Well, two good things and a Mystery.

Good thing #1: I stopped by the church on my noon to five pm between-class break to drop off the cover letter for our check to help the victims of the hurricane. The secretary said, "Let me check and see if I've got last week's total" (We collected the offering both last week and this week.

Last week's total was $1240.

That's ONE week - one Sunday's offering. Over and above the regular offerings. I'm amazed...or maybe that's not the right word, maybe "humbled" is better. Because, really, I'm not *surprised* in the sense that I didn't think the congregation had it in them to want to give that much...but we are few in number (there are maybe 60 to 75 folk in church on any given Sunday) and most of us are not all that well off - and I know lots of people had already given to the Salvation Army, or the Red Cross, or to the Mercy Corps, or any of the other funds.

One thing I see again and again in this congregation is how we pull together - on everything. If someone in the congregation needs help, we're there - with food, with rides, with cleaning, with money. If there's a natural disaster somewhere, they are asking me (as head of Outreach) what they can do almost before I've figured it out myself. And they're really generous. And even when it's little, simple things - a group wants to have a special dinner at the church, or cookies are needed for some function - it's like the Loaves and Fishes, people showing up and bringing food and offering help.

It's a good thing I didn't have to stand up right then in front of the congregation to thank them; I probably would have busted out in tears.

Good thing #2: I had to run to the wal-mart for graph paper. They had the new Interweave Crochet, so I bought a copy. Didn't get a real thorough look at it because I had to come back here for office hours, but there is one super-cute bobbled purse (a Mari Lynn Patrick design I think) that I want to make. And Annie Modesitt has several garments in this one (And she has a "right on!" essay about how when the phrase "not your grandmother's crochet/knitting/embroidery/gardening/whatever" is used, it's really pretty ageist and it's dismissing the contributions of a whole generation of people. Go Annie!). There's also an article on how to read the symbolcraft method of notation - which is sometimes used in older publications and also in other-language (i.e., Japanese) books - so being able to decipher it will open up a new world of crochet patterns to me.

I wonder if Interweave is positioning this to become a more-than-once-a-year publication, maybe a quarterly, like Interweave Knits used to be. (If they do, I'd probably subscribe, even if I don't use a whole lot of the patterns. I'm a pattern ho' that way.)

And the Mystery? I got a phone call at my office from the manager of the apartment where I used to live - a package for me has been delivered there. Very strange. I am guessing either it's someone who used to know me at my old address and who thought I was still living there, or perhaps someone bought me something off my Amazon wish list and because the old address is still floating around in the ether and got applied instead of my new one.

Update: I got in touch with the manager and ran down there (she knew where to call because inexplicably, my office phone number was on the box). It was an examination copy of a book from Blackwell. Not one I'd be at all likely to adopt. Crud.

as I told my colleague: "And here I thought it was going to be some kind of magical package from far, far away, or from someone I'd not heard from in a long time."