The year was 1997.

Bill Clinton began his second term as President of the United States.

Tony Blair was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, the first time a computer beat a chess World champion in a match.

Timothy McVeigh was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and received a death penalty sentence.

The first book in the award winning Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling is published. (The last will be published this year)

NASA’s Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.

Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in a Paris tunnel.

Scotland voted to create its own Parliament after 290 years of union with England.

The domain “Google” was registered.

Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule

The Florida Marlins won Game 7 of the 1997 World Series against the Cleveland Indians 3-2 in 11 innings.

The Green Bay Packers win Super Bowl XXXI, defeating the New England Patriots 35 to 21 on January 26th in New Orleans’ Superdome. (Sorry Jason)

The term “weblog” (later shortened to “blog”) is coined.

The late Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker passed away, as did poet Allen Ginsberg, magician Harry Blackstone, Jr., French explorer Jacques Cousteau, American actors Robert Mitchum, Burgess Meredith, Chris Farley, Denver Pyle and James Stewart, American television reporter Charles Kuralt, Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, United States Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, American comedian Red Skelton, professional wrestler Brian Pilman and American musician John Denver, among others.

And while celebrities such as Woody Allen and his adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn were getting married, an obscure man and woman (to everyone but each other) in Orlando, Florida were married in the beautiful backyard garden of the bride’s parents, writing their own vows, choosing their own music and surrounded by family and friends.

As I told my children shortly before the ceremony; outside of the days they were born, this was the happiest day of my life.

It still is.

Happy Anniversary, Blog Girl. Thank you for the 10 happiest years of my life. And thank you for loving the man behind the mask.

I’m lying here in bed in the BlogCave coughing my lungs up (oops, one just landed on the keyboard. Give me a second here to put it back in). At least I’m not suffering from the sore throat that felt like I must have swallowed hydrochloric acid and a nose that basically became a mucus faucet stuck on “open”, as I was for the previous 3 days this crap has been in my body.

We took down the Christmas decorations and tree today and got everything put back in the attic or hauled to the curb. That took about 2 hours and I was completely worn out the rest of the day. Slept about 5 hours in the afternoon and don’t have much of an appetite (good start for the upcoming diet/exercise program), but I’m not as achy feeling as I have been.

The required bed rest has given me a chance to read one of my Christmas gift books, Wally’s World, and I may even get to finish one more other book before the end of 2006.

Some sort of morbid curiosity (my friend Jenn will know about that particular kind of curiosity) made me half-sit, half-lie on the couch last night at 10pm watching the circus on CNN regarding Saddam Hussein’s execution. Commentators made the statement that “Hussein and his two co-conspirators were being hanged for their role in the 1982 Dujail massacre, in which 148 Iraqis were killed”.

That got me to thinking…the shrub and his two co-conspirators, Donald and Dick, are responsible for the deaths of almost 3,000 American soldiers and the wounding of tens of thousands more. That doesn’t count American contractors, soldiers from countries in the “coalition of the willing” (or their civilians who are in the country) or even the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who have been killed.

Is anyone suggesting they face a hangman’s noose?

I didn’t think so.