Friday, July 26, 2002
Couch Rodeo |11:32 AM| When I got home yesterday, I had been awake for something like 36 hour straight. Obviously not the longest period I've ever been awake for, but enough to make me a bit drowsy after a bizzare work day. I puttered around the house a bit, checked email, that sort of thing. All of a sudden, I felt an overwhelming glee at being alive. I was filled with love for all of humanity. I felt great. It's possible this was a psychotic episode, but I could also chalk it up to simply being free of my job and really appreciating that fact. My phone rings just as I'm sitting down on the couch. It's Carter, a friend of mine from high school.

Carter: Hey Cecil, how are you doing?
Cecil: Gosh, Carter, I feel absolutely terrific. Today is just great. I feel so happy!
Carter: ...
Cecil: Wait, you sound a bit down. What's wrong?
Carter: My grandmother just died this morning.

Hi! I'm a big doofus. To be fair, I couldn't know in advance that she was calling about a tragedy, but I still felt a bit crappy being so happy when I picked up the phone. I talked to Carter for a long time. I didn't try to cheer her up, I just let her talk and by the end of it she wasn't crying anymore, and sounded a lot more chipper. I went from being bizzarely happy to simply appreciative of how well things are actually going for me. Carter is going to fly out to Florida, I wish her the best.

I did not know exactly how to act in that situation. I couldn't make jokes, I couldn't do anything to try to cheer her up. I certainly couldn't relate my own families tradgedies. (My grandmother? Oh, we put her in the ground as soon as she stopped moving enough to cover her with dirt. Then we ran). All I could do was listen, express that I was there for her and listening, and respond when asked a question. Despite not knowing what to do, I feel happy that I clearly helped her. She as doing so much better after that conversation then when it started.

At this point, I really just wanted to go to sleep. I dozed off for a bit, but then my phone started ringing and wouldn't stop. In fact, Vorpal showed up to pound on my door when I wasn't picking up his calls. Sinclair was driving down from Dallas and needed directions. My family called to complain about something or other. Bill collectors called asking for money I don't have. I only bring this up because I don't think my phone has spent so much time just ringing off the hook, ever.

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We need one created for the years, and then the months. The months are the /////tricky ones, since they need their ID to increase more than the years, but since the functions keep referencing ///// the same name system, we have to be careful not to make the years close up when we click on a month. ///Set some Variables $YearMenuID = 1; /////What ID the preceding year link controls. Needs to be same for all the months under a given year. $MonthMenuID= 1; ////What ID the preceding month link controls. Needs to be the same for all the weeks under a given ////Month but not the same as any year, etc. $LastYearUsed = 0; $LastMonthUsed = 0; echo '

'; /////That should be the "Year" div. All the years should be in this one DIV. ///Start the main loop. foreach ($myDateArray as $key => $value) { ////Pulling the year/date. $month = ExtractMonth($value); $year = ExtractYear($value); $YearMenuID = $year; $MonthMenuID = $month; $PrettyMonth = $MyDateArray[$month]; ////Is this a new year? If ($year != $LastYearUsed) ///Then we need to put the year down. No DIV created quite yet. { ///First off, we need to close the preceding year's DIV. Twice if it ain't 2001 if ($year != 2001) { echo '

'; } echo '

$myDateArray[$key]

_HTML2_; ///That creates a DIV for the year (month based links) then the month (week based links). ////Then the first weekly link. ///That should have made a link to the weekly archive file. ///As well as creating the first month link, which is in its own DIV, } Else { ///Okay, it's not a new year. So, we need to check if it's a new month. If($month != $LastMonthUsed) { //So it's a new month. That means we need to put down a link for the month to control the div //that contains the weekly links. //First, though, we need to close up the previous month echo '

$myDateArray[$key]

_HTML3_; } Else /////////So it's not a new month, then we just need to put down the weekly link. { echo '

' . $myDateArray[$key] . '

'; } } $LastMonthUsed = $month; $LastYearUsed = $year; } ECHO '