Spent the first half of today evaluating our philosophy and religion collection, looking for any lacunae in core authors. But I didn't find too many gaps. Strangely, although we have most of Wittgenstein's books, we don't have his most famous work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, so I might try to correct that lapse. Admittedly, I doubt any of the faculty, let alone the students, will read it (in fact I haven't and I have a Ph.D. in philosophy), so I would be violating the principle I learned in library school that use should determine the extent of the collection, rather than an abstract ideal of completeness. But on this issue my boss is on the old-fashioned side, for she said, apropos of some German magazine gathering dust on our shelves, "There are some things you just need to have, even if no one uses them." Although she was exagerrating to make a point, I agree that an important but lesser used item has a place in a collection.

I'm starting to feel...not so young, with my 34th birthday just a week away. Maybe it's the fact that I will have outlived Jesus. In any case, it didn't help that today one of my coworkers said that his 19-year old son was wondering if I had any attractive daughters he could date! This is especially sobering considering that I wouldn't mind finding an attractive undergrad myself. But I think that opportunity has passed me by.

Perhaps my new PlayStation2 makes me young at heart? Or maybe just immature. I played "Kingdom Hearts" for a couple of hours this evening and enjoyed it.

Lately I have been adding invocations to saints to my prayers, on the Pascalian grounds that there's a lot to gain if such prayers are answered and nothing much to lose if they aren't. To increase the self-interested character of my decision, I only invoke the saints generically, i.e. "Saints pray for me," rather than calling on individuals, because the former is more efficient! (I can't think of any good reason for supposing that personalized petitions are the only ones heard, or that they are more powerful.)