Blogging is Very Useful Sometimes...

.... even though it's not a blue engine.
(I know only parents of little boys or girls who love trains may get this one , so I offered the link :)*

Take what happened last night, for example. After the boys went to bed, I was planning to go out to return some things that need to be returned to the stores before it's too late and to clean the house because it's extremely messy (e.g. I just unloaded the dishwasher from the Thanksgiving dishes so I could load it again with the stinky dishes in the sink), but I was checking some blogs before heading out when I came upon this post by one of my blogging friends, Professing Mama. The words "submission guidelines" rang a bell and I looked at the date -- I had an abstract for a conference I don't want to miss that was due yesterday, and it was past 9 p.m.! I had less than three hours to come up with it.

So I went to work and came up with an abstract that I'm very excited about. Better yet, in the process of writing it, I found a full book online (from the 1880s) in Google Books that will contribute to my dissertation research, yay!! So, thanks to blogging, I'm not only be able to go to a conference that I really want to, but I have found a book that will help my rearch, and will start using Google books from now on (this seems to be another "very useful" tool).

*I'm going to write a post sometime about the things I wish I had, and one of them would be the ability to be really witty and funny, like some people I know. I'm very proud of the rare joke or witty saying that I pull out, and this is one of them. I know this sounds lame, but it is very true... I do have a good sense of humor, I think, but I just wish I could be funny at the right times. (note for my Brazilian readers: to be "witty" can mean to have presença de espírito to say something funny at the right time).