Rob, what happened to Randy yesterday? You gotta find that boy some offensive linemen! I though Warren Sapp was going to chew him up and spit him out yesterday.
After reading more about the game, I found Warren Sapp had some comments about Randy. Evidently Randy was pretty cool under pressure, even though his offense didn't go anywhere and he got sacked a million times.

We saw Jonathan Hurst last night. He seems to be keeping busy coaching and lawyering, and is taking the world of high school swimming by storm.

Rob's brother Randy got some playing time at QB yesterday... He played a little more than one half the game, and didn't have great stats. I missed the game, but looking at the play by play, I think that he ran the ball well but had trouble finding his receivers. However, the #1 & #2 QB's are both hurt, so he could be a starter next week. Rob, any word on whether Randy might start next week?

Here I go...I am jumping into the land of BLOG. I am at work now; it seems like I'm at work almost all the time. It's fun keeping up on everyone's lives this way...

Went to a midnight screening of "The Princess Bride" last night.
Everything else in my life is insignificant.

Congratulations to Kevin! (Congrats to Ben, too. We're looking forward to seeing him again when visiting the Walshes.) Wow -- Supreme Court positions and trips to Ireland -- and I spend my days explaining to the teachers of our youth how to move a Netscape window to the left so they can see the scroll bar. (Ok, that was only one person, but it's a good indicator of my days.) Of course, I think some of my liberal New York co-workers are shocked that I would admit even knowing someone who worked for Scalia, apparently a villian for more reasons than I care to hear.

Dan, will you pray that Josh and I win the lottery? If not that, how about that he gets published in some great journal of patristics, finishes his PhD in 10 months and gets offered a full professorship at Boston College (not Harvard; they're too political) or some small liberal arts college in the Northeast -- anyplace fun and not hot?

I promised Kevin that I would blog soon, so here I am blogging. What news from Betsy and Dan? We just got done going to three weddings in a row. The first was at my grandmother's house in Belle Harbor, NY. 89 years old and getting married again! Then we drove home just in time to fly to Ireland on Aer Lingus. We toured around the the Cliffs of Moher and Connemara for half the week, then on to Dublin for the wedding. Everyone in Ireland drinks Guiness all day and no one likes Americans, especially in Dublin. We said we were Canadian, but they knew we weren't.

Then we went to Betsy's brother Paul's wedding in Ithaca, NY. We had a great time, but we're happy to be home and back to work. I'm trying to graduate this spring, so I need to finish my experiments and figure out whet they mean. Here is an abstract of my research if you really what to know what I study. Currently, I'm in the midst of analyzing some data. The results are surprising so far, but I don't yet know if that's good or bad.

After one solid week of work, I'm going back on the road, to Sarasota, FL, where my frisbee team, Boss Hogg, is playing in ultimate club series championship. We're seeded 11 out of 16 teams, and hope to improve upon our last place finish of 2000.

That's all you're going to hear from me for now. I've made this site my home page so that I don't have to look every day to see if anyone said hello.

Supreme Court Clerkship . . . Just received some fantastic news this morning. Next year I'll be clerking for Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court. This only proves the point that if you ask Dan to pray for something, God listens. Anyhow, this is my dream job and I am thrilled. The other fantastic news is that Ben Hatch, whom many of you know is a close friend from law school, also received a clerkship offer today from Justice Scalia. So we'll be working the same job, which is cool. Don't worry, while I have respect for Scalia, it's not as unbalanced as this guy's view.

Yes, it is a cult . . . I encourage everyone to check out the web page that Jill so kindly linked below for the Park Slope Food Coop. I vote "yes, it is a cult." I also vote "yes, you should join." If it is a cult, at least its members seem to be well-fed. I particularly enjoyed reading the description of how their work policies changed over time. It seems that, shockingly, even hippies can be lazy and not show up to unload the frozen food truck. I also enjoyed reading how the "worker/owners" tried to operate without rules and discipline, seeing such things as the suspect product of hierarchical institutions (i.e., those with a divide between management and labor). Previously, there were no rules:

"The committee/squad system came into being late in 1974 after the Coop had folded for its second and last time. The previous member-work systems had resulted in very high absenteeism. The Coop also relied too heavily on a few members who were willing to do large amounts of extra work on an unpaid basis. The previous systems had no rules to deal with absenteeism because at that time it was not perceived that absenteeism was going to be a problem. Plus, Coops like ours were not big on rules in the early 1970's. However, experience taught us that without certain rules, the Coop's existence was jeopardized." Click here and then hit the link for Part IV to read more.

The story has a happy ending (or rather, the coop has not had an ending but is happily continuing), as it seems like the Park Slope Food Coop has figured out how to lower food costs while maintaining some type of community atmosphere among the worker/owners. While the coop looks good, I'll say that it's no Wal-Mart. But then again the coop probably exploits fewer people. So, Josh and Jill, I say you should join. Just don't miss a shift, because then you'll have to work double-time to make it up.

UpToDate . . . Congrats on the job, Doug. Shannon apparently uses your company's product all the time. Well, not all the time (though she works most of the time). I checked out the website myself. Enjoyed viewing articles in the patient center on a range of topics, including such crowd-pleasers as transsphenoidal microadenomectomy. Yes, Doug, seems to be a very useful site.

Too bad I don't have any really cool news to share from the Papsdorfs. We're settling in to our new apartment in the fabulous neighborhood of Park Slope. We're considering joining the Park Slope Food Coop, which is just around the corner from us, but Josh is a little afraid it might be a cult. We've started getting involved in our church, St. Francis Xavier. Though we haven't been to the library, the museum or the Botanical Gardens, we do spend a lot of time in Prospect Park, which is just three blocks away from our new apartment. Sherlock couldn't be happier...there are dogs and birds and squirrels. He hasn't quite figured out the dog-drinking fountains, though. (Yes, they really exist.) Josh also has easy access to about six coffeeshops, not even including Starbucks, where he's spending most of the time Sherlock isn't dragging him around the park.

For those who haven't heard (which might be everyone), I switched to the Information Technology team here at NAF a few weeks ago. I am now the Data Analyst, which means I'm the person they blame when stuff goes wrong and the one they beg to change stuff. So far it's been stressful, but I think in the long term it'll be good -- it's certainly more challenging than what I was doing.

We convinced my parents that a good Christmas present would be tickets to California for New Years -- so we'll be there. Anyone else coming, or will us just be us and the Fasanis?

I GOT A JOB. yesterday I accepted an offer from UpToDate. from the website: "UpToDate is a subscription-based clinical information resource available to physicians on an individual, group or institutional basis." I'll be working as a software applications developer starting Oct. 21st. it's in Wellesley, so the location is good for me. there's no travel and the company actually makes money! so I'm very psyched.

enjoy the long weekend!

Rumor has it . . . That Maurissa, Doug, and either Josh or Jill (and perhaps both) will be posting soon. How do I know this? Perhaps it's just wishful thinking. However, I have verbal commitments from a certain Italian-American presently residing in the metro Boston area, and will be extracting a verbal commitment from our own -- it's not just about the rock n' roll hall of fame -- Cleveland-based correspondent, to let us know what they have been up to. I for one would like to know -- what is it like to be a fancy sports agent? And how does Johnson and Johnson make that no-tears shampoo? These questions and more may be answered in the coming days. So continue to tune in.

This is pretty cool, Kevin. I've already bookmarked bld98.blogspot.com.
Look for more news from me soon...

One of the benefits of the "blog" format is the ability to set up links to anything at all on the web, whether that be an impostor site, an account of Notre Dame's victory over Stanford (sorry to bring up a sore subject, Rob), or "a heritage of excellence" (compare, e.g., this shady operation).

This page can be a discussion board for topics theological or cinematic or synovial. Because it's on the web, it can be accessed from Chicago or Charlotte or Kauai. And it's easy to post if you say the magic word, "magnificat." Just respond to the email you received about this page, and you will become an authorized post-er. If you need some training on the Blogger software, don't wait, but use your mind, engage in some early intervention and check the www.blogger.com FAQ. If we ask nicely perhaps we can get some funding for future upgrades.

So whether you're at work or at home, keep bld98.blogspot.com on your favorites/bookmarks list.

Greetings everyone. BLD (the publication) is back in action. We may not have college funding or our own blitzmail account, but we also won't need to drive down I-91 to the printing press in order to "publish." I don't really know how to use this software yet, but I'll spend a couple hours this afternoon learning. The next step will be to figure out how to set this up so that all BLDers can make posts. That's all for now.