Sigh. Another five days just flashed by without a post. Granted I spent 48 hours of them without sleep to get a bunch of material done for a big project review, and another all-nighter last night for a Mon morning rollout (as well as some recovery time). But it’s still unbelievable how fast time can occur as rolling by. It’s kinda like sands through the hourglass, or water under a …. well, you know.

I experienced a moment I wanted to capture a day or two ago. I’ve been meaning to write it down so that I remember it. Janece, Amira and I were at the mall getting lunch. Amira was getting pretty tired in preparation for her nap, but not the pesky tired — just the super-relaxed and sweet kind of tired. Janece was holding her while I was cleaning up and getting ready to go. She started singing “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, and Amira was eating it up. She had both hands on the sides of Janece’s face and they were smiling at each other, all snuggled in together oblivious of all of the noise and activity going on around them. The sun was out and gorgeous as only a Seattle spring can be, and a beam was literally shining right down on them. It was a golden thing of beauty — that moment. I actually had the sensation of reaching out and taking the scene and putting in a mental locket to hang around my neck, one of those times where you know that you’ll remember it. I am so lucky to be able to witness Moments like that. In both senses of the word…

Currently enjoying two releases from members of my old band in San Diego, Via Satellite. Check out Glory and also Passing. The main riff of both songs are gorgeous. Both songs are off their new album “Cities Are Temples“. Also, Scott from the band has his own side project called Manuok. He’s pretty good at the lush jazzy emotional chord thing — especially on “All Said And Done”, which I can’t get out of my head. Check out his song samples and video. Drew and Tim from VS currently tour with The Album Leaf (Scott designed the site and Tim did the painting on the last album cover) and Tim has also played drums for Sigor Ros on a tour or two. Lovely boys, all of them, and their beards are second-to-none (except for maybe ZZ Top).

I’ve been meaning to respond to the comments over the last couple of weeks, so I’ll just skip the post and do that tonight. Feel free to browse around and find them (he says, cleverly getting people to read the blog).

You don’t want to search? Oh, all right. Stop whining. I’ll give you an assist. I left comments in this post and this post. I still want to respond to this post, too, but that’s for another time as it’s getting way too late.

By the way, if you want a peek at the match that lit my firestorm that I mention in the last post, the close-to-final morph-i-licious end product is up and running at this build site. None of the links are live, but the general approach is complete and ready for fine-tuning.

Tough night tonight. I’ve been off all day — just generally anxious and moody. I have several clients needing major work projects completed, I have Amira’s dedication party to plan and assemble (more on that in another post), and I have a 3-song EP I’m trying to get written and recorded for the party– a lot of to-dos to keep rolling. On top of that, we just did a debt overview a night or two ago, and it wasn’t pretty. We’ve been way behind in our taxes for the last 4-5 years because of an expensive move to San Diego, and this tax season brought more bad news of even more money we owe the tax man. So I feel like I’m working really hard and falling farther behind, which always makes me feel anxious and crabby and claustrophobic. And not only that, but we’re tight on money right now. I’m working hard but it’s on projects that are either investments or where the money has been long spent but the work is still due. You get the picture: distracted, busy, feeling overworked and poor, claustrophobic and wishing I were out of debt, resenting my responsibilities, anxious that everything might not work out, yadda yadda.

So when Flash started crashing right in the middle of working on an urgent project that has a review in a couple of days, and things looking like I’d just wasted hours of laborious drudging labor and my hard work being unrescuable, I just…well, snapped. I was stomping around cursing Macromedia’s entire dev team with the worst swear words I could think of, but in a low voice so as to disturb Janece’s world as much as possible without waking Amira. I finally stormed outside and spent a half an hour in the rain punching and kicking the barn, shouting and swearing, cursing my situation and Janece and I for putting ourselves in it, and me for being a dumbass that can’t make money enough to make the situation go away, and …. you get the picture.

The inner storm finally died out, and I came back in and sat down to the project again. It turns out that it was once of the library items in Flash that had some kind of error that was crashing Flash, and I worked it out and got quite a bit farther on my work, although not as far as I’d like. I’m sitting here typing this about to go to bed, feeling spent and ready for some sleep.

Whatever illusions I had about myself as an easy-going person have died an untimely death somewhere in the last 3-4 years. I’ve either gotten more open about being or have become harder on myself and others, less philosophical about life’s downturns, and more disappointed with my ability and efforts to make my life what I think it should be. Add to that brew the circumstance of debt which I deeply loathe and bitterly blame myself for, and you have a lovable teddy bear of a guy who bounds joyously through life smelling the tulips and glowing with an “attitude of gratitude”. Or…uh…not.

Overall, I’m much better than I was a couple of years ago. I’m still not at ease with myself and there are still times where I wish I was in an elsewhere-life doing and being something more ideal, but thanks to good coaching reminders from Dana and the patience and support of Janece and the exuberant innocence of my beautiful baby, I’ve been more able to keep embracing my life for the good thing that it is — mistakes and all — and seeing openings for joy and peace.

Sleep will help and that’s where I’m off to.

I’m not the kind of guy that lusts after cars and other types of stereotypical road machinery that guys are supposed to lust after (although I’m a big power-tool fan). But, well, then a couple of unexpected vehicles happened along in the last couple of months that got me drooling: the Subaru B9 Tribeca, the Saturn Sky, and the Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

The Subaru B9 Tribeca is a bold new direction for Subaru. Janece and I own a Forester, and have really liked it. It’s peppy, agile and good in panic situations, as well as being roomy enough to carry all of the band equipment for 5 guys (not including drums). But the Subaru line has been a little square in the conservative sense. Solid, but not flashy. Subaru seems out to change that image with the Tribeca. It’s obviously still a sports wagon, not a sports car, but the new styling is sleek in all the right ways with a subtly rounded profile and an attention to the exterior detailing (like that smooth looking grille on the front). It’s got the usual Subaru goodies — great safety elements, all-wheel drive, a peppy 6-cyl engine, individual climate control, etc. — plus the option for 7 seats (!) and a lot of floor space, but the interior is where it really shines. Visit the site and check out the pics of the beautiful two-tone “Y” configuration of the dashboard and the sporty LED styling of the controls, etc. This is a well designed interior that looks totally snazz with leather seating. Tricked out with the stereo and DVD player upgrades, this is the kind of car that makes you feel family-friendly and zoom-y all at the same time. The full-meal-deal version starts at $33K, so it’s not real cheap, but it looks to me like you’re getting a lot of car for that price considering Subaru’s stellar satisfaction record. I’d definitely consider this for our next car. The only bummer is the gas mileage. I wish Subaru would get on the ball with a hybrid. I don’t know if that technology would work with their all-wheel drive, but it would be awesome to know that you’re saving gas and planet while enjoying the ride.

A two-seater sports car for just a little over $20K? From Saturn? That’s actually cool? Yep. Stepping out into bold new territory must be in the wind, because the Saturn Sky is definitely not business as usual from Saturn. Janece and I owned a Saturn as our first real new car and loved it. We were in an acccident where we were rear-ended at a dead stop by a guy going 55+ MPH and lived to tell about it with barely any injury because of our Saturn. The car was also solid and very reliable, and fun to own. But Saturn’s been wandering around in fuddy territory for the last couple of years with lackluster releases like the Vue and boring sedan models. They decided to stop hemorraging market share and get back in action with the Sky and a new sedan model called the Aura. The Sky is nothing short of genius in my opinion. It’s got the tasty retro styling and good looks of roadsters 2-3 times it’s suggested MSRP, and if it’s as well-built and fun to drive as it looks, I predict it’s going to be a serious contender for the budget sports car set. I think it looks way better than the Miata and similar models, and if I had the disposable cash, I’d definitely have one stashed away for open-air drives down the 101. I have a lot of fondness for Saturn for being there for us, and I hope this model helps them break out of the doldrums. If you’re feeling generous, you can preorder me one in Silver Pearl. Thanks.

The Toyota Highlander doesn’t really fall into the “make-me-look-fancy” category — it’s a touch on the stodgy side — but the fact that it’s a roomy mid-size SUV that has an advertised fuel economy rate of 31 city/27 hwy is making me sit up and take a second look. (That, and the fact that it’s about $10K cheaper than the Lexus Hybrid.) It comes in a 2- and 4wd model, has all of stellar performance/track record of Toyota’s hybrid technology, has a goodly amount of interior space, and may even qualify you for a federal tax break and maybe even a state incentive depending on where you live. That means you could get into it for less than the Tribeca and save a bundle on gas. My brother-in-law snickered when I mentioned this, but the hybrid engine actually means better performance, too. The addition of the torque provided by the hybrid engine allows for the Highlander to have a tow-capacity of 4000lbs, and makes it quicker off the line. It’s not as flashy as the other two, but there’s really no downside to purchasing it that I can see. My in-laws leased a first-generation Prius and love it, and from what I’ve heard the technology’s only gotten better.

We’re definitely not in a place right now to buy a car, but I’m pleased at the fact that our favorite manufacturers are offering such cool additions to their lines. Means more and better options when we’re ready.

Sadly, another late work session. Got a lot done on my list — enough to be proud of, but no time for personal reflection again. It’ll come…

In the meantime, here’s another bone for you webmonkeys. Interested in free, fairly robust file transfer tool? If your site runs PHP, then you need to check out the PHP Advanced Transfer Manager (phpATM). I recommend the mod put together by a “Mr. Scripto” — check it here. It’s got better user management than the regular version, and it includes a Wimpy player for previewing MP3s and Flash. There was a couple of things I had to do to take it live on my host, but now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I think that I could roll it out in probably around 3 hrs, including customization for a client’s site.

Free software. It’s truly one of the best things about the Net. Now everyone can take advantage of the work of lonely coders who have nothing better to do but churn out massive and intricate applications for free.

First miss of the new daily-blogging me. I have a post partially composed in my drafts, but it obviously didn’t do me any good there…

I spent all night working on a client’s web form. I hate forms. Forms are the most dreary, soul-consuming part of web production in my opinion. Even if you have a quick drop-in form processing method, you still have to put in all of those different types of fields, make sure the form is working, format the output, yadda yadda. This particular form was made even more heinous by the fact that it was a legal bankruptcy form asking for minutae about monthly expenses and income — not just for one person, but for the spouse, too. Double the fun…

By the way, Janece took some great pictures of Amira and me yesterday that are worth taking a peek at. That baby is cute beyond belief. We had her bundled up in this great knit cap and socks that our friend and coach Dana Roc sent us.

Time to headbutt some pillow. Maybe I’ll be able to get to Sky’s responses to the church posts sometime in the next 24 hrs before the conversation trail grows cold.

And, hey, thanks to all of y’alls who post comments here. It gives me the same kind of satisfying feeling as when I got care packages in college — that little long-distance human touch. I appreciate it.

I’m all in a geeky twitter after solving some DHTML web dev problems that went well, so I’m feeling in a sharing mood. Here’s some info for you code monkeys out there:

• DHTML image fading: So, I found this cool DHTML image fader over at the Dynamic Drive DHTML site (one of my favorites that I use frequently as a starting point for all things DHTML-related). On the client site I’m working on, I needed a header and footer image to rotate through 6 images each in sync with a center Flash area. The idea is the Flash area will change, and fire off a command to the DHTML code to change to the next images in the header and footer (which match and continue the design that’s in the Flash area). I didn’t know if I could sync that up as well as have the Flash object control the DHTML, but after a little jimmying I got it to work fabulously. The effect should be that the entire image theme of the page will change in sync with the center Flash. Slick.
• Controlling opacity in CSS: I just learned tonight that opacity is much more widely supported than I thought. There are tags that will work in IE, Firefox/Netscape, Safari and even Konqueror. The only browser still kicking around out there with no support for opacity is Opera. If you care about Opera (and many don’t) the best you can do is just make sure your transparency isn’t so crucial to the design that it can’t degrade well. (Or, if you want to manage the hassle of working with IE’s bad support of transparent PNGs, you can put semi-transparent PNGs in the background of the element that you want to be transluscent in Opera.) So, here are the tags that you can use to specify transparent elements in all of the cool browsers:
  

  opacity: .15;
  filter: alpha(opacity=15);
  -moz-opacity: .15;
  -khtml-opacity:0.15;

  The first one is for CSS3 compatible browsers like the new Safari, Konqueror and Mozilla browsers. The “filter” line is for all IE browser versions. The “-moz” line is for older versions of Mozilla, and the “-khtml” line is for older versions of Konqueror/pre-1.2 Safari. Hopefully Opera users will be able to join in on the party here soon, and hopefully IE 7 follows the CSS3 spec, too. It would be nice to just use one tag for a change…

• Embedding Flash with javascript: Why embed Flash with javascript? Well, lots of good reasons, including being able to sniff the plugin version and browser so you can serve up what’s appropriate to the user. And, it’s easier to provide non-Javascript users (about 10-15% percent of all users apparently) with alternate content. Ah, don’t whine… All the hard work’s been done for you. Check out FlashObject 1.1, created as a freebie just for you by the able-bodied Mr. Geoff Stearns. It even can grab variables from a URL string and pass them into the Flash file for you. How’s that for service? The information’s all there. Go. Embed.
• Why Firefox is better for developers: It all comes down to three little words — “Open In Tabs”. Firefox has revolutionized my workflow. I have a lot of great reference sites I’ve accumulated over my webmonkey tenure, and when I was an IE guy, I’d have to open anywhere from 10-15 windows just to keep my web references for DTHML, Javascript, ColdFusion, ASP, design, etc. etc. available when trying to weed my way through code. But no more. I have a bookmark folder of my most used reference sites ready and available. I just open a new Firefox window, go to my folder and select “Open In Tabs”, and BAM! — 15 reference sites all neatly contained in one easy-to-browse window. I’ve done the same for each new job I work on. Each job gets a bookmark folder and I can easily get to all of the relevant files on my hd and online in one self-contained tabbed window. Same for my design references, music sites and everything else. If you don’t have Firefox and you’re a webmonkey, do yourself a favor and get it now. (Also, be sure and download the ultra-awesome-and-handy bookmark backup extension. It backs up all your bookmarks each time you close out FF. A must-have for the serious bookmark collector…)

6:02AM. It’s still dark outside, but the birds are chirping and the sun is just about to break open the night sky. A pleasant time of day, no?

Well, no. Not if you’ve stayed up all night like I have working on getting a project out the door for first thing Monday morning. And this time it wasn’t from lazing around. I got hung up for hours trying to resolve a problem with my sIFR fonts not displaying on this new site we launched after I changed all the IP references in the site to the actual domain name. Turns out that it was a simple stylesheet thing. I put media=”screen” on a print stylesheet that was supposed to be media=”print” and it made all of my sIFR fonts disappear, as well as 3 hrs of my sleeping time. Ugh. Looks like I’ll be sleeping in until noon again trying to catch up. I feel like the undead…

Speaking of which, Janece and I have been totally getting hip with the kidz and getting into the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series, and probably Angel, the spinoff series, after that. (Sure, we’re like 10 years too late, but better late than never, right? We did the same Luddite thing with the Simpsons — waited until 8 seasons and the whole fad had passed before dipping our toe in and getting hooked.) The series is funny and surprisingly poignant and completely addicting. At least with Netflix we don’t have to wait to see how things turn out any longer than it takes for the next DVD to roll in. I knew that Netflix was addicting, but didn’t realize how much. It’s going to be even worse when the bandwidth gets good enough to stream/pull down movies from online at the drop of a whim… My dream is to be wealthy enough to take large chunks of my day and become an armchair movie critic (with a properly overstuffed armchair and oversized plasma screen). That would be blissful.

OK. I’ve paid my dues. I posted a blog for the day. The “intention to blog” rubber has met the blogging road. Time for me to re-introduce myself to my estranged companion — the pillow. (BTW, Sky, thx for your posts. I’ll get to your comments shortly.)

When, like today, my mood bends towards the more hopeful on possibly engaging with church again, I then get caught on the next hurdle — namely, which type of church? As you’d expect, I’ve got a little bit of fidget of some kind with all of them:

(Read the rest of this entry…)

I’m trying to write at least a little every day. I’ve been in a depressed “I don’t have anything to say and no one cares anyway” kind of funk over the last few weeks. It’s partially a result of my very heavy workload over the last few months and not getting a substantial break. It makes me feel like I’m nothing more than a worker bee pouring out the hours of my life to just grease the wheels of industry with nothing left after hours. It’s also partially a frame of mind that makes me feel removed from everyone and worthless as a contribution to anyone.

I’m clear that both of those things are just stories, and not very powerful ones at that, so I’m making a move to nip them in the bud and explore my brain in writing a bit everyday. The same goes for my music and vocal practice and, eventually, my piano practice. If I neglect them for too long, things start getting wacky upstairs. As with anything, the more I practice it the more I’ll find and the more I’ll have to say. And hopefully, the more meaningful it will be to anyone who finds their way in here.

It’s time to dive into the questions that I solicited from y’all back in this post. I’m answering them in order, so down to the first, submitted by my friend Sky. The post in question was about faith and surrender, my difficulty with both of them, and at the same time my desire for them. Sky asked:

“how does that jumping/faith live out for you in terms of community? i know this is an area of desire, struggle, question for you… would love to hear you connect your questions of church to that of surrender. why stops you from joining a church community?”

Short question, long answer. “Surrender to the church” is the key phrase here. I’m both attracted to and repelled by what it means.

(Read the rest of this entry…)

Amira made her first step of independance in living space yesterday. We moved her and all of her baby things out of our room into her own room. Since her birth, she’s been sleeping in our bedroom — first on our bed in a co-sleeper and then in our slightly modified closet space in her Amby baby hammock.

It was pretty nice in that first step to get her out of the bed and into her own sleeping space, but this latest round made me a little melancholy. At just under seven months, she’s obviously still young enough to need our ready attention, but she’s no longer a completely helpless infant and is developed enough in sleep patterns and personality to warrant a move to her own space. On one hand, it feels nice to have our digs back and not have to tiptoe around in the room all the time, but it’s sad to feel that very first little twinge of seperation — symbolically if not actually.

She’s adapted great to the new surroundings and is totally fine, but I miss hearing her breathe in the room and night and make those little cries and sounds that sleeping babies make when they’re semi-awake or dreaming. My little girl’s growing up. Maybe she’ll let Janece and I have a sleepover in her room sometime…

We’re ready for primetime. As of 9:30-ish AM yesterday morning, a state judge gave Janece and I the official seal of approval on our request to change our name. Instead of three different people with three different last names, we are now one family — Paul, Janece and Amira Moment. You can read Janece’s thoughts on it here and mine below:

For our entire 12 yrs together, Janece and I kept our own last names as a symbol of our mutual love for each other’s independance. We both treasure our families and family history and neither one of us felt like letting go of them to have a common name. We were perfectly happy representing the Seattle contingent of the Mossbarger/Clement clans and being called simply “Paul & Janece”.

But after the Pregnancy Bombshell Of ’04, we started thinking about identification of the new baby. She was something completely new in our partnership — a living expression of not just our partnership, but of our actual physical/spirtual/emotional bond and hopefully a living synergy of everything we like best about our families. So, we decided to have our names be another symbol of that deeper union and combine our names like we combined our physicality — creating something new and meaningful in the process.

“Moment” is not only a combo of Mossbarger/Clement (without the heinously long hyphen to deal with), but it connotates what’s most valuable in life. When everything fades at the end of life, what will sparkle out of the dark is the necklace of memories of the individual moments that have defined our life — the face by the window, the giggle of a baby, the pride of seeing your loved one acknowledged for their talents and hard work, the timeless sensation when you experience pure intimacy, the disappointments, the sorrows, and the mellow golden moments of peace. The only thing that’s ever truly real for a human is this moment, now. They are our only true possessions, the only stones we have for our altars — these moments that crawl, slip and dance by us.

We love the symbolism, not just because it reminds us to fully open ourselves to every precious second of our lives together, but also because it reminds us of the gift and the mission we have as a family to provide those moments of beauty and grace and redemption and love for others as well.

It feels good to have a common identifier with the two dearest people in my life — to know that people will look for bits of each other in each of us because we share a name. I’m sad to leave my life as a Mossbarger behind me, but I know that I will always be taking a part of that legacy with me into my new family. To my Mossbarger family, know that I love and cherish all of you and I’m proud to bring the “Mo” to my new family. To my new Moment family, I love you to the widest width and highest height and deepest depth of me, and I hope our lives will be such that our new name brings joy when people remember it and us.