner of cyberspace, perfectly content to be a wallflower. I can only shout silently – to my friends and family who stay in touch with me via www.erinmarielee.com, if you can hear me, please don’t give up!

Hello, blogging world! Thank you for your warm welcome. I created my first web site back in 1995, long before personal web sites were fashionable. Years before Blogger or WordPress were even a twinkle in the eye of cyberspace, I filled my simple site with running commentaries on my life and the events I witnessed around me. Heck, you might even say I INVENTED the weblog. (Of course, Al Gore made it easier for me by inventing the Internet first…)

And yet, it is now 2007 and I am just now making my first-ever official “blog” entry on my first-ever official blog. Why on earth has it taken me so long to enter the world of blogging? How could someone who used to be so technologically advanced end up so desperately behind the times? Quite simply, because I couldn’t think of a name. You can hardly hope to have a successful blog without a clever title. And so for years, literally years, I agonized over what to call my blog. What did I come up with? Nothing. Nada. Diddly squat. The pressure was simply too great. In the meantime, I’ve missed out on years of babbling on about my life to complete strangers (or possibly nobody). So while I’m certain I could eventually come up with something more clever than what I’ve decided on, at this point I flat-out refuse and will henceforth cling desperately to the boring, un-chic un-title of “Intentionally Untitled.”

Welcome. I hope you will feel quite at home here.