I took a nap today right after I put Poppy down for a nap. I woke up about an hour later and came downstairs to start the book I picked up this afternoon at the library. I just finished the book. That’s how short it was: 78 pages.

But there’s a lot in those 78 pages. “About Alice” is a tragedy wrapped in a love story. It’s what Nicholas Sparks* strives to be. And it’s a true story. You should read it. You’ll probably cry.

*My apologies, Amy.

This is the best news story I’ve read in a long time.

Swiss troops march into tiny Liechtenstein by mistake
The Associated Press
ZURICH, Switzerland: What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered 2 kilometers (more than a mile) across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story, but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

“We’ve spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it’s not a problem,” Daniel Reist told The Associated Press on Friday.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior Ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. “It’s not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,” he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington, D.C., does not have an army.
from the International Herald Tribune.

. . . . . the end . . . . .

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions

This was a dry land. Just a short distance to the west lay the Kalahari, a hinterland of ochre that stretched off, for unimaginable miles, to the singing emptiness of the Namib. If she turned her tiny white van off one of the tracks that struck off from the mail road, she could drive for perhaps thirty or forty miles before her wheels would began to sink in the sand and spin hopelessly.
from “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” by Rockfordander McCall Smith

That worked out nicely; the first two sentences were one of my favorite segments in the book.

. . . . . the end . . . . .