Fran has a new av! Great!
An interesting word, "avatar." It first came into popular usage in the late 18th century and comes from the Sanskrit
avatāra, from
ava, meaning "down" (as in, a descent) and
tāra or
tārati, meaning, variously, "passing over" or "crossing over" or, again, "he passes over" or "he crosses over." Now, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin are languages that are part of the Indo-European family of languages and many words we use today in English (or in French, for that matter) come to us from Greek and Latin roots, just as many Greek and Latin words came from Sanskrit roots. For example, the
atma (Sanskrit "breath" or "spirit") in "atmosphere" or the
agni (Sanskrit "fire" or even the god of fire) in "ignition." From the Sanskrit
tāra, we get the Latin
trans. I'm sure there's no need to explain to anyone here the meaning of the root word "trans."
So,
avatar and
trans have a common linguistic root and history. In its original sense, the one still in use in India, an avatar is supposed to be the incarnation of some aspect of God, as in, Krishna (who "crossed over down") is an avatar of Vishnu or, it can be argued, Jesus Christ (who also "crossed over down") is an avatar of the Christian God. Of course, today, here in the West, we use the word to refer to the photo or icon of a computer user who's part of an online community (on forums or in virtual game worlds, for instance) chosen to represent some aspect (or incarnation) of himself or herself.
I'm thinking that, based on the above (and for obvious reasons), there'd be nothing to prevent us from calling our little picture an "avatran."
Anyway, all this to say, that's a cool avatar, Fran.
Love,
CJ
Proud Military Family - Navy, Army, Coast Guard, National Guard 
) for a good, long minute but, when I broke the surface, the damned fly was still there, doing lazy loops above my head!
