Non-attachment

I wouldn't say I had the most productive of weekends, but it wasn't bad. Friday night I met some friends for dinner, which was fun. I don't do that often, but I always enjoy it. Barb was in town for a wedding, so I met her and Patti and Nancy at Cheeseburger in Paradise and ate way too much, but had a great time.

I got home around 9:00, but since I'd had a drink at dinner (only one!), I was falling asleep by 10:00, so I went ahead and went to bed. I didn't have anything in particular to do on Saturday, which was good since it rained like the end of the world. It cleared off in the early afternoon and I went out and ran a few errands and had a late lunch at Chipotlé, then came home and ended up going upstairs and taking a nap, then reading in bed for most of the evening.

So of course I was wide awake, and stayed up way too late watching streaming movies on Netflix, which I love. I watched "Monsters, Inc." and "Up," neither of which I had seen. "Up" hit a little too close to home, and made me cry, but I loved both of them.

I didn't get to bed until about 2:30, which normally would have been fine, but I had agreed to participate in a study that a university is going on interactions in groups in Second Life. My timeslot was 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. this morning, which wasn't too bad, but I could definitely have stayed in bed a while longer. But I didn't, I got up, washed my face, and signed on.

I can't really talk about it since the study is ongoing, but there are details here. I see that the study has been closed for now, but they may open it up again in July. They were paying $5,000 Linden (the Second Life virtual currency), which equates to about $20, so it was fun and worthwhile. It was a Victorian mystery that you had to solve by teamwork with 5 or 6 other people, then answer some survey questions afterwards. I found it a little hard to get into at first, but it was fun once it got going.

After the SL stuff, I boxed up some books to take to Half Price Books to sell. I've been doing that about every weekend; it doesn't pay much, but it gets some stuff out of the house and gives me a little extra pocket money. Last week I did pretty well, and got $25.00; this week I only got $6. But I always figure it's $6 I didn't have yesterday, and it cleared some space on the bookshelves.

I always check Amazon to see if any of the books are worth anything, and if they appear to be, I'll list them for sale there since I can normally get LOTS more for them there than at Half Price. But there's the hassle of packing them up and mailing them, of course, so it probably all balances out. Unless I run across one that's worth quite a bit. If I can sell a book for $50 or so--and I have--then it's obviously worth the packaging and the trip to the post office.

I remember when Liora was talking about selling books and using the proceeds to buy her Kindle. At the time, I thought I would never sell my books, but I've gotten out of that mindset. I have books that are 20 or 30 years old, or older, that I'll never look at again. With the internet, I don't really need reference books, and I'm finding I'm less and less inclined to want to purchase fiction books that I won't re-read. And I'm trying to practice non-attachment. It's going pretty well so far.

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