Happy Halloween!! That picture below? Might be hard to tell exactly what the hell I am supposed to be doing or looking like, but if Scooby Snacks mean anything to you....there's your explanation. This wig is really making my head itch, but it's fun and the kids loved the get-up this morning. I should have some pictures later tonight, if the digital gods cooperate.



I wanted to trumpet loudly just how incredibly cool my sisters, brother-in-law, and Tom are. Thanks to their collective efforts (and, one must assume, hard earned money), I am finally a proud owner of a PDA. A Handsrping Visor Pro, to be exact. Tom was consulted heavily for his expertise in gadgetry, and this is the model that was chosen on my behalf. I can't begin to tell you how absolutely incredible this device is, and how it has radically changed my life in the short time that I've owned it. The scheduling alone is worth every penny of their money. ;) Being the geek that I am it didn't take long - about five minutes I think - to get adjusted to this new toy/device/gizmo/wonder-gift. I've already been burning up the bandwidth downloading all kinds of Palm apps at PalmGear.com and C|Net's download center. I find Virtual Cigarette particularly funny, if functionally useless. Good for sharing a health-risk-free cigarette with a colleague or after (virtual?) sex. Beam me up, it's a little program and worth sharing.



All in all this has been an extended birthday. A personal thanks to Jer, Adrienne, Steve Hobbie, Marcus Barici, Felicia (the cookie bouquet was EXCELLENT), and Denise, each of you put a smile on my face. I hope my family understands that my thanks to them are included in the package. :D I'm too lazy to actually send out thank you notes, but I think I told each of you individually, and I'm a techno-child so I thank people in a cyber kinda way. You guys rock!!

Short update: the guestbook is now active....stroke my ego and sign it for me!! You don't have to give up your email address if you don't want to, just the entries with an asterisk are required but that seems to have been overlooked by many. I'm still tweaking it so patience if something doesn't look right, I am an anally-retentive perfectionist about this stuff and I'll get to it.

I haven't got a whole terrible lot to report today - but a nice new change for everyone: the search button over on your left, which should be available on all pages. If you are trying to find something, this should make it a lot easier. You may also notice that certain pages have a slightly bunchedtogetherlook because some carriage returns got chewed up. I'll be fixing that too, as time permits. And as always, there are some subtle under-the-hood changes to Broge.com to make your browsing more enjoyable.

Aunt Anne and Mary have both let me know that they saw the new Clos galleries. My apologies to Helen, Terry and family - somehow their name became "Brown" on the dates page and that too has been fixed. It's always nice to know that you all are getting something out of this - the family history and things of that nature was one of the main reasons this site was founded to begin with. I'm hoping to have some very interesting data compiled by Henry E. Close Sr. posted soon. About the time I was a wee little two year old boy he did a lot of work in researching the Clos family history - most interesting of all is the possible permutations of the name Clos that exist in different areas. That's a teaser, for those interested in the history part.

Lastly, new photo galleries are due to arrive shortly of the France family, and if the gods are kind even some sub-sections for the Wiedwalds and myself. Now that I've got the photo template lookin' good (thanks to Macromedia and Dreamweaver) you should hopefully see more pix on the site. That is....as time permits me to scan things!

Hello y'all,

I present for your viewing pleasure the Broge/Clos (pronounced "close") Photo Gallery. I scanned a lot of older pictures in when my Aunt Anne was here to visit, but am just now getting them up on the site since I left it in a broken and sorry state for so long. That, along with a slew of minor updates that most of you will probably not notice but should make the site look a bit better, and hopefully easier to navigate.

Also, today, I got Alysha and Adam's school pictures back. Alysha's will need a re-take but the current one is up soon for your viewing pleasure, along with Sir Adam's. Man, have I got cute kids, if I do say so myself. Not much news to report at this juncture, I'm afraid - but when I get done with this nose to the grindstone thing I promise to get some news up here. Really.

Hey y'all.........THE SITE IS FIXED!! Now I'm going to bed. Yo Joey...sorry, man, I overwrote your webcam pic of Jess. Time for a new one. And find me on AIM when you can yah?

The Blue Man picture! I got my film back - all taken with a 35mm camera, mostly Felicia's - so it's going to take some time to scan these all in and post them. Sorry for the delay. The rest of the shots are from the trip and of the theater and such, but I had a great time in the "Windy City" and Felicia is a really great tour guide. Not to mention a very gracious host and one of the most kind-hearted people I know. This will be short, because it's near bedtime - but I wanted to get this in a public place. I don't have everyone's email address but some of you reading this will have gotten the picture via email. If I don't have your address, give it to me!! Off to bed...and I see that Mama B. has posted to the blog so I guess I should get cracking on fixing the website. See ya all later!

Surprise! from the Senior Broge Maternal Unit. There is usually some sort of excitement going on in this household ; however I am at a loss to report anything "really new". Mark continues with his updates; were it not for him then Blogger would be an utter failure. I do wonder however, when the Broge.com website will once again be available for popular viewing.....:anyone (ahem)" have an idea, Mark? Today has been a glorious Tuesday; beautiful weather, beautiful grandchildren, beautiful animals, and beautifully calm and will remain that way for about another hour and forty-five minutes - then the younger generation of will be due to return and those beautiful grandchildren I mentioned earlier will turn into not-quite-so-beautiful noisy children with need to vent their excess energy in some manner. KT and Maria are to meet for a mutual haircutting session at Leslie's place of continuing beauty and afterward will take the Weewald's to a fast food joint for dinner. Sounds like fun. Friday will be my chance to see all the Weewald's and the not-so-Weewald's and I am much looking forward to the encounter. Hank AKA Dad has a long standing date with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra that evening and during the day will serve as interim meet-the-bus-and-deliver-to-the-sitter person. Tis time I must check freezer contents to see what arrangements can be made for dinner, a never ending challenge. How boring is this, anyway? No, don't answer - I don't really want to know! Adios for now, onward and downward to the basement and freezer. Later - VLB