Why does the hair on Pope freely leave his body in copious amounts--aloft on the wind, it flits aimlessly around the house--yet when we brush him, the amount we manage to get would be disdained by a bird as worthy nest building material?

I'm writing a paper on the VRA Core Categories, a metadata scheme that visual resources curators can use to describe their collections of art slides/digital images, as well as the original art works themselves. I keep thinking: "What's the point of writing this? No one cares. It won't be published." But Jon reminds me that the point of writing papers is to educate yourself, not others. So there.

I've been reading "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" on my breaks at work. I don't usually enjoy fantasy infused with pop-culture--it's just too self-conscious--but this isn't so bad. It's lazy summer reading material, which is why I must have picked it up, considering that the Joseph-Beth building is entering its annual sauna season. It's about a boy who discovers he's a demi-god (like Hercules) and must go on a quest to find out who stole Zeus's master lightning bolt before Zeus zaps him out of existence. Sure.