Good idea, Harried Psych Major. Here's mine.

On the job front, I was given a lot more work to do because the skinflint boss stopped replacing terminees, just over-burdening those who remained on the job, redistributing work to us, despite the fact that most of the employees are already working weekends and evenings to keep up, and not even being paid for it. I still managed to get all my deadlines met, without giving the skinflint any free overtime, which is against my principles. One of my cardinal principles is not to give skinflints free overtime. I don't want to be an "enabler", making it easy for him to be a cheap bastard. I know for a fact that there were qualified people who applied for jobs, a good friend of mine being one. Why should the skinflint hire three people to replace terminees, when all he has to do is nothing at all, and sit back and watch as his overly burdened employees take it upon themselves to give up their weekends and evenings for free to replace those who leave? I always resisted being bullied.

My health. I got lithotripsy. Knocked me for a loop. That makes four kidney stones, and counting. I thought lithotripsy was the easy way out, smashing the stone before it gets me, but it is not an easy way out. Lithotripsy knocks hell out of you.

My wife got her dream job, finally. She's a recreation director for old ladies with Alzheimer's. She loves the old ladies. She only works a few hours a week, and the hourly rate isn't much, so it doesn't cure our financial woes, but at least she loves the job and she's great at it.

My son still manages to support his family of three, despite the fact that his wife doesn't earn a dime and he doesn't have an employer. He books jobs for bands, from home. He still can't afford a car. At one point in the year his computer was down and he missed getting much money in, and he asked me for money, and I told him to fix the long term prospects before dealing with the short term bills, to get his wife to work, since he is the one taking care of the baby anyway, and if necessary to get himself a second job, part time, to supplement his current income, which he said isn't something to fully count on. I did not give him any money. I wanted him to use his current financial pressure to influence his wife to help out more, rather than having me eliminate the pressure and let her be a lazy ass. In the end, nothing changed, he got his money by himself, didn't need help from me, and his wife still does nothing.

My older daughter in England left her British boyfriend to live with a guy from the midwest, but that didn't work out, and when she tried to return to England she was refused admittance. So she came home to us. She got a job in the same old age home as my wife, and was pretty happy. She got herself a new boyfriend in Florida through Eharmony and met him a few times. She visited him in Florida and enjoyed living with him and his daughter. That could be a future life for her. Then there was a sour note between us. I received a letter telling me that I had an outstanding loan of $30,000 that I had to start paying on, and I confronted my daughter on it, and she eventually admitted that her British boyfriend forged my signature on a loan a few years ago and they thought I'd never find out because they'd just pay it when it came due, but they didn't know exactly when it would come due. That's not ok. That is a major betrayal of one's family. Now she's back in Florida with her boyfriend and his daughter, and she's seeing to it that the loan gets paid.

My youngest daughter, now a senior in college and budding music teacher, did her student teaching this past semester and passed the Praxis test to be a certified teacher. Sometimes she says she doesn't want to be a teacher, she wants to be a performer. She's very headstrong. She's also very talented. I hope she gets herself a teaching job after graduation in May 2008 and is able to stand on her own two feet financially. I hope that she continues to live with us so she isn't stuck with rent to pay, and I hope she is less demanding and obnoxious to her mother and doesn't throw any more tantrums. If she wants to be a performer, who's stopping her? Go ahead. Become a star. I hope you do. But meantime, make some money.

Grandson is the light of my wife's life. He is six now. He got a nasty skin disorder called Pleva, suspected of being caused by vaccinations. It made him look like he had chicken pox, and this had to be explained to his teacher. Fortunately the skin disorder finally started to go down.

I got a new Imac computer. That was a lucky break for me. My Dell was slow as can be, taking 15 minutes just to start up. I couldn't afford a new one. But then my brother told me that my niece never cashed her inheritance check, the one my brother sent to her after my mom died. My niece was insulted by it. It was only $4,000. She expected a lot more, since my brother, the executor, told her she'd probably be getting about $20,000 and then only sent her $4,000 and an explanation. It was a mixup. At first the lawyers said that niece was entitled to an equal share with me and my brother, but then the lawyers said niece was entitled to absolutely nothing, and that was their final decision, that all mom's money was to be divided between her two living sons, not to the daughter of our deceased sister. So bro sent niece $4,000 out of the goodness of his heart, not legally responsible to send her anything, and niece was extremely pissed off and never cashed it, never even responded. To her, we are both dead. She is the wife of a really rich guy, and she only works when she feels like it, or else maybe she travels. Bro kept $2,000 for himself and sent me the other $2,000.

My brother was feeling pretty bad about the whole thing. He was feeling guilty. When he emailed me that he was giving up on niece, after making a few last attempts to reach her, and that he was sending me $2,000, I emailed him back one word - YIPPEE! That made him smile.