I'm in the YU library - a place I've been frequenting for, oh, thirty two years. It's open till 10 for now.  And it's quiet. For now. (Except for the librarian shouting into the phone.)

A major personal blogger says that it's not blogging if you stop or plan.  Her definition of blogging is free form writing.  I kind of agree.  And if that's so then I haven't been blogging much of late.

Like any good library they have a nice array of magazines here.  I just picked up Forbes and memories of childhood came rushing through me.  I guess that's just the effect Forbes has on everyone.

When I was a kid I'd rip out and collect the back page of my dad'sForbes magazines, the page entitles, "Thoughts on the Business of Life." (My dad - he should live and be well - once told me in connection to that habit that life is more than just a lot of quotes.  I told him that that was a great quote. It is.

The quotes used to be on a wide array of topics.  So I was surprised to find that they've now narrowed it down to "Thoughts on Investing." Here's the most general one in this month's issue, "A lot of moneydoesn't make anyone more often right. It just makes him harder to correct."

In the past I posted an idea I liked on Parshat Chukat, this weeks parsha, in two different forms (here and here). There's definitely a death related theme going on in this parsha and that's a topic worth giving thought.

I like writing, blogging in particular. I feel it's a higher way of spending time than watching TV or movies or just hanging.  Writing can be a profound experience.  And it's nice if there's a reader too.

There's a Psychology Today here.  Who reads that? I'd think that psychology people poo poo it as pop and that people looking for pop culture are more interested in other topics than psychology.

This months issue has an interesting article about body fat and how mosy American foods do away with Omega 3 and replace it with Omega 6. which causes a lot of weight gain.  They come at this from a unique angle.  But the cover story was the reason I took this magazine off the shelf: "Sixth Sense: Premonitions, DeJaVu, Coincidences, Near Death Experiences." My mother - of blessed memory was into this kind of stuff, read up on it, etc. I am intrigued by the general topic as I was by the opening of the article by Mathew Hutson:

"Chances are, at some point in your life, you've felt someone staring at you. Maybe you were at the grocery store. Maybe walking alomng the sidewalk. Maybe sitting on a bus. And sure enough, when you turned your head to look, the suspects eyes met yours.

You just had an anomolus experience...

...Anomolous experience of this sort ranges from sensing a strong vibe in a room to feeling outside your own body.  We often explain such phenomenon using concepts related to spirits, luck, witchcraft, psychic powers, life energy, or more terrestial (and extraterrestial) entities...

One of the most commonanomolous experiences is the sense of being stared at... Another common experience is deja vu, a phenomenon two in three people report."

It seems like an interesting article and I wish I could borrow it from the library or read it free online.

It's that just last week school/work was still on.  Funny (not ha-ha) how a world can disappear and reappear.  I'm going into year 17 in the same school - thank G-d.  I remember my first day like it was a second ago.  A colleague of mine who started the same year as me said that could never imagine staying and teaching for many years.  He didn't. 

I had lunch today with an honors graduate from my school whom I never formally taught in a class but got to know over the years.  We spoke about light stuff, like the works of Aharon Appelfeld, peace in the middle east, and the importance of being honest.

Time for Maariv.

If you enjoyed reading this post half as much as I enjoyed writing it then I enjoyed it twice as much as you. (Adapted from Steve Martin)

Goodnight and G-d Bless