Coping

I had a whole other post in mind for today, but came across some information that I think everyone should have access to in these troubled economic times. As I've said before, I don't want to call this a recession because it's really a depression. If you don't believe me, read up on what happened during the Great Depression. We're currently missing the dust bowl, but that's the only major difference between what's happening now and the Great Depression.

Anyway, I found a whole website devoted to dealing with the current depression. It's called Recession Wire, and the particular post I started with was this one, about how to deal with being laid off. Some of the information seems to apply to people who have lost a job, and anyone else who needs some extra income. Check out the link for Discounts for the Unemployed. At the bottom of the list, "Government Money for Your New Career" seems like a winner, but only contains some very general information, with no starting point for where to look, and no links to more information. 

And I just found another one of their Just-Laid-Off Checklists. This particular one is less about concrete steps you can do to make some money, and more about how to deal with the emotional impact of a lay off or being fired. And believe me, this part is every bit as important as making more money.

Each of those posts has a list of related posts at the bottom of the page, so there's a lot of information there.

If you belong to a subscription service like Google Reader, it might be worthwhile to add them to your list of blogs to read.

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I don't know if I mentioned this on my blog, but there's a sweepstakes currently happening on Twitter, and today is the last day to enter (moved up from the 10th). The final prizes will be awarded tomorrow at 10 am Eastern Daylinght Savings Time (I think). They are/were giving away 10 MacBook Pros, one a day. But they made such problems for Twitter that they've decided to give all the remaining ones out tomorrow. So, if you have a Twitter account, check here for more information.

And while I'm on the topic of something for nothing, check out the Family Dollar 50 Days of Giveaways. It's possible to win a car or an extremely large screen TV as well as many more prizes. And if you enter and don't win, it makes a very sad sound.

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I ended up my weekend pretty late last night after having spent most of Sunday watching movies on TV and knitting. Unfortunately for the knitting part, I noticed late in the day that I'd dropped a stitch early in the day, and it had ruuuuunnnnn! I'm a big one for fixing mistakes like that, but this was such a disaster that I wound up frogging almost everything I did yesterday and starting over almost from scratch.

The movie watching was fun, though. I saw: Live Once, Die Twice; The Avengers; and Independence Day.

Live Once, Die Twice was a good thriller to watch once. Unlike some movies that I want to see over and over, it was pretty much finished when it was over, but it was an enjoyable one-time shot.

The Avengers tried hard, but it had a lot to live up to, and just didn't manage to succeed. In the New Avengers, Joanna Lumbly wasn't Diana Rigg, but she was good, and she had Patrick MacNee to work with. But neither of the stars made me care about them or like them very much. I enjoyed the supporting cast much more than the stars, Eileen Atkins as Alice, a machine gun toting little old lady agent was the hit of the movie. And Jim Broadbent made an excellent Mother. I was especially interested in him because he'll be playing Professor Slughorn in the new Half Blood Prince movie. 

I guess Independence Day doesn't really need a review because everyone must've seen it by now.

Off the topic of movies, but still in a science fiction theme, don't forget that Warehouse 13 will be premiering on what will become (tomorrow) the SyFy Channel. This premise has the capacity for total failure or completly fabulous. I'm hoping for fabulous. And I'm prepared for a slow start. SG-1 was OK when it started, but it took a little while before it really hit it's stride. So did Babylon 5, one of the best thing that's ever been on TV. Blakes 7, however hit the ground running!

Well, my DVR is full, and I need to catch up on the knitting I flubbed yesterday, so I'm going to run.

Have a great week!

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Addition:

I found this great article about a newly-found black hole that's different from all the others, and I thought you might enjoy it.