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.

Hi, remember me?

I know, I know, it’s been a while. Things have been rather hectic here in The Blog Cave and in the life of The Masked Blogger. Lots of working hours (18 one day), lots of family and friend things and…some other things. If you’re in my address book, you’ll hear about those in a separate e-mail later tonight or tomorrow, but for now be assured that there have been few empty moments in my existence for the last couple of weeks.

And I don’t anticipate any for the next month either, but then every November/December is like that, no matter how much I try to make it otherwise.

Here’s a condensed version of the past 3 weeks or so. I was handed two new and good-sized projects by my division’s director. One of them involved a reduction in force action for our entire division and that has not been easy or enjoyable. Stressful and time-consuming, it has been. I had to oversee a project that will put 86 people in the unemployment line next month, one of them from my own department whom I love dearly as a friend and a co-worker. This was not an unexpected situation; all of us have known that the job we are doing for the big government agency is one that we would eventually work ourselves out of, yet I guess we all hoped it would still be off in the future somewhere. Instead, it is now. Barring any changes, we will do it again in April or May.

As unpleasant as it has been, I have learned a lot about certain procedures, policies and people that will be helpful to me.

The other project is an on-going one that is also teaching me a lot about the division I work within. Though my department’s work touches others and I have picked up some things from them along the way, almost all of my experience has been in the one department that I supervise. This project is helping me add to my store of knowledge about the entire operation. The more you know, the less expendable you are…I hope.

We had a busy, but enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner with some 30 family members. I was so tired I didn’t even take my camera to shoot pictures. After eating and celebrating the November birthdays, my father-in-law, 3 brothers-in-law and I sat down and ironed out the plans for our first camping trip together in January. I’m looking forward to that.

On Black Friday after work (when the crowds were pretty non-existent) Blog Girl and I ventured out to have dinner and buy our Christmas tree. When we got back to the Cave we put it up in the stand to allow it to “fall out” overnight. It is a huge 8 foot Frasier Fir that looks much bigger here than it did at the tree store. Saturday I put up the lights outside the house and the lights on the tree inside, and then Blog Girl and Amber decorated as much of the tree as they could reach, and I finished the top. It looks very beautiful.

Sunday morning after dropping Blog Girl off at Lake Eola, I went to Amber’s new house and put up hooks all along her eaves and then hung her icicle lights. After that I returned to pick up BG from Lake Eola and then we went to meet our friend Rhonda at the Disney Marketplace where we did some shopping and visiting. It was Rhonda’s birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY RHONDA!!

Today at work I got a really cool early Christmas gift from my friend Denise. If you’ve got a laptop and you’ve had to go searching for a Wi-fi signal so you could connect to the Internet, you know it can be a chore to boot up the laptop and go through all the steps to try to get a signal, only to find out there isn’t one nearby. Well, the WiFi Finder Plus licks that chore and makes locating that needed signal a breeze. Just push the button and within a few seconds the WiFi Finder Plus lets you know if there’s a signal and how strong it is. It also locates Bluetooth signals and has a little flashlight as well. Denise said she just couldn’t wait to give it to me and I’m glad she didn’t. I loves me my new toy! Thanks Denise!

Real quick; Egg nog is on the shelves!! Tomorrow the “Superman Returns” DVD goes on sale.

It’s late and I have to be up at 4:30 tomorrow, so don’t look for the e-mail with the “other things” news tonight. Probably tomorrow.

You may have noticed some of the changes I’ve been making around here. A few days ago I added a graphic link to my new MySpace site, a couple of days later I added my list of books read (that is still a work in progress as I have to get the books I’ve been reading in 2006 listed) and today I changed the header graphic above and the color of the sidebar headings. Let me know what you think.

But I could not have done any of those things without the help and assistance of 2 lovely ladies who graciously gave me their time and technical know-how. I can handle your everyday HTML coding but for some reason I’ve never been able to get a strong handle on CSS coding, which is the basis of WordPress templates like the one I use for this blog.

So I’d like to offer a sincere “Thanks for the info” to Hänni (HAW-knee), the Grand Empress of Hännihaus and Michelle, the Goddess behind Zengrrl. Shortly after sharing some of her knowledge of “the Force” (mere mortals such as myself can only handle so much in one session) Hänni packed up her bags and moved Hännihaus to the Lone Star state of Texas. Thankfully that move was not a result of meeting me, but rather a move already in the works so that she and her hubby could live closer to where he works. The Sunshine State’s loss is the Longhorns’ gain, but hopefully the “art”-ful one will find the time to return and visit O-town occasionally in the future. Michelle is an obvious graduate of Hogwart’s School of WordPress Wizarding and helped a great deal with issues I was having with my header graphic and sidebar additions. I told her that once I saw what she did I would be able to do it own my own after that, but I almost put the lie to that statement today when I was attempting to change out the header graphic. However, after some tinkering and spellcasting, I was able to get the graphic I wanted to show up where I wanted. Michelle is currently splitting her time between Mouseville and the cheesehead state of Wisconsin. She’s been back in our neck of the woods a few weeks but Blog Girl and I haven’t had the chance to meet up with her as of yet. Soon, hopefully, soon.

I’ll continue making changes in the decor around the cave, but the real credit goes to Hänni and Michelle for getting me on the right track. That’s why I’m grateful to the ladies.