Jacque sells antiques and her one-of-a-kind handiwork on her Etsy shop. Here I am modeling a heather blue hooded cowl.

Definitely check her store out for birthday or Christmas presents. I particularly like the hobo backpack purse she had me model, although all the items are nice.

This was a nice change of pace. I’d love to model again.

Other things I have been doing while not updating this blog:

(The following is not verbatim.)

Female Co-worker 1: That Barbara Walters got around. I had no idea she slept with so many of her sources.
***Cross-talk with a another co-worker, who agreed with me that it was creepy, ensues***
Female co-worker 1: As a top journalist who is always busy, that’s who she’s exposed to. Who else does she see all day?
Me: Co-workers.

Actually, I don’t think that’s such a hot idea either. Dating a co-worker can lead to some pretty awkward moments if it doesn’t work out. (Yes, I speak from experience.)

But, hey, it works for some. Every newspaper I’ve worked at has had at least two married couples if not more. According to American Journalism Review’s “Married with Bylines,” that’s not unusual.

“If you go into any newsroom, you’re going to see couples that are married and if they’re not married, they are living together,” says Nancy Woodhull, a founding editor of USA Today who now heads a media consulting firm specializing in new media opportunities and audiences.

One of the Gawker comments expressed a similar position, a little less eloquently:

YOu end up fucking them [your sources] because you never really meet anyone else (except other reporters, and you’ve already fucked them).

Personally, I feel lucky to have escape the minefield. I think, with my love of travel writing, I lucked out on marrying a pilot!

What do you all think? As journalists, are there people you shouldn’t date?

Teachers around the world tell students, “Show, don’t tell,” when learning to write. Too bad the author of “The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery” did not take this advice to heart.

Enrique Joven, its author, takes a fascinating mystery and puts us to sleep instead. It’s all the more infuriating because the mystery — an either 15th or 16th century manuscript painstakingly written in an unknown language and illustrated with what looks to be symbolic drawings — is real and stored at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The author of the Voynich manuscript is unknown, but it’s associated with the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia Rudolf II, who patronized a variety of artists, writers, philosophers and scientists, including Dane Tycho Brahe and German Johannes Kepler.

Those names should sound familiar because their work (and the work of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei) formed the basis of our understanding about astronomy and physics. In fact, it was the tumultuous relationship between Brahe and Kepler as well as Brahe’s strange and untimely death that should have been shown, not told to us in lecture after lecture.

The narrator of “The Book of God and Physics” is a likable Jesuit named Hector, who teaches at a Catholic prep school in Spain. He belongs to an online group dedicated to unlocking the secrets of the Voynich manuscript, which has never been translated. And many have tried, including American military cryptographers after World War II.

Then, Hector’s online world collides with reality, as two of his online friends — Juana, an heiress from Mexico, and John Carpenter, a physicist with the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge, United Kingdom — seek his help to unlock the secrets of the manuscript. Together they become enmeshed in a conspiracy possibly stemming from Rudolf II’s court to the present day.

Author Enrique Joven, who himself holds a doctorate in physics and works as a senior engineer in the Canary Islands, obviously loves and is enthusiastic about science. He puts forth all the theories surrounding the Voynich manuscript as well as discusses the speculation about Kepler’s possible role in Brahe’s death.

Though Joven wisely makes his narrator both a priest and teacher, who might be forgiven a little too much exposition, he unfortunately litters the book not only with long summaries of events but also clunky dialogue, such as this scene from page 282:

“That last one sounds good. Explain,” Juana asked.

“Aqua regia is a yellow, extremely corrosive solution, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid, highly concentrated. It got its name, royal water, because it could dissolve precious, or royal, metals like gold and platinum. Very few reactants could do that,” John explained.

Unless the reader is a very dedicated scientist or history buff, “The Book of God and Physics” won’t capture many people’s imagination, which is a shame because the Voynich manuscript — and all the people associated with it — resonates as a real-life mystery needing resolution.

This was a fun review to write, which sounds terrible since it was negative, but the disappointment I felt reading this book made it easy to offer criticism. Apparently, my passion was obvious.

“You should only write negative reviews,” my co-worker David said. “That was your best book review yet.”

Stay tuned then for my review of Stephen King’s “Under the Dome,” which isn’t all negative but isn’t all positive either.

The statue of Justice overlooks the archway for the main entrance of Dublin Castle in Dublin, Ireland. Even today, Dublin Castle is the site of elections, state events and presidential inaugurations.

I was a little puzzled, especially since Justice carries a pointy sword and isn’t blind.

Sure enough, they used the picture as the main picture, too, on today’s business page. I still think it’s a little weird, but hey, they used my picture (and I got credit)! My co-worker inserted an ellipsis after “inaugurations” in the cutline (caption) to try to match the two: “…and, of course, it serves as a symbol of law.”

Copy editors are crafty folk.

Speaking of reviewing books, my book review on “White Witch, Black Curse” by Kim Harrison published on Sunday. I really enjoy doing book reviews, especially since I can use my downtime at work constructively.

I don’t mean the pom-pom waving sort, but I do well in encouraging others. A News-Journal colleague of mine wrote a 75-inch article on Charlottesville, Va., for the travel section. Then, a week before it was supposed to run, the powers-that-be morphed the travel section into a tabloid-sized entertainment guide, where writing more than 25-inches is a luxury.

I encouraged him to send it elsewhere since our newspaper was not using it. I brought my Writer’s Market 2009 (a must-have for writers), and we looked up markets for him to send it off. We talked about what he was going to say in his query letter. So far, he’s only gotten one response–a personal response from an editor at Southern Living, who says they mostly assign stories. However, they do accept essays for their back page, and she encouraged him to send one in. Needless to say, he’s over the moon and has an idea for an essay already.

Now, I just need to motivate MYSELF to send out more queries. Rejections don’t bother me so much as the process of actually crafting a letter and sending it out. Why is that?