I've been accepted to review for Choice! I'm told that it might be some time before I get my first assignment; it all depends on when the next book in my area of specialty is approved for review. One of the essential functions of a Choice review is comparing the work to currently available alternatives. It's been two years since I've been active in academe, so I may want to catch up on the literature that has been published in the meantime.

Sunday I went to a Baptist church near campus, but it started off poorly with a children's sermon that had members of the championship high school girls' basketball team talking about their recipe for success and then the pastor drawing the banal analogies to the spiritual life: the church is our team, Jesus is our head coach, and the Bible is our playbook. Then I saw in the program that the rest of the service was pretty much filled with praise choruses, so I bailed and went to a late Mass at Sacred Heart. This one was in English, but again I was completed ignored so I think the potential for a tightly knit community is negligible. At this point I'm ready to start heading down to Lubbock on Sunday mornings, as inconvenient as that would be.

I need to find a decent cheap table wine. It's sobering (excuse me) to realize that since I go through a bottle in three days, a $12 bottle runs me $4 a day, which is almost the price of a meal itself.

My dad works for the company which makes the space shuttle's external tank, one of the chief suspects in the disintegration of Columbia. He said the mood was somber at work today. I'll try to stay informed during the course of the investigation.