Found Happiness

Sitting on my bureau in my bedroom is a huge glass beer stein I won back in college (I won’t say what, precisely, I won it for…). Every day when I arrive home I toss any loose change from my pockets into the mug.
It’s been ages since I last rolled all those coins. In effort to find new sources of holiday cash, I lugged the mug up to mall and poured contents into one of those big, green Coinstar Machines.
$103.82. One hundred and three dollars. And eighty-two cents. Who knew?
So I turned the entire balance into a gift certificate for Amazon.com.  It costs nothing, and I can use it immediately.
PLUS, they have a promo going until 12-15 — if you send in the bottom half of the receipt you get from the machine, Coinstar will send you an ADDITIONAL $10 (that’s ten bucks!) to use for the service as original GC.  I could have done Starbucks or a dozen other retail or online vendors.
Found Happiness, that’s what I call this.  I empty the lint from my pockets, and I get a bonus.
What did I do with my “found” money?  I spent part of it on some presents for others.  And then I looked in my Amazon Wish List.  Hmmm.  This is where I post things that I want to get for myself, but don’t, because… I dunno.  Maybe a little bit of guilt, like, “Do you really need ANOTHER book or CD, Jim?”
Honestly?  YES!  So I turned part of my Found Money into:

• a new Enya CD (and WInter Came)
• Yo Yo Ma’s fabulous Songs of Joy & Peace (Wexford Carol with Alison Krauss is AWESOME!)
• Daniel Pink’s new book, and
• two CD’s by the ethereal Loreen McKennitt (A Midwinter Night’s Dream and An Ancient Muse).
• Oh, and I FINALLY bought a copy of Jill Bolte Taylor’s fabulous “My Stroke of Insight.

Music, Muses, and learning.  This truly is, for me, some FOUND HAPPINESS!  🙂