In Which I Confess My Utter Lack of Sense

My wife and I have spent the last hour and a half trying to figure out how to change text from the internet into a printable book format.  Here's the story:

So, I have to read Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus Homo - Why God Became Human - for my Systematic Theology Class.  Although I am very adept at reading blogs and news articles online, I hate reading works of theology online.  Go figure.  Our professor decided to save us money by having us read the text on the internet.  I was grateful for the saving of money, but dreading reading nearly 100 pages of a dense, theological text off of a bright computer screen.  This afternoon, while steeling myself to spend hours staring at a screen, I hit upon the idea of turning the text into a book.  After all, the text was in an online, printable format, and the copyright information said that it could be printed and used for educational purposes, just not for sale.  Perfect!  So, I went to our campus's nearby computer lab and downloaded the text into Microsoft Word.  Now, I could have just printed it as it was, but I'm also a stickler for durability, portability, readability and paper-saving.  So, I spent an hour and a half formatting the text into "book format," which, conveniently, Microsoft Office for Windows XP on the school computers/printers has readily available.  Anyway, I ended up printing the text on 55 pieces of paper, front and back, two "pages" per side, meaning that it looked like the pages of a regular paperback book.  Then I took it to Staples, where my wife was working this afternoon, had her cut the pages in half and then put them together with a card stock cover and spiral-binding.  All for only $2.50.  Not bad.

Now, there are a few other things that I would like to read/turn into books, such as old public domain hymn texts online, christian classics online, etc.  All in the public domain, no copyright.  I decided I wanted to work at home and try to format it all on my Mac.  No dice.  The Mac did not have the pleasant "book format" option.  So, I tried to emulate it with formatting.  No Dice.  And that was how I spent the last hour and a half.  Sigh.  All of that time when I should have been reading the book that I so nicely formatted and had bound this afternoon.  Welcome to my nonsensical life.

Other than that, life is good.  I'm busy and a little sleepy now, but I'm good.  Sigh.  Cur Deus Homo here I come!

Hair Cut and G Strings

After posting so many philosophical thoughts, I figured that you the reader deserved something more lighthearted.  Firstly, I finally went to get my hair cut.  I told the woman cutting my hair to leave less than half an inch on the sides and about an inch on the top.  She understood me properly about the sides, but only cut off an inch on the top.  I didn't have the heart or the will-power to correct her and decided that it would probably be good for me to have a new hairstyle anyway.  Unfortunately, when I got home I couldn't decide how to style my long-on-top, short-on-the-sides hair.  Thus, this afternoon, having no Greek homework and trying to amuse myself while my wife completed a free-lance graphic design project, I experimented with several different hairdos.  So, without any further ado...The many faces of Marc Hong.*

I like to call this one the faux-hawk.  Or the unicorn.

This is the plain, ordinary part to one-side style.

This is the "I could kill you with my pinky" style.  My music teachers always said I was a tenor, but I could swear that I'm a "Soprano."

This isn't really a style.  It's just to show you how long the hair on top is as opposed to the sides.

On another note, I broke a guitar string today, after having strung my guitar a mere two weeks ago.  And of course, the string I broke was, you guessed it, the G-string.  It's the only string I've ever broken.  Which means that every time I break a string I can say to my wife: "Hey honey, I just broke my G-string."  To which she simply responds by rolling her eyes.+

*A note to all wives or future wives: this is what happens when your husband has too much time on his hands.  You have been warned.

+I thank God every day that my wife is a patient woman.