abstracting this jQuery function
<p>Gotten a lot of great help here! The code here has been helped along by a few folks. Hopefully someone can help me take it to the next level.</p>

<p>Basically, I have code which will add a checkmark after a given period of time to a clicked item in the left navigation.  There are going to be other links on the page which are going to trigger the same behavior for the corresponding left links. So for example there would be 10 links on the left, and  10 links on top that would each need to trigger a corresponding link on the left.  I am trying to abstract this code so that I can activate it from a different source. To make it easier, it can be thought of as how to trigger this piece of code from a source outside of the navigation. Here's the code:</p>

<pre><code>$(function() {

var thetimeout=null;
 $('#leftnav li a').click(function() {
      $('#leftnav li').not('this').css('background-position','left bottom');
      $(this).parent().css('background-position','left top');
      if(thetimeout!=null) {
          window.clearTimeout(thetimeout);
      }

       thetimeout=window.setTimeout($.proxy(function() {
                 $(this).parent().css('background-image','url(images/check.png)');
            }, this)
      ,5000);
 });
</code></pre>

<p>});</p>

<p>I have a working demo (with the top links not working) up <a href="http://www.jontakiff.com/checks" rel="nofollow">here.</a></p>

<p>Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it.</p>
