Good evening, one and all. I've been lurking, shame on me I know, and reading with great interest but not chiming in so much. But, to explain a little about what has been occupying my time: some of my coworkers and I have been doing some unofficial blogging about the Museum where I started working back in November. You might enjoy clicking through to A Repository for Bottled Monsters.

Wil Wheaton linked to this Think Geek offering. Bask in its awesomeness. So wish I was going to the big convention next month in Vegas (and yes, that's my inner geek speaking now, the one my wife enjoys reminding that that I am almost 34 with two children and gallivanting off to the desert to hang out with the pasty-faced Trek crowd isn't a good use of vacation days...)

It's official - Star Trek XI gets greenlit. Release date: December 25, 2008. That's just one year, nine months, 26 days and counting.

Here's the release.

Discuss.

I am finding that I might need to augment my meager HTML skills in this new job - I want things to look and feel the way I want, and the staff in place to support the Web is competent but overwhelmed (to say the least). Does anyone have any tips on places (online or offline) to get a crash course? Thanks in advance.

And, is anyone else here using Twitter http://twitter.com/? I'm interested since I keep hearing about it in the PR blog community, but I am not sold on its utility.

I typed an eloquent post the other day about my recent job change. And just when it was good and done, ready to publish, down went IE on me and away went a few hundred words of carefully-crafted prose. Ahh, such is life, right?

So, here's the short version - I left the association I had been with for going on three years, and have settled into a new communications position at Charles E Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville. I'm a member of a new Institutional Advancement office, and work primarily for the head of school and the department director, but the interesting side of the business will be getting involved with the students, and exploiting (I mean, carefully positioning) their activities and successes to advance the larger agenda.

I am swamped here at work (breaking news: I've quit the association, leaving in a few weeks and am starting a new job with a school - not teaching - shortly after that, details to follow) but I ran across this link to a killer short film that's worth two minutes of your time.

Follow the link.

Forgive me if this has already made the rounds.

I am here to staff our booth at the so-exciting Lamaze International annual meeting. It's edge of your seat excitement, I can tell you.

I wasn't at all sure if there were any folks hanging out here on the blog that lived in the Boston area, so I figured I would put that out there. And I'm also interested in recommendations on places to eat, and so on. I'll have evenings free, but I am mercifully freed from this meeting on Saturday afternoon.

So, we've isolated on two locations for the Barnsonian Pre-QOHS Reunion event for July 7th. Rather than use the poll option, I figured I would go with just throwing the two options out there and see if there's a consensus.

Lisa says that unfortunately Friendly's at Quince Orchard Plaza is no more. That's not one of the options. Shucks - think of how much fun we could have had waiting in line for a booth. Those were hours we won't get back, right?

Who knows what comes of this, our hopes have been dashed a few too many times in recent years. But AICN is linking to a Daily Variety story that reports that JJ Abrams (you've heard of Lost, right?) will produce and direct a new Trek film that "will center on the early days of seminal "Trek" characters James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, including their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and first outer space mission." Here's the Daily Variety link.

TBS, formerly known as the Superstation, is running a mini-marathon of LOTR movies this weekend - Fellowship and Two Towers. I caught a very funny commercial this morning promoting the weekend's movies, featuring some cleverly edited together frames of Frodo and Sam, set to the song Secret Lovers. There was a killer shot of Gandalf with this bemused look on his face. I guess it was the kind of thing that's funny at 6:30 in the morning.