So really nervous: I sent out my personal statement to the Career Center and (an already overworked) Prof. Hoffmann for proofreading yesterday. It's really colloquial, maybe not the kind of letter I'm supposed to write to a grad school.

But it's honest, and it took me most of yesterday to write.

I did find the time to watch The Daily Show, which seems to be a little less annoying now that the election is over with. The dioxin jokes were a nice touch.

One point of order: Jon Stewart — last seen claiming that "terror" is not a noun — seems to be at the only news organization (unless you actually believe that trivial information or satirical commentary on major news stories constitutes "fake news") still calling a certain Eastern European country "the Ukraine" instead of "Ukraine."

It's a common mistake, but not as common as I once thought it was. Google News has about 3,740 hits for "the Ukraine" right now, and a lot of them seem to be attributive modifiers like "the Ukraine election debacle" and "the Ukraine runoff." There are about 53,960 articles using "Ukraine" but not "the Ukraine."

A quick Google search shows that even the unwashed masses drop the article 29 times out of 30.

I used to say "the Ukraine" too, probably because that's what they called it on Seinfeld that one time or in some long-forgotten Geography course. But I was wrong.

Once I learned this, I was eager to spread the word. I talked to the Politician, who had apparently always dropped the definite article. He's no stranger to Eastern Europe, that Politician.

Jonas was even less interested, declaiming to this English major that "the Ukraine" is no different than "the bench" or "the Spain," both proper in his eyes. I told him to use his trivia skills and look up the article I cited above, or some similar article; I can only assume he did just that, as he hasn't mentioned "the Ukraine" since.

Maybe in a few years, if popular programs like The Daily Show keep using "the Ukraine," a generation of Americans will opt to use the article and I'll be wrong again. Whatever. I consider myself a relatively descriptivist copy editor, and I'm willing to go with the consensus on this one.

Speaking of Google, the library idea is genius, though it could have interesting implications for Trivia. I've been working on trivia questions on and off since I got home.

I have three so far, out of a required thirty.

My goal is to make questions that are conceivably "knowable" but very difficult to answer with a simple Google search.

Other trivia masters have different strategies: the Grand Master seems to enjoy riddles, and it sounds like one of our expatriated masters is going to come back with thirty Garrudas.

OK, I've got to get back to app stuff. My 10-page writing sample still needs some work. Ugh.