Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).

Improving Online Public Access Catalogs, by Martha M. Yee and Sara Shatford Layne.

2. Open the book to page 123.

Got it. (Just missed that chapter bibliography, whew.)

3. Find the fifth sentence.

Got it.

4. Post the next three sentences.

Users may not expect to have to invert names in an online system, so a keyword search of personal names that does not require the words in the search to occur in a particular order is useful. However, it does mean that a search on Frederick Lewis will also retrieve Lewis Frederick. The best solution would be to use form fill-in for novice users, and inversion and commas for more experienced users, to get the user to identify the surname and forename elements of the name.

5. Tag five people.

Gee, is anyone left to be tagged? Anyone want another round?

Let’s try Jonathan, Kasia, Ironic Catholic, Kathy of Editor Mom, and Athanasius. Hope you’re surrounded by less abstruse works.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Next drawing is on Saturday, February 30, 2008

Ummm, okay. I won’t count on winning, then….

• Went to vigil Mass at St. Patrick. Actually heard the priest preach about the sanctity of life! “This passage shows clearly that God is in love with us from the womb. … We must love life from the womb. It is just that simple.”
• Today was a day for proximity to fame. Saw both Julie Andrews and Armistead Maupin. Only 100 people got to get books signed by Andrews; Maupin signed multiple books for people and waited while we told him our own stories.
• Do you DC wheelers get to know the holes in the sidewalk pretty well? It’s disconcerting to come up suddenly on an area of missing or uptilted brick.
• I’m in love with the Metro. Even when it’s broken it works!
• Didn’t spend nearly as much time as usual in the exhibits. I just felt squashed by all the walking people. You know, don’t you, walking people, that you don’t walk in straight lines, and that you turn abruptly and walk backwards without looking? Or maybe you really think I’m the erratic and dangerous one.
• That blue and white symbol on the large stall door does not mean “for people in wheelchairs or people with big wheeled luggage.” Just so you know.
• I know we presented an NLS funding resolution to the ALA Council (or will, tomorrow). Don’t know if it will pass, but I expect that it will.
• This is the first time I’ve been on a computer since Thursday. So maybe I really can stop using the Internet any time I want to.
• Then again, I haven’t had supper, and its nearly 8, so maybe my priorities are a bit skewed. Think I’ll go get a bit to eat, and then pack. Later, I’ll tart this post up with relevant links and all.

The first bus I tried to catch this morning  didn’t have a working lift. There were two of us in chairs waiting — and we got to wait 20 minutes more for the next one.  I got off a stop early so that another gentleman in a chair could get on (it only makes a block’s difference at most in my total distance, so why not?)

And I keep reminding myself that’s it’s actually great to have such high-class problems.

Even for those not directly involved, the effects of the shooting will endure. Pray for healing, and as best you can, pray also for the shooter, who is in the hands of God.

Events like these — (and how sad it is that I can actually write “events like these”!) underscore the benefits and burdens of electronic communication. Here in St. Blog’s Parish, and elsewhere, posts and messages blossom as soon as an event begins to unfold. Bits of eyewitness testimony mingle with rumor, offers of assistance, links to stories posted in a rush by news agencies correcting their stories on the fly.

Already, if you look at the comment spaces under the news stories, you see people second-guessing administrators’ decisions, speculating about terrorist connections, offering prayers and curses.

In a way, this interconnectivity makes more apparent a spiritual reality we tend to ignore. Scripture and the Catechism alike underline that, not only are we in the Church the one Body of Christ, but creation itself is affected by sin and redemption.

Paradoxically, these virtual worlds also promote alienation; without remembering that you are a real person of flesh & feeling reading these words, I can be flip, or biting, or focused on winning my argument rather than respecting you.

Oh, this is all repetition of things that have been said over and over. I suppose I think if I talk about it long enough, I’ll understand why.

Perhaps it’s best for me to stop now, and remember that the Church calls evil itself a mystery.

The cashier asked who they were for.

“It’s my daughter’s 16th birthday,  she’s in the hospital with a liver transplant.”

I also had my 16th birthday in the hospital following surgery, though of course it wasn’t as serious.  So, I thought perhaps I was in the grocery store so I could hear, and pray, and ask you to pray.  Please do. God knows who she is, so it doesn’t matter that we don’t.