A friend of mine died Monday morning. I'd been visiting him in the hospital for weeks, since early June. He'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer around Christmas, but nobody thought that when he went into the hospital he'd never come out. He did pretty well up until a couple of weeks ago, and then lost ground very quickly. His sister had hoped to get him out for hospice care so he could die at home, but she's from out of town and had to settle things at work and get someone to look after her cats, and by the time she got here he was too weak to take home. It's hit me harder than I expected, since we were just casual friends-at-work.

To help deal with the stress, I wanted--no, needed to knit something, so I've been working on my Ugly Shawl. Kept going until I was about to run out of yarn, then bound off. Now I'm working a simple saw-tooth edging on it using a yarn from the same grab-bag--it's the same yarn, but the colors are different, related but brighter. It's going to be a truly ugly shawl, but making it has been exactly what I needed recently. There's just something calming about the physical act of knitting. How weird is that? But how nice.

Speaking of simple, I made a sort of cobbler the other night: preheated the oven to 350. Greased an oblong glass baking pan. Dumped a bag of frozen raspberries and a bag of frozen blackberries into a pot, added a little water and a little sugar, and heated until it was bubbly, and put it in the baking pan. Melted a blop of soft margarine in a little bowl, and put some cinnamon sugar in another little bowl. Opened a can of Pillsbury biscuits and dipped each one into the melted margarine and then into the cinnamon sugar and put them on top of the berries, and then baked it for 30 minutes. Ate it warm with a little spoonful of vanilla ice cream. I was delighted that it turned out so well because my oven doesn't heat evenly and consequently I don't bake very often. I really wanted some comfort food, and happened to have those things in the house. I ate the last of it for breakfast this morning. Yummy. (You can't see much of the fruit here--it's under the biscuit.)

The friend who gave me hostas last year asked if I wanted more this year--of course I said yes--and also came away with a bagful of siberian iris, four little white cleome plants, and a gorgeous silver perennial artemesia. Lord knows where I'm going to put everything, but I'm sure I'll find a space somewhere. (In fact, the artemesia is now under the climbing rose near the backdoor.)

Between refinancing the house and getting stiffed by the plumber and my friend's illness and death, it's been a stressful couple of months. Now I'm adding to the stress by considering whether to commit to a new car. With Chrysler offering to match the govt.'s $4500 Cash for Clunkers, it's possible I could actually afford a brand new Dodge Caliber SXT. Thing is, it will make money even tighter than it's been (which seems hard to imagine; also scary), and there will be *nothing* I can fall back on if there's some kind of emergency. On the other hand, it seems doubtful I'll ever get a better deal, goodness knows the van isn't worth anything as a trade-in. I think I'm going to do a test drive next week. I may not like the car. I'm considering it because it's affordable, it has fold-down back seats so I can (theoretically) fit both dogs into the back, and I can buy it in town so wouldn't have to figure out how to get the van, which doesn't go any faster than 35, to a dealer in a different town. It would be nice to be able to get out of town--one thing my friend's death has made me consider is how much I would like to spend more time with my family and friends, and this being Forgottonia, the only way to get anywhere else is to drive. I wish the US still had a good passenger rail system. But we don't, and I need a new car.