Let me tell you about the agony of being a weekly columnist.

The problem is not coming up with ideas. There's always so much going on in our libraries (not to mention my own head) that I've only had real trouble coming up with a topic just three times in 16 years.

In fact, there's so much going on around here, I often kick myself for having overlooked something that would have made a great column on that particular date.

I'm pleased to announce the third incarnation of the library's website.

The first one went up, I believe, in early 1997. We were at that time the first website in the county, and one of the first library websites in Colorado.

Some years later -- around the year 2000 -- we rolled out a new version, more graphically sophisticated.

I've always thought of myself as more of a cat person. I had two cats, brother and sister, that I adopted as kittens in the desert. Pookalure finally had an encounter with a coyote that he escaped from, but mortally wounded him. Watson, a small, black female cat, lived to the ripe old age of 20.

My family moved to Douglas County 13 years ago. Our daughter, Maddy, was a little over three years old at the time.

We lived kind of far out in the country, and had only one car, which I drove to work every day. My wife, Suzanne, says as she watched me drive off down the hill she would think, "I am Rapunzel."

Perhaps in part because of her early exposure to country quiet, Maddy has always had a rich interior life. She's a watcher: deep and observant.