ColumbusGuy

When I lived in the country, raking leaves was no fun, but jumping in their dried piles, then burning them in the back yard was great fun....Now in town, the closest I get is walking outside in late Fall or Winter and catching the whiff of someone burning real logs in their fireplaces. That can send me right back and bring a smile to my face. If our power went out back then, we'd burn wood in our fireplace and keep relatively warm that way--at least our kitchen stove was gas and we could light it with a match! I think the Blizzard of '77 was the longest our power was out...two days and we were snowed in for three. Until then, our schools had no Spring Break...the next year, it was instituted so 'snow days' could be made up...too late for me since I graduated in June after it happened. An afternoon or evening walk...fallen leaves...bring on the hot chocolate--I'm ready!

Okay, a new vampire...and a shifter? I'm hooked--as if I wasn't already.

Off to a great start, Caz! But then, it's cats isn't it? Can't go wrong with cats.

They have a team? Wow, who'da thunk it!

I just tried inserting the 'JM Main Street' image in the post above, and it showed up, but again, the only audible cue was the url, and no pop up text showing the image title or note...I just don't know what I'm doing wrong...sigh. My signature has a new title too, and that doesn't show up or get read either. What's strange is that Cia's Purple Bee text shows up fine, though the url is still read, but ends with something like 'purple bee eater embed'.... Could this be it: I just noticed the way I usually get the image url is to 'view' it in the Gallery, and right click and do 'copy location'...but that is different from what I see in the address bar in my browser if I'm just viewing it in the Gallery...so should I copy from the browser address bar instead?

Thanks Cia! You have no idea how unfriendly some sites are, like Google Mail...with high-contrast settings, some buttons completely disappear, and you don't know they're there unless the mouse pointer changes when you hit one...and they are remarkably lax in labelling buttons in other cases. What really irks me is Hotmail, whick is my main client--they use symbols for some things, and rather having labels that pop up or audible cues saying what it is, you just get the name of the symbol, like 'Boomerang' instead. What the heck is that?! Any way, thanks for looking into this for us!

I just went through my image gallery and changed the caption/title of each picture, and on a couple of them I added the 'Note' Cia mentioned...but those only seem to show up when I'm in the Gallery itself. One of the pictures is on my Jay & Miles cover page, and it's called 'Downtown', with the note reading 'JM Main Street'. When I mouse over it on the story front page, all I get is the url narration, nothing pops up to show either the title or note...same with the image in chapter 2, which should pop up as School Aerial View. I tried refreshing the pages, and even closed and restarted my browser. It all works in the Gallery when I view the images there, but not elsewhere onsite. Ideas?

I was just trying to change the text associated with my images in my Gallery so that would be audible rather than the url...in the old way, I think you could control that, but with the new layout, I can't seem to do that. I tried altering the Description by inserting a word or two describing what the picture is, but when I went to it on the associated page, all I hear is the url, even after refreshing the page. What did I do wrong? Is this handled by a tag instead? I called up the details by right clicking the image where it appears, and it gave the url under 'Associated Text', but I can't find how to change that in the Image Gallery... Any suggestions?

I have a problem which has been around since my eye surgeries at the beginning of last year, and I'm hoping it might not be too difficult to solve for the site people. As a bit of background, I lost most of my vision just at Christmas of 2015, and had three surgeries which have gotten some of it back, but not all, so I use narration software to assist in doing web things. In addition, I use high contrast pc settings that make the text appear as white on black since the normal way causes the text to be nearly invisible due to the glare of a white background. Here's my problem, which is related to site banners and images in things like the Newsletter: quite often I can't make out enough detail of pictures, or any text to read when it's there...due to lack of contrast. Some banners and images will have a narrated url if I mouse over them, which is no help in saying what the thing is for as that url often has no description of the image used. How difficult would it be to put in a one or two word description of the banner contents that would be audible rather than the url? Or perhaps it could appear in a little text pop-up as it is moused over? This would be a great help to visually impaired, or even completely blind visitors to the site. Thanks for any help you can give!

The one of my mom I think is when she was 30, just before she married my dad, which would put it in '56. My sisters would have been four, six and eight years old then. I have later color pics of her, but she'd cut her hair to shoulder length then...I think for the first time in her life. Her mom never had hers cut and she wore it the same way. Ah yes, Polaroids--our first one was black and white, then we got the color one which was used to take pics of me and a couple friends before high school graduation in '77. One guy would turn out to be my first sexual encounter in college, the other was a German exchange student who was devilishly cute with his long brown hair and grey eyes, but I couldn't get up the courage to ask him to do anything.

Interesting about the picture of your mom--I have one of mine about that age, that would be just before I was conceived. Mid-50s from the cars in the background where she stands on a sidewalk in Columbus near her house then, her hair braided and wrapped around her head (it was down to the floor when undone) and a print dress down just past her knees. I didn't think of it when I first saw it, but she was pretty, and I could see why my dad married her. Who can picture their mom that way? And she'd already had my three older sisters by this time! Crap I just had a thought--that dress looked similar to the one my sisters dressed me up in when I was six or seven, even the low-heeled black shoes! That pic is in my Gallery...my mom looked better in it than I did!

Funny thing about photos...they capture a moment, a feeling, a person for us to hold dear for ever after...our first ones are taken by others because we're too young to operate cameras--then when we can do it ourselves, how often do we forget in the joy of the moment? Lives get so full of people and moments that we unknowingly let some pass uncaptured except in our heads--there'll always be a tomorrow when we can do it properly. I have two albums of pictures, and a wooden chest that once held a family Bible, now full of more pictures...almost every single person in those is now departed, leaving faded color images, or even stark black and white we can color with our minds from later events....There were so many more moments we could have captured if we'd taken a moment, until the moments ran out. In the days of cameras and roll film, it was so much harder to capture these times; how many more images would we have taken had we really thought of it? For me, digital media came too late for many relatives and friends, but when it came, did I go around capturing current friends on a card? Once or twice, yes, but the habit of having a tomorrow had settled in, so there are some people in my life now of whom I have maybe one or two pictures...others none at all, and they live now only in my head. Those who grew up with cell phones won't understand...but for the rest of us...I urge you--go out and take a picture of some happy scene with a friend, a loved place or even the family pet--tomorrow may not come for them. Don't regret a missed opportunity to add tangibility to your memories!

I just found this thanks to a link Headstall sent me, and I love it! I'm a fan of old cars, and this combined that with a love of tradition and caring that touched me deeply. Wonderful job!

It's wonderful to see the guys again, and also to see you back in action! I've missed your special touch with the shifter genre, and it all came back to me in the first paragraph. Maybe Damon and Tyler's kids could be one from each...one might be vampire, and the other a bear? I wonder if it would be possible to have the surrogate carry both like twins?

We raised Siamese when I was growing up, and the only time I haven't had one since was for about five years, until I lost Bortai two years ago, now I'm thoroughly catless. Never had a mean one, but they do tend to pick one person to devote themselves to...but they like everybody else too. The meanest cat I had was 58, who appears in my story. Long-haired tuxedo, nice to me, a terror to anyone else. She'd attack visitors from convenient hiding places, like the insurance salesman one day. She didn't adapt to the move into Columbus and died in 1988 aged 16.

But, Siamese are the royal cats of Siam! Owned only by the royal family in the early days, and the kink in their tails was so princesses could put their rings on them while they bathed--maybe princes too. Of course, a Traditional style would be better since they're robust and bigger than the modern skeletons--and it would soon have Lily and Rose doing her bidding....I know none of the Siamese I ever had would take crap from another cat, or dog.

What can I say? It brought back memories of my own move into my house, on a drizzly December day. I had a great circle of friends who helped, and it was an adventure...particularly moving my upright piano as the last item out of the truck. It was after 9pm, raining, and didn't have long enough boards to get it up the five steps into the house, so it lived in my garage until Spring! Labelling boxes helped make things go faster, and this was the first time my friends saw my house--they loved exploring, and my friend James found the 'hidden' alcove in one of the attic storage spaces. Those two had panel doors like the rest of the house, but this space was tucked in next to the front dormer, and it matched the inside of the storage area except that it had a small porcelain pull to open the access panel. He laughed when he jumped out of it to surprise me! A fun day full of great memories, and you brought that all back for me. Mrs. B doesn't surprise me at all...while growing up, it wasn't unusual for our country neighbors to talk about their departed loved ones as still there, and I found it extremely touching. I'm glad she cheered up with the memory of his loving cookies, and the need to 'lose weight'...the guys knew just what to say. Ya know, the house is still missing something--where's the cat? Every house needs a cat, preferably a Siamese!

So many great memories! We lived a mile west of our little town, so going door-to-door was a trek for kids, so we would get taken into our 'town' to do it, and got plenty of candy and smiles from parents on their porches! No fear of tampered sweets then, and we could shout and run from house to house with friends or siblings...sigh. I think I was 14 when I last went, and I felt too old to do a ghost or fireman or pirate...so I went as Julius Caesar! A bedsheet toga and all...I was one geeky kid, and I don't think anyone had a clue who I was supposed to be, so I gave up saying Caesar and said 'Roman' instead.

Anything involving sex, either real, virtual or vicarious is fun--that't the point Geron.... At least you're not a 'newbie' in that area! Me, I'm still practicing to perfect my technique.

It would be a huge task, as it would involve tracking Philon and his friends through more than a decade of nearly daily posts, reading those of the other people in addition to my own guys to condense their actions that impacted Phil. There is a little post if you look up Ancient Sites that says something to the effect that to get it to work on a modern server would involve intense re-writing of the code, and as the site had basically one or two people who did that, it's not likely to happen...sigh. Vesuvius was a fun place, and we all got to be friends over the years, but there is no longer a place to gather.

As mentioned on the Front Page, the Ancient Worlds site where this story was written with other writers is now off-line, likely permanently. The host’s servers were hacked, but the files for the AW site were unharmed as their own particular server was too old to be affected by the hackers. Sadly, the host company went bankrupt, so AW had no home, and I was told the entire site’s coding needs to be reworked so it can be put on a modern server. This particular story was set in Pompeii

This is interesting so far, but I have one question: Is it MakaVovia, or MakaRovia? The latter sounds more likely from that region....

I'll never have the fear of a parent, thank god, and more so for the fact that I've never experienced this as a victim. I can't even say the world has changed since I was young to allow this to happen, because the most famous perpetrator at present has been doing it since I was a teen. Power corrupts, as we all know, but that isn't any sort of excuse as people might think...this is a twisted thing inside the aggressor's mind that ought to be excised. Where are the signs for this, and how can we prevent this mind-set from getting a foot-hold? Sadder still, physical abuse isn't the only form of rape--which is a violent taking of anything against one's will--Kevin was put through a mental equivalent by the very people who should have nurtured and loved him, and no amount of caring and love from me or others could win out in the end. Thank you my dear friend for bringing your mind to bear on this subject--I hope your words can bring some order and solace to someone out there....

Thanks Def! The boys have grown on me since this started, and while Mikey began as me as I was then, his growth with Jay has helped me a bit in real time. I'm closing in on coming to terms with my dad and even in this short time, Kevin. All my boys have created their own niche in my heart, so they're going to help me tell their story now that I've gotten to know them better. I'm glad so many people seem to like them too. More to come, especially with the anniversary night.

Linda was not going to be a big player save as a foil to Jay, but she refused to live that life, and look at her now--she could have been one of the status-mad girls, but Jay and Mikey changed her too I think. Finn is Finn...irrepressible but kind, so maybe we're lucky Lee is still in Junior High. If they were together, things might be a lot more wild than they are with Jay's bubbling hormones. Ah yes, he may need an entire backpack rather than just a notebook! With Mikey, I think Jay may see Kevin as having played a part in bringing out his inner strength...it's been happening slowly, but I think Jay sees his boyfriend as ready for his final boost....