Happy Birthday, Jill!

Today is Tuesday, August 23, the 230th day of 2005. There are 130 days left in the year.

Among other notables, today is the birthday of actresses Barbara Eden and Shelly Long, and of poet Edgar Lee Masters, best-remembered today for The Spoon River Anthology.

On this day in 1926, Rudolph Valentino died at age 31 after surgery for a perforated ulcer. The actor's death provoked a hysterical outpouring of grief among women around the country. Tens of thousands of fans swarmed the Campbell Funeral home two days later, and public viewing of the body was cut short to control the mob.

Movie studios shut down on September 7 for Valentino's funeral, the first time studios closed their doors for the death of an actor.

And today is the birthday of my buddy, Jill Saigusa. I "met" Jill a couple of years ago when we were both taking an online writing course. Coincidentally, both of us saw the same advertisement in a now-defunct magazine, and coincidentally, both of us were trying to get back into the writing life after several years of lying fallow. That was about all a just-again-pregnant Texan with a 3-year-old and I seemed to have in common, but we quickly formed a close email friendship, and even eventually got to meet in person. And the friendship remains, not least thanks to our respective spouses allowing it to (Thanks, Peggy! Thanks Mak!).

Jill would probably make a pretty good blogger, but life gets in her way. As well as taking care of Johnny Mak his bro, Jack and their father Mak, and running a household filled with critters, she's also recently secured a freelance writing gig and is churning away articles on everything from the Texas rose industry to a new ultrasound machine at the local hospital at a rapid pace.

She's a good writer, and I figured she was going to need someplace to showcase her growing portfolio, so for her birthday, I secured her her very own domain and hacked - sometimes literally - a site together for her. She also gets me as half-assed Webmaster, at least for a year. After that she's on her own.

So go and visit. Some good stuff is at Jillbo.com, and more will be coming when Jill can get around to sending it and I can get around to posting it.

Yesterday was Jill's son Johnny's first day at kindergarten, and yesterday morning I found an email in my inbox sent at 2 a.m. Texas time from a concerned Jill who was up pawing through his already-packed backpack to see if she had forgotten anything, and worrying about whether he could handle his $1.50 lunch money on his own. So I sent her the sticker below to use in case of emergency: