The Mongoose Made Me Do It

I was taught early on about the value of books - one of the fondest memories I have is of being gifted with books as varied in topic as they were in size and quality. Residing side-by-side on my bookshelf today are two of those early gifts, and I write about them tonight because they led, directly or indirectly, to the experimentation & mutations this young blog is dealing with.

The Golden Treasury of Children's Literature & The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling both contain a fairly well known story from The Jungle Book, titled Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. I read and re-read this story so often the books naturally fell open to it, and even today I can find my favorite passage at a glance:

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is "run and find out"; and Rikki-tikki-tavi was a true mongoose.

While I didn't grow up to be a true mongoose (I'm occasionally frightened by the world I live in, I lack a proper tail, and my nose is by no means luxurious), the story had a deep effect on me and I unconsciously adopted the family credo, which is why the local library always ranks as one of my favourite places to be.

And I was there again today.

As both a neophyte to the world of blogs and a Taurus who takes great pleasure in pleasure, I ran into a typical blogger quandary; how to tweak the settings on this thing until it looks the way I want it to? How do I add content? Make it interesting enough for me to want to share it?

Add into the mix my usual need for intellectual independence, and a dash of glee at the acceptance of a challenge, and voila! The only viable option is to teach myself html, CSS, and whatever else falls before me in the process.

A rather long-winded explanation really, for the many permutations this blog is and will be experiencing.

Don't blame me - blame the mongoose.