Dog-eared in the waiting room

My dentist is a prince among men. Unlike any other professional's waiting room in my experience, he has current copies of interesting magazines lying around to help me pass the interval between my appointment time and the time the professional's assistant moves me into an inner room to hide the fact that I'm still waiting. I bless my dentist. I would bless him even more if he tended to run behind schedule, because no sooner do I get engrossed in an interesting article in the New Yorker or U.S. News and World Report but I am summoned to the reclining chair to offer penance for my sins of gum neglect.

As you may have noticed, Exultet can tend to get a bit creased and dog-eared between posts. Therese is neck deep in professional demands, and I have been likewise absorbed with work projects. However, that's no reason we should neglect you. We are sorry.

While we restart our literary engines, here are some tidbits for you, all nice and glossy:

• End of an era. If you haven't noticed, the fabled Amy Welborn is abandoning her landmark blog in which she did all the legwork and looking-into so we wouldn't have to. Thank you, Amy. The Catholic online world is in your debt. Her more personal and informal musings will continue at Charlotte Was Both.
  
  
• Seminarian videos are the new black. I admit, it's videos like this as much as reports of the recent tendency of solid, holy young men to flock to seminaries that give me hope for the future of the Catholic Church in America. This one parodies the PC vs. Mac commercials in a treatment of contraception and Natural Family Planning. See all four.
  
  
• Things I wouldn't have considered unless Julie told me to.
  
  
• Madonna, call your office. Straight from the fantasy lives of all priests, deacons and choral directors, here's Deacon Greg Kandra's recommendation for the church bulletin announcement to end all bulletin announcements. An excerpt:
  
  "CELL PHONES CAUSE HEAD INJURIES! New research indicates that people who bring cell phones to church are more likely to suffer serious head trauma, usually caused by the priest throwing the lectionary at them."

Thank you for listening. We now return you to your regularly scheduled web cruising.