My favorite aunt, who just read my old entry complaining about MS Word footnote Issues, sent me a link to a really, really wonderful New Yorker essay by Louis Menand, The End Matter: The Nightmare of Citation. It contains the beautiful line: "First of all, it is time to speak some truth to power in this country: Microsoft Word is a terrible program." It is very, very funny. If you ever wrote academic papers in grad school or undergrad, you need to read this essay. (And if you ever had to live through a semester-long course--or, as in my own case, two semester-long courses--devoted solely to Bibliography, then you will cherish this essay. I promise.)

***

Yesterday was a Monday. In all its senses. I spent a large and frustratingly pointless part of the day trying to get various bibliographic databases to work for me. They didn't. I killed time on the internet instead. End of day came. Much self-loathing ensued.

Today I'm hoping for better luck. For one thing, I'm going into the university campus, where, if the databases won't work, I can at least ask librarians for help. And for another thing, we now have more espresso. Yesterday morning, I ran out. I blame the rest of the day on that fact.