Happy Anniversary Baby

Read on CNN's site that the :-) is 25. The "smiley face's" birthday is Sept. 18. According to CNN, a dude at Carnegie Mellon University evidently was the first to use the colon, hyphen and a parenthesis to create a horizontal smiley face.

Back in 1982, I was doing my typing mostly on a typewriter still and had not thought about smiley faces. Thanks to my old TI calculator from junior high I did know about 7344 (ooops - should have been 7734) and turning my calculator upside down. That always provided tons of fun for my buddies and me.

The CNN article says the smiley face helped folks to create emotion or feelings in the typed message world. I know for a fact that the lack of intonation in e-mails has created many workplace and personal issues. Maybe we all should use more smiley or sad faces. My favorite is the :~) or the :o). Another fun one is 8-) from someone who wears glasses.

Stopped by the Schramwiches tonight on the way home from the J-O-B. Sept. 19 is El's birthday. She's seven. I gave her a great book titled "Just Like Heaven." She liked it but was more excited about the approaching birthday and Friday night's slumber party.

This book is fantastic. Patrick McDonnell writes about a cat named Mooch. When Mooch wakes from a nap, something cats often do, he doesn't know where he is because of a deep fog. He concludes he must be in heaven.

Mooch then walks around and explores "heaven" and doing what he thinks he should do since he's in heaven. Hmmm? The drawings are super special. My favorite is of two friends waving to each other.

Happy Birthday, El!