So as of today, I'm shy just $252 of my Citi Thank You card spending goal, and I just another week and a half to spend that. I'll likely wind up at Shop Rite and just buy more gift cards. All I can say is, it's going to be one heck of a bill...about $1,500, but I must (and will) pay it in full.

Not much else new.

I did an interesting legal focus group last Friday at the law offices of a firm trying a negligence case. Two of their attorneys presented both sides (they didn't tell us which side they were actually representing til it was over) to about 10 of us and we discussed and decided the case. And they paid us $100. I'd love to do more of those but you don't see these too often.

I learned about it by seeing a full-page ad in the local paper, which i decided was reason enough to renew my Sunday only subscription for another $20, something I'd been debating.

Freelance work has been dead. I THINK I'm working the polls in my hometown a week from today, but registrar hasn't confirmed that yet. I'll give it a few more days and then call her Friday if I haven't heard from her. My only worry is that she finds enough other people and somehow overlooks me, despite my calling with my interest as soon as I heard the budget was defeated in the first go-round.

I'm doing something tonight I haven't done in a VERY long time...meeting a strange man for coffee. Potential friend. I'm reluctant to get involved with anyone becus even if they're understanding of your underemployed situation, I doubt they could understand my desire to spend NOTHING extra. Nothing. And I don't want to be a leech on someone else. I feel like there are so many things I'm deferring that I just can't justify frivolous stuff like...coffee or meals out.

Over 2 years after my layoff, I finally got around to asking my old boss's boss for a Linked In recommendation. I knew he would say something really good about me, and he had a pretty weighty role at my old employer. He was the one who hired me, and the one who laid me off. I guess I felt a little funny asking him, for that reason, but more recently I figured, what the heck. I always thought very highly of him. He's very personable, very intelligent, very capable and I must say, I felt personally attracted to him. For some reason, there were a lot of people in my old group at the company who had a strong disliking for him. Especially one who I worked very closely with. So it was hard to remain objective; I never really saw or experienced any of the bad things that were said about him but I often wondered how people's perceptions of the same person could be so skewed.

Anyway, I was very pleased to finally hear from him a few weeks after i asked for the LI reference; he's going to write one for me, he's just been busy.

I managed to transplant three silky (or gray) dogwood seedlings spreading out from the mama plant to a bare area on the hill out back where I had to have the damaged sugar maple taken down. I don't know if they'll make it or not; it was a real bear digging in the soil which was compacted by roots of poison ivy, lots of brambles nad other stuff. It'd be nice to have a small grove of silky dogwood growing there rather than invasives of every stripe.

I may try to sell more silky dogwood seedlings as well as lily of the valley pips and pachysandra cheap on Craig's List. Also could divide my blue milkweed and sell some of that too.