Odds & Ends: July 2003 Archives

Fr. Sibley posted the other day about a weird little kitchen gadget called the Octodog.

I realized today that this looks like the ideal gift for one of those "Yankee swap" party procedures.

For the uninitiated, here's how they operate: the participants each bring a wrapped present. These all go into a pool. Each participant in turn then does the following:
1. Choose a package from the pool.
2. Unwrap it in plain view.
3. If someone else already has unwrapped another gift that one prefers, one may take it in exchange for the gift one originally chose.

It's a marvel that this little war-of-all-against-all became the central event of office Christmas parties. Well, maybe not.

Comfort and joy, everybody!

The good folks at the National Park Service have reversed themselves and restored three bronze plaques with Scripture quotes to their places in the Grand Canyon. Somebody must have realized that they weren't legally obliged to roll over and take them down immediately when the ACLU complained. One neat thing about this story is that the plaques are a gift from the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a group of Lutheran nuns (!) that's not well known in the US.

I just got a Dr. Watson error that was generated by drwtsn.exe. That is a very bad sign.

(I'm not making this up, you know.)

From Jewsweek. As Nancy writes on her Hello, Failure blog, "Some Jews who apparently have a LOT of time on their hands have begun bar and bat mitzvahing their dogs," sometimes with the co-operation of their rabbis! Oy.

When conservative Jewish pundit Dennis Prager talked about this on the radio, he got a lot of letters from Christians thanking him for mentioning the item: they were grateful to know that religious silliness wasn't just something turning up in their churches!

Chris Reilly, our sensible Catholic friend up in Maine, is starting a blog, and even though it's not hosted here at stblogs.org, it will definitely deserve your patronage!

Welcome, Chris!

A reader of ours just got accepted as a candidate for seminary formation. He's got two great cats who need to find a home before he leaves in August. Their names are Mack and Fred. They are not related but they look quite a lot alike and they're best buddies. Click on the pictures for larger images. Email me if you can take these guys in. He says they've got a lot of love to give!

At the office today, I heard one end of a phone conversation. A co-worker got a call from a friend, who started telling her the latest news about Jane, a student gal they know who is perpetually broke:

"I don't understand. Jane is gonna 'sell an egg' and get $4000?...
What is it -- Fabergé?"