A few little good things:

1. Saturday I finally found out about the "Economic Stimulus" check. Yes, I am getting one. No, not quite the full amount but still since I don't have to declare it as "income" (which probably would have led me to a "thanks, but no thanks" type response), it's basically "free money."

I think I am going to get a new, smaller digital camera (smaller than the giant Mavica I currently own). Not sure what make or model yet...my main interest is in something portable, with good close-up ability (as I will mainly use it to photograph plants/bugs/lichens, and ideally with a large memory, or memory sticks that can be bought separately.)

Yes, as my dad pointed out: "Well, it will probably be made in China" (meaning the "economic stimulus" will go over there). But whatever. I'm making less than inflation on my savings account right now, and my own personal stock-picker is 'broken'* and I tend to choose companies close to tanking. So investing or saving it seems a less attractive option than just spending it on something shiny and new and fun (and potentially useful).

(*Heh. I knew someone in grad school who stopped dating for...I think it was 2 years? Because she kept dating men who were bad for her, who made her crazy, who would find out she had a decent job and then decide they could quit theirs and spend their lives lying on her couch and watching "Jeopardy!" Her conclusion was that her "picker" was "broken" so she needed a time-out from dating)

(The alternative would be to blow it all on tons and tons of Brown Sheep and Lisa Souza and other US-made, or at least US-dyed, yarn....but I've got an awful lot of yarn already, probably more than I can knit up in what remains of this life...

As much as I admit, the idea of having a room TOTALLY FULL OF YARN like Scrooge McDuck's Money Vault is appealing if unrealistic. No, I wouldn't swim in it or anything. And yeah, living where I do it would probably entirely get eaten up by crickets or carpet beetles before I even had the time to properly enjoy it. Still ROOM TOTALLY FULL OF YARN is kind of a nice fantasy)

2. I found my missing plant ID books. I had several nice identification books - including a book of the Noble Foundations' guide to grasses that a former student gave to me, because someone from Noble gave her a bunch. And then I couldn't find them all of a sudden.

And that made me sad. Because while I'm good enough at identifying things I don't need the books OFTEN, when I need them, I need them. And I was frankly fearful that I had loaned them to someone and forgotten that I had, and it was someone who had headed off into a new life and forgot to give me my books back. (It's happened before.)

But yesterday, looking for an article I needed for the Literature Cited on my **second** manuscript of the summer (to be submitted at the Prairie Conference), I found them - in a tote bag with the paper in question.

(My mother always claimed the best way to find something you'd misplaced was to start looking for something else. Oddly, that often seems to work for me. No, there is no logical, real, scientifically-verifiable reason why it should. Then again, there's no scientifically-verifiable reason that the St. Anthony prayer or some modification of such should work, but it also sometimes does.

Though sometimes I wonder if the St. Anthony prayer is partly to clear your head of the "I must find it!" thought and open parts of your mind that had been shut off and allow the thoughts to flow again...just like how you think of someone's name when you stop forcing yourself to try to. Because I find often when I stop the frantic "I've GOT TO FIND THIS" and just let my mind relax, I suddenly remember where I left the thing.)

3. I am slowly working on the **second** manuscript of the summer and with good luck (or at least with no serious bad luck) I should be able to submit it next month at the Prairie Conference. It has some interesting results and I hope it'll get published.

4. A minor sort of crisis that would have affected one of my classes this week was averted, and averted in such a way that required no effort on my part.