12:09 a.m. The only constant in life is change. I really have to write that down somewhere.

I'm sure many many people get up in the morning, plan to do a specific job or two, get totally sidetracked and then look up at midnight and wonder: where did it go? This particular day? I had intentions ...

Well, I feel the time is upon me to do something about our business site. It's bought, paid for, and waiting empty on the server while I fuss around with a layout problem or two. My goal today was to get that site underway so that I can finally get serious about stalking the search engines and turning their little robotic heads and marbly eyeballs in my direction, manually, if necessary.

That was the plan. I really only stopped in to check the email lists for a second or so, and while I was there I posed an innocent little question about photo compression -- you know, nothing earth-shattering. I'm easily set in my ways, and for the last several months I've been happily following a series of clumsy but comforting steps all designed to bring the photographs on this site from the real world (here) to you, denizen of the web (there).

The only problem is that I've been going about it all wrong, and I blame that stupid book How to Create Killer Websites. For some reason, I glazed over the GIF and JPEG discussion, breezed through my Photoshop manual, and ICQed my brainy graphics design guru not for crucial info, but instead for fun things like fuzzy edges and shadows and recipes for tapas.

Now I really do think that the mailing lists are one of the best things about having a computer. If someone had told me ten years ago that I could be plugged in to a couple hundred people who shared certain interests with me and I could talk to them, practically in real time about things that matter very much to me -- I would have thought the idea was nuts. Up until a few years ago we've all of us been trapped in our own heads, stuck for conversation with whatever family we dropped down into ... and if you had a friendly neighbor or decent office mate, you were a lucky sot indeed.

But now! Now you can search just a little bit and find the very people you would otherwise have spent years of Christmas cards exchanges and scribbled-out address books and high-school reunions and church suppers to find. Suddenly, there they are: people you can talk to, argue with, tell jokes to, and most important, ask questions of.

So today, that's pretty much all that I did. I learned a whole lot in a really short amount of time. Now I must wave a magic wand and turn all my grainy GIFs into sharp and shiny JPEGs. I like a challenge. It's change that I find hard to live with, even after all these years, all this common sense that I've tried to amass.

I don't know how we humans developed this attachment to yesterday's comforts. Maybe it's a defense against the terror of living on a planet that we know to be spinning. When I was a kid, I used to lie in the grass face down with my arms extended, holding on for dear life to our dear mother earth. Now I know it's futile. One of these days I will most certainly loosen my grip and fall off.

So today I learned how to change all the pictures on all the pages I've already created so that they will look better and load faster. I also noticed that the impatiens are looking a little leggy and anxious as they reach for the thinning sun. I found a leather button in my sweatpants pocket that I thought was gone for good.

A boat overturned in the Marina and the heavy thumping helicopters once again appeared suddenly, swooped spotlights past the palms and disappeared again into the clouds. Tonight I went up on the roof to watch the necklace of lights circling the entire purple horizon from east to west as the ruby tail lights of commuter planes hovered against the sky, nearly home at the end of the week.

We're always either almost there or way behind, reaching or rushing or stalled. Why is it so hard to be right here right now? Who has the time?

Tomorrow.