A Nice Piece Of News To End The Old Year With

I know 2009 has been a very difficult year for most of America, but for me it's been pretty wonderful.

As penance, I spent most of yesterday doing tedious but necessary jobs. Post office/motor vehicle/bank/supermarket to use up about to expire coupons. And that was just before lunch. In the afternoon I went to the Village of Goshen town hall to renew my mother's handicap parking permit, only to discover her paperwork was at the Town of Goshen town hall. Lucky for me, the Village and the Town both have very nice people working there, and the necessary papers were faxed over and the permit renewed for another five years, at which point my mother will be 103.

I also made a number of boring phone calls yesterday to let various businesses know my charge card expiration date had changed, and I found out what to do about the dvd of The Dead I'd bought in November. The Dead, which is one of my favorite movies ever, is 83 minutes long, but the dvd was only 73 minutes long. Sunday's New York Times reviewed the dvd, and while I didn't much care for the review, it did say the manufacturer of the dvd had learned of its mistake, and had reissued it with the missing 10 minutes and here was the phone number to call. Which I did Monday, along with all those other phone calls and tedious errands.

If doing boring jobs qualifies one for sainthood, I should be polishing my halo.

Last night, as a reward for getting so many things accomplished with a minimum of whining, I bopped around the Google listings of Pfeffer "Life As We Knew It" . And it was a good thing I bopped, because I discovered that the state of Idaho has named Life As We Knew It as their 2010 Idaho Kids Read The Same Book teen selection.

Naturally, I am thrilled about this. But I waited until this morning to tell my mother. I figured she'd had excitement enough yesterday learning her handicap permit had been renewed!