Number Two

I once mentioned that Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water was my favorite of their albums. I stand by that, but I have to add that Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is an extremely strong second.

It's got "Scarborough Fair". It's got "Homeward Bound". It's got "The 59th Street Bridge Song", and it's got "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her". All of these are great songs.

If that's not enough, it also has such not-quite-great (IMO) songs as "Cloudy", "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall", "A Simple Desultory Philippic", and "7 O'Clock News / Silent Night".

Man, those guys were great together.

A Matter of Interpretation

Mary Chapin Carpenter's lovely elegy "This Shirt" includes the following lines:

This shirt was the place your cat
Decided to give birth to five
And we stayed up all night watching
And we wept when the last one died

Do you read "the last one" as meaning "the last one to be born", or "the last one to die"?

Cataloging and Archaeology

My new Library database is up and running. There are some major features I still want to add, but I'm putting them off in favor of getting the basic catalog entered; I'm also making minor improvements more or less on the fly.

One new feature - and I should have added it to earlier versions - is a way of keeping track of where books are in the house. Many of the locations are bookcases, but quite a few have the form "Den:Desk" or "Main Bedroom:Dresser". For those, I'm taking the cataloging as an excuse for long-overdue cleaning and clearing. I've uncovered a lot of manuals for software I've long since abandoned - OS/2, Borland C++, early versions of Civilization - and they're going into recycling. A few superficially similar books, though, I'm hanging on to, more or less as museum pieces. The Personal Computer Book, Complete with up-to-date Brand Name Buying Guide (copyright 1982) is one such. (I'm tempted to leaf through it, just for the memories....)

I seem to have misplaced my duster. That, I'm going to need.

Steppin' Out

I always enjoy watching Gracie manage the steps to the back porch. Between the length of her body and the height of the steps, she can't really descend them like a normal dog. Instead, she flips her hindquarters into the air and runs down the steps on her forelegs, fast enough that, by the time her hind legs come down, she's clear of the steps. Cracks me up every time.