Niamh Elizabeth Rolston was born on November of 2002 at 5:24am, in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Peter Weiss delivered her at the Cedar Sinai medical center after roughly twenty hours of labor by Tracy.
Niamh weighed in at 8lbs, 7oz, and was 20 and 3/4 inches long. As for her name Niamh (pronounced as Neeve) it's Gaelic meaning "luster, shine, radiance, brilliance". Niamh is also the name of a faerie princess from celtic mythology:
One day while out hunting with Finn and the Fena, Oisin (the son of Finn) saw a beautiful maiden on a white steed ride swiftly towards them. As she came slowly to the presence of Finn, he addressed her courteously in these words, "Who art thou, O lovely youthful princess? Tell us thy name and the name of thy country, and relate to us the cause of thy coming". She answered in a sweet and gentle voice, "Noble king of the Fena, I am the daughter of the king of Tir na nog and my name is Niamh of the Golden Hair. I love thy noble son Oisin; and this is what has brought me to Erin." She took Oisin on her white steed to Tir na nog, the land of never ending youth. The steed galloped swiftly and smoothly towards the west, till he reached the strand; and then moved over the face of the sea with the speed of a cloud-shadow on a March day....
In a similar familial vein, I recently scanned a few old (and somewhat damaged) pictures from Tracy's youth, and did some retouching. Those photo's are available
here
It's been a while since I did a mainpage update. Came across a couple of classic old photos taken by my old college roommate Peter Fong, and decided to do a rescan. These were taken when we had an apartment in Redondo Beach across from the ocean, and Giz was still just a puppy. These were pretty badly damaged, but thanks to Adobe Photoshop they're looking pretty good again, at least in the online form. This scan was a lot better than the original one which has been on the site for a long time. Click on either photo for the fullsize version in the gallery.
Time for Fall cleaning. Dogs don't like baths in the sink though.
Tracy has taken a new job as a staff consultant with
Blackbaud Inc, a Charleston South Carolina based software company that sells fundraising and accounting systems designed for non-profits and schools.
We recently took a small vacation while back east for a friend's wedding in Pennsylvania. Gizmo put in a tour of duty as postal delivery monitor. You can click on the photo to see it fullsize.
Our trip took us to Hilton Head, SC and a day trip to Savannah, Georgia. If you've read the book or seen the film "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", you may recognize the Italianate mansion behind Tracy as the Mercer House on 429 Bull Street.
This was the home of the central figure of the book, Jim Williams, the now famous location of his huge Christmas Parties, and where he was alleged to have shot and killed his assistant Danny Hansford. "Historic" Savannah has a number of these courtyards, surrounded by residences.
Continue reading "Paoli to Savannah"
My lifelong pal, Tim Phillips married Alicia Crawford on Saturday June 9th, 2001 in Malvern Pennsylvania.
On Friday night we attended the rehearsal dinner courtesy of Tim's parents David and Gretchen. Tim's mom also happens to be my godmother, and a special lady with a great sense of humor, spirit of adventure and appetite for literature. It was great to see her up and about after her recent illness. The dinner afforded us an opportunity to meet some of Alicia's friends and family and see old friends like Brian and Susan Dye.
On Saturday we attended the marriage ceremony, and I managed to snap a few photos with Tracy's Fujifilm Finepix 1300 digital camera. The finepix is a relatively inexpensive 1.3 megapixel camera (1280x960 max resolution) with an lcd screen on the back.
Both photos on this page were taken at the reception held at the People's Light Theater in the town of Paoli, where I grew up, and where my parents still reside.
I was relieved not to have to make any speeches at the event, although I did don a tux for the festivities. There were some excellent toasts made by Alicia's brother-in-law Tad, Tim's brother in law (the best man) Vince Connelly, and a sermon from Tim's older brother Andy, who is a practicing minister in Virginia.
Alicia's parents threw a lively reception featuring a buffet dinner, a better than average band that specialized in classic soul and motown hits, and several hundred enthusiastic guests.
I bought and assembled a Smith machine, which is a sorta home gym weight rack a while back, and set it up in our basement room. Gizmo likes to sit out on the porch entrance and monitor the stairway while I'm working out.
It's been a long time since I updated, primarily thanks to the demise of my DSL Internet connection when Northpoint went bankrupt. Apparently, my house is just a bit too far to from the local pacbell central office for me to get reliable DSL service (even though I had it for over a year from Northpoint!). I tried two seperate ISP's and in both cases waited weeks only to find out at the last minute that they
couldn't provide me service.
I've found a new one and am keeping my fingers crossed. Fortunately, I was able to colocate the gizmola server with Kent Bulza, who has been nice enough to help get it and my mail going again. Thanks Kent!
