The project I've been working on for the past couple of days is a pair of upcoming workshops for teachers. You know, if you've been reading for a while, that this is one of the things I routinely did for my erstwhile job, and I really enjoy it. So I dragooned The Computer Guy into joining me to offer workshops to meet the six-hour technology professional development requirement for our state teachers. This is really a great need, and I sincerely believe that we will be able to offer an excellent product.

He is not hiring me to do this; we're just partnering up. I'm doing the publicity. He produced the flyer, is fronting the money, and adds respectability to the venture by having a company in the first place. If the workshops fill, we'll share the work of actually preparing and presenting the things. His company will benefit from the publicity, and if the workshops fill, I'll get paid from the profits. If the workshops don't fill, I'll have spent a couple of days working on it, and enjoyed myself. An investment of a couple of days and a bit of gas money seems worth it.

That's the flyer on the right. It's a quick flyer, so that gives you an idea of the level of computer skill the guy is bringing to the table.

And of course I know the state frameworks and the realities of the classroom, plus having lots of experience with teacher training.

So on Wednesday, I emailed the schools, did a couple of blog posts and a press release on the subject, and put some announcements into the online forums. I also filled out that form I told you about and some other stuff like that. Yesterday I picked up the flyers and carried them around to the local schools. I dropped one by for Client #3, since she has a lot of B2E trade, and she kindly put the word out on the media specialists' listserve, of which I am not a member. Today I'll be taking them up to the neighboring town's schools.

Yesterday, we had a request for info from two counties away and a request to do the training at a local school in August. No actual purchase orders, but for quick initial response (especially since I didn't email the school two counties away), it's encouraging.

We're also at the top of Google for reasonable searches on the subject, ahead of both the local university and the state Science and Technology Authority's offerings, and you know how I gloat over that sort of thing. The Computer Guy was impressed, too.

Speaking of SEO, the post that I told you about now has many funny comments on it, so if you didn't read it before you might want to now. And it is the custom among SEO bloggers to propose posts on their blogs to consolidation sites -- kind of like recommending posts here at xanga, except that they take the post to another spot, which is set aside for this purpose. Such are the quaint customs of the SEOs. Anyway, mine got elevated in this manner, and I am all excited about that, too.

I also heard from Client #4, who is one of my June start date people, and she appears not to want The Dark Art Lite at all, but rather to have big plans. We haven't talked figures, but it sounds encouraging. And Client #2 set me up an email address at this site, which has to be some sort of vote of confidence.

In short, I've had lots of work this week, and it has been quite successful. I could do this sort of thing all the time, chortling to myself happily when no one is around. It has not yet resulted in any actual spondulicks in my bank account for this week, though I did get a commission check and tutoring fees, so I will be able to feed my houseguests if they actually show up. Do you remember that book, Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow? There may be another step in there, like "Learn How to Bill People" and "Try to Work Only on Things You Are Actually Going to Be Paid For." That's the thing I like about salaries. You can just go ahead and work all you want, and someone gives you funds on a regular basis and you don't have to think about that stuff.

Where are the Medicis when I need them? Do you think they would be patrons of SEO if they were around today?

Well, it is good to learn new things. I may go over to the Small Business Development people and see if they can give me any pointers.

I am also going to have to try to get other aspects of my life in order. You may have noticed, if you have no problems of your own to think about, that whenever my life gets exciting, I lose track of things like housework and exercise and eating properly. In this case, the level of excitement has been pretty high for quite a while. My house is pretty disorderly, I have added enough pounds that I now must either lose some or find larger professional clothes before I can actually do the presentations, and my family probably would be telling me that they are feeling grumpy and resentful if I were paying enough attention to them to notice.

I'll work on those things later, though. Today I have more school visits, preliminary research for Client #4,  upkeep on Clients 1 and 3, and that new program to master.

Yesterday was an eventful day, if a day spent sitting at a computer can ever be properly called eventful.

I got the word that the people who were thinking of buying the store web site have decided not to do so. This means that I can take caring for that site off my list of unpaid things to do. It also means that I have to decide what to do with the store xanga. I began detaching it from the store, in case I decide just to keep it. It can be handy to have a nice site to stick things into. I debated about whether to link to it in this post, so that I could benefit from the good advice of my excellent readers here, but of course doing so threatens my anonymity. Tell you what -- a lot of you already know, so I am going to go ahead and ask your opinion. It's an investment of a couple of hours a day. Is it worth my keeping it? Should I look for a new sponsor for it? What do you think?

I also got a rejection from a job application. This is not bad news. For one thing, PayScale assures me that it would have been a pay cut from my previous job, so I wouldn't have been able to take it anyway. For another, it was nice to hear something. I have now applied for 20 positions. I've had two interviews -- the one which offered me a position I couldn't afford to take, and the university temp lady, who was very positive and offered a temp job that I couldn't fit into my calendar. The rule of thumb for job hunters is that you can expect one interview for every ten applications and one job for every ten interviews, so I guess I'm on track (though I am hoping that the job offer I got is not the one in a hundred). Still, it can feel as though I'm sending things out into the ether with no way of knowing what happens next. #2 son pointed out that having had a response on this position, one of the first I applied for, implies that I may yet hear from some of the others.

Something cool happened, too. I submitted a blog post to one of the big SEO blogs (don't laugh -- there are big SEO blogs in the same sense that there are big knitting blogs) and they posted it. I was quite happy about that. There were notes in my mailbox all through the day saying someone had commented, and all of the comments were nice, so it was fun to take little breaks during the work day to go read them. And one said to drop him a line, and it turns out that he has some content provision (that's what us SEOs call writing) to farm out, and is checking with his client about farming it out to me. So that was exciting.

Then Fine Soprano made a great suggestion. That had happened the day before, actually, She's a music teacher, and I am doing some marketing to schools at the moment, so I told her about it. She reminded me of our mutual friend the Public Information Officer for the school district. I have never yet included him when marketing anything. However,  I took her suggestion, and he emailed me right back saying that he would add the info to his official list for teachers.

First I had to fill out a form. I found this form hilariously funny. Here's the first question, following the part where you fill in your names and stuff:

"NSDC Standards (5.01)

            Context Standards (Check all that apply and provide details of how the event meets the standard.)

___X_ 1. Requires skillful school and school district leaders who guide continuous instructional

                 improvement."

Yes, you are reading that correctly. You are supposed to explain how your workshop requires skill on the part of the district superintendent. All the "questions" are like this. That is because they have just lifted a bunch of phrases from the NSDC standards document. Fortunately, that document is online, and I was able to go read the sections and then come back and write something relevant to the section for my "answer" to the "question," but isn't that a stitch?

Anyway, being on the official list makes it more likely that the workshops will fill, and having the workshops fill would make it certain that I could pay my bills in July. I have two clients who are supposed to come on board in June, plus the assignments of the Computer Guy, so I am feeling pretty sanguine about June. And most jobs for which I am qualified would have August start dates. So I may be okay for the summer, and then I may very well be employed after that -- or else still working  freelance, but feeling more confident about the lance in question.

Thomas Friedman, in The World is Flat, talks about the kind of people who can expect to have jobs in a flat world like the one in which we now live. The cheapest, of course, but that isn't an option for most of us in America or Europe. I can't even be the cheapest in my town, I have been surprised to discover. To be employable in the new economy, we have to be among the four kinds of people Friedman says can count on jobs. We can be  special, specialized, "anchored" (doing a job that has to be done in situ, like cutting hair), or really adaptable.

I think it is possible that being able to write simultaneously for humans and search engine robots is a sufficiently specialized skill that, in combination with a high level of adaptability, I could be employable.

This has been a long and probably also a dull post. It could have been worse; I could have described to you the work I did yesterday.

Today I have a couple of blog posts to do, and I need to finish learning how to use Visual Studio. I may need to pick up flyers and carry them around to the schools, and I have tutoring again. I have possible house guests for the weekend, so I suppose I had better do some housework at some point.

I will leave you with the other exciting thing that happened yesterday: my son made me a table.

I have not photographed it well. Nor is it in its home spot. It is just sitting in the middle of the floor. But it is pretty amazing, isn't it? He made it in welding class, so it is all metal.

I will find the best possible place for it, and take a picture that conveys its true gloriosity.

First, I was completely wrong about the Computer Guy's reasons for having me learn that program. It was something technical that makes complete sense. I'll go study it some more.

Second, the post I submitted to the big famous SEO blog was posted today. I am excited by this way out of proportion to the actual importance of the honor.

As I was driving to a tutoring appointment yesterday the phone rang. I am pretty strict about cell phones while driving, but after all, it could have been a job offer, so I answered it.

It was The Computer Guy. He told me his timeline for the sample site and I told him that his blog post was in draft form but I still needed to get some of the numbers out of it.

People's eyes slide off the screen when there are too many numbers in a post.

"Okay," he said. "Do you use Blah Blah Blah web tools?"

I was peering at street signs at the time, so I am willing to believe that he said something else. I think I said nothing at all.

The Computer Guy said something about being able to put text directly onto the sites, and I suggested that he send me the name of the program in question, and I'd learn it. "You can e-mail me things and I can tweak them," he said despairingly.

"No, really," I said. "I'm quick."

Turns out it was Visual Studio Express. Not Blah Blah Blah.

So when I got home last night I downloaded the program, watched the video, found and worked through the kids' tutorials, and generally got myself up to speed on this new program.

I was a little mystified. This is a web design program for amateurs. There was some controversy about it when it first came out, with people worrying that it would diminish the value of good web design. Imagine the monks of medieval Ireland objecting to the idea of literacy among the common people, and you will have a sense of the tone in these discussions.

During my study I had a few fleeting moments of wondering what we were going to do with this stuff. After all, this is a guy who uses XHTML1.0.Strict, not transitional like you and me. What are the chances that he wants to switch to a program that lets people drag and drop radio buttons?

What, in particular, are the chances that he wants to allow someone like me to drag and drop radio buttons onto his sites?

It hit me as I came out to make the coffee this morning: it was supposed to be easy enough for me to use. Being a real live engineer, The Computer Guy has misunderstood the level of difficulty involved in using HTML for text. I do it all the time. He's thinking that -- to put it in our shared language -- since it is challenging to design an Aran sweater, it is also hard to knit a garter stitch scarf.

I could be wrong, but that's my working hypothesis. I emailed him delicately asking what the heck we were going to do with that cool new program.

It could have been the result at least in part of an exchange we'd had earlier in the day. We're offering technology training workshops for local teachers, so I had sent him the course description of one of the tech workshops offered by the local authorities. Here it is:

"In this workshop, attendees will have the opportunity to view new websites that correlate with the AR Frameworks and to navigate through them."

This is a six-hour workshop, and the attendees will be looking at websites together.

"That's not tech training," he said. I could hear his brow furrowing.

"True," I agreed, "but it is what our local teaches are being offered. You can see why I am so confident."

Perhaps he thought then that, if this is what teachers imagined people did in tech training sessions, then he had better find a much easier program for me to use.

Anyway, if you have any desire to build web pages for your own amusement, check out that link. It's quite fun to play with. It still requires you to learn code, and it's not compatible with html, so it's not going to be useful if you are working with anyone else. It reminds me, in that, of Esperanto. But it is fun.

So, yeah, I'll let you know how it comes out.

The winner of the First to Bloom race this year is New Dawn, an award-winning rose known for its rampaging habits, and it certainly does have that habit in our garden.

It's several weeks later than normal, presumably because the caterpillars ate all of last month's rose buds.

I'm glad to see it at last.

I'm involved in a couple of pitches that would result in nice round figures in income, and have a new assignment as well. There hasn't been a whole lot for me to apply to recently, but if the pitches happen to be successful, I'll be settled for the next couple of months anyway.

We're voting today for judge. I don't feel very informed about the candidates. I've had a couple of e-mails from friends recommending one of them, I've heard some conversation about another, and the one that I actually knew has withdrawn from the race...

How well-informed do you need to be to vote? I've known people who felt that the main point of public education was to have well-informed voters, people who refuse to vote unless they have very strong feelings in favor of one candidate, and people who feel that they have a duty to vote, even if they're just making a random selection.

I tend to be the one cramming with Google at the last minute.

Today I have stuff to write, work on one of the aforementioned pitches, tutoring, and a client visit. This evening is "Share Day" at the Tuesday night class, and I am inclined not to go. I probably should be ashamed of myself for that inclination, but people are encouraged to stand up and say what they've learned this year, and so many people can't stop once they start talking in public. I think it's nerves. They're nervous about speaking in front of others, they get started, they haven't made any plan for how to end, so they just keep talking long after they've run out of anything cogent to say. So I planned instead to go to the rehearsal of the choirlet, and volunteered to be the baker for the week (I told you there was a lot of cake going around here), but have just had an email postponing the rehearsal to Thursday, so I could go and listen politely to people's maunderings.

I'm maundering myself, today. I'll stop.

Having received all sorts of sensible and supportive advice about Erin, I sucked it up and began another band of Celtic creatures to finish up the back.

The Summer Reading Challenge starts on June 1st. You make up your own challenge for this. Last year it started off as a challenge to read every day and post about it. I realize that it doesn't sound like much of a challenge, but summers have been intrinsically challenging for me for some time. This summer might also be, since I am jobhunting and perhaps will actually have a new job at some point this summer. But you can make your own challenge. Some people last year began with a list of things to read, or challenged themselves to read all their unread books, stuff like that. Sometimes a challenge will be thrown out -- photograph the places you read, for example. As I recall, it was a nice little discipline for the summer.

This little creature may be too much of a challenge for me.

I joined Facebook to play Scrabble with my kids. I don't really have time for Facebook, so -- while I haven't rejected any requests to be friends -- I do ignore all the people the site offers me as friends, even though I know them, and I never post anything there.

Now that I am unemployed, I could perhaps be more friendly on Facebook, but I always feel that keeping up at Xanga is about all I can do in the way of online socializing.

However, I am friends with my daughters, and they invited me to join in the Zoo at Facebook. It seems harmless enough. You choose a little creature. My daughter plunked it down in San Francisco for me. I felt that I had done the cooperative thing.

No. These creatures get sad if you don't play with them. You have to feed them. You have to earn ethereal coins to buy their food by playing with other people's pets. You have to arrange for them to sleep. Yes, that is correct, they get all exhausted if you don't push the sleeping button. They are in this way more trouble than real pets.

It's cute, though.

Yesterday I made it to Sunday School for a few minutes. I have, this semester, been messing around with music during Sunday School time on most Sundays, and this summer I will be teaching the Jr. High Sunday School class, so I have missed the ladies int hat group. They asked me about my job hunt and I told them that I was still unemployed and would they let me know if they heard of any cool jobs.

"She only wants to know about cool jobs," said one, who works at Wal-Mart. She later told us that she makes $9 an hour, and the others were impressed. One woman had retired with her income at $10.65 an hour. How can people live on $9 an hour? I honestly feel that I was just making ends meet in my previous job. One of the other ladies pointed out to me that I had a lot of advantages: a husband with a job that provides me with health insurance, skills that people are willing to pay for, freelance work while I search.

I acknowledged that I was being a brat about it. I also had to go play bells, so I acknowledged that I was only showing up for long enough to whine at them and then leaving.

I resolved to quit being a whiny brat about my unemployment. We'll see how long that lasts. On the way out of church, one of the ladies invited me to her Triple Crown party. She requires gloves and hat. She told me to bring my girls -- Girls, put it on your calendars.

Yesterday's conference was interesting. I had actually done quite a thorough post about it, but it disappeared into the ether, even though I had saved it, and I don't have time to do it again, so you will just have to do without all that useful information on hymnology.

There was cake.

There were also people there from one of the places where I've applied for a job, and I hope they will, when they see my application, think to themselves, "That name seems familiar... ah, yes, that's the woman who was so witty and informative on the subject of Victorian missionary hymns. She'd make a great Adult Education Director! Let's hire her immediately."

When I whine about the possibility of having to go back into the classroom, it is not the actual teaching that I dread. I like the varieties of teaching that I've been doing all these years since I left the classroom -- either going in and doing an exciting presentation and then leaving, which is like a performance, or working one on one with people to help them understand and act on things, which is like a relationship. I enjoy both of those. I just don't want the staff meetings and grades and departmental politics and stuff that go with full-time teaching.

So yesterday after the conference, I was doing some Deep Thinking about my job situation while weeding, scrubbing, doing laundry, and knitting.

Basically, I want to be able to continue to do the research, writing, instructional design, and training work which I have been doing. I'd like to continue with SEO and SEM, but they are largely just examples of the kind of work you can do with the skills I like to use -- research, writing, problem solving, stuff like that. In order to be able to do this, I either must find a job which will allow me to continue using those skills, or collect enough contract work to make ends meet. I've been applying for jobs that seem to be the right kind of thing for me. I should perhaps also use those research and problem-solving skills to identify more people who might need my services, and approach them with my resume in hand. Well, of course I should do that, since it is a normal part of a job hunt, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, what will all the work I've been doing.

 Erin's sleeves are finished. I am not sure that they really go with the body of Erin. I still have the back of the sweater from the armscye up, and I have decided, on a mad whim, to use a chart from Poetry in Stitches to finish it, on the grounds that a) I am tired of the pattern bands that actually belong on Erin and b) I have already trifled with the pattern so much that it won't matter.

In fact, the whole sad story of Erin...

Well, I don't actually have time to tell it right now, as I have to go sing in the early service. but I may come back to it. If it seems to you that I would be making a terrible mistake by using a Poetry in Stitches flower rather than the Erin Celtic beasts, though, please say so. It may be foolish, after putting in all that time on this cardigan, to be whimsical at the last pattern band and risk spoiling the while thing.

What can I say? I like bridges. This was yesterday's walk. A beautiful day.

Client #2's page rank is up. I am not sayng that this is because I have been writing his content this month. I am just mentioning the fact.

Have I said how much fun I'm having? I am. Yesterday's writing task was doing a little something about the Technology Exchange Center, a place where businesses can post their technological needs and scientists can post their new ideas, and the two groups can find each other, all in the interests of ecological sustainability. I find this such a sensible and useful idea, I'm surprised that it hasn't been done before. I wanted to jump in and do publicity for them, but I have so far restrained myself. Check it out, though, and register your green technologies that you've been working on in the garage.

Then I worked a bit with a client who has a parenting resource center. She had a masseusse on hand again this week. This could become addictive.

A walk, and then I did some work on the Victorian missionary hymns for today's conference. Just for completeness's sake, I googled "Victorian missionary hymns." I am sorry to say that this very blog is the #1 source on Google for this search string.

From this we can conclude that no one really gives a flip about Victorian missionary hymns. I will endeavor to be entertaining on the subject, even so. We have a little simulation, followed by my presentation, then singing, then an actress doing a bit of living history, and then some more singing. And if you ever want a list of all hymns including the word "heathen," you just let me know.

I also did some thinking about a proposal for tech workshops for the schools, some tutoring, and a bit of knitting.

I applied for another fun-sounding job this morning, "publicity and information specialist" at the university press. I think that I would do a good job for them. It is cheering that there are such positions coming up on the screen fairly regularly, even if I haven't heard back from any of them. I am also getting vast quantities of spam and phone calls offering me fake jobs and "business opportunities," so I'm thinking that at least one of the jobs I applied for was a fake. I guess if you are going to offer fake jobs for the purpose of getting hold of people's contact information, you will naturally make them sound fun.

There is a at last a rosebud showing a bit of color.

Normally at this time we have lots of roses. Fine Soprano has lots. I haven't asked Partygirl, but I know that she is usually in the rose competitions and the garden tours, so if there is a problem with her roses, she probably would have mentioned it.

We have had The Year of the Caterpillars, though, so we are just now beginning to see some bloom. Or at least incipient blooom.

I have some more garden pictures for you. Happy lettuces. Winsome columbine. Stuff like that. We have begun being able to step into the garden while cooking and grab a pepper and some herbs for the pot.

I wanted to tell you about my meeting with the university temp lady.

She did not throw me out as the town one did. She was glad to have me. She offered me something right then, which I could not take because it included Saturday, when I will be doing a presentation on Victorian missionary hymns. She sent my resume off to someone who needs an instructional design person.

The picture that is not of my gardens is from yesterday's walk. I was thinking, as I strolled through the park, about my attitude toward my job hunt. That is, I am not thinking about what I might enjoy doing, now that I suddenly have completely open possibilities.

I am thinking, here's what I would like to do. Too bad I can't do that. Oh, well, what could I stand to do?

 That's a bit sad, isn't it?

It isn't as though there is absolutely no need for people who do research and writing and instructional design. Even The Dark Art is an actual field of work that people do. It isn't as though I want to be a goddess or something. I basically just want to continue with my happy little life as it is.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post to submit to one of the big SEO blogs (they will probably not use it, but I enjoyed the process), made a delivery of kitchen gear, did some tutoring, met with a client, and then came home to find another assignment from Client #2.

If the temp lady calls me fairly frequently, I could perhaps combine assorted tasks at the university with assorted freelance work and have a working life filled with variety and creativity and problem-solving.

Or perhaps there is in my town someone who needs a person like me in his or her organization, and I just need to find them.

It could happen.

Today I have the new assignment, another client meeting, a good post for my erstwhile paid blog (which I am still doing while someone is negotiating about buying it, and I hope that gets settled soon), more tutoring, and preparation for tomorrow's presentation.

This really is my idea of a perfect workday.

I am also thinking about my next knitting project.

 Erin has one finished sleeve and one nearly finished sleeve.

I still have part of the back to finish, and then it has to be sewn together and there are the button bands and all that, so it isn't that close to completion.

However, I enjoy thinking about future knitting projects. I like to extend the stage of contemplating the next project for as long as possible.

I am going to use the laceweight yarn from my stash. I may have enough for two projects. I  bought it for a cardigan, but found that it was simply too light for that purpose. Alissa sent me a link to a pretty shrug pattern, and one of my books has a lace vest. I have also taken a fancy to the type of triangular lace shawl where the motifs meet at an angle in the middle. There are several of these online: Kiri, Icarus, Leaves and Flowers, Matilda. If any of you have made any of these, I'd love to hear your views.

It is Friday, at least in this hemisphere. My husband is off today and #1 son doesn't go in to work until the afternoon. I will therefore be doing all those jobs while they hang around making noise.

Apart from that, I'm looking forward to it.

Today, May 15, is the official Blog for Human Rights Day. Bloggers all over the blogosphere will be posting about human rights issues today, and I hope you will check out some of the many concerns being shared. I also hope that you will give some thought to one of the human rights issues that is a particular concern of mine: child labor.

Many of us think of child labor as a thing of the past. Pictures like this one of a young miner led the people of the United States to pass strong laws against child labor in the last century, and American children are pretty well protected.

But the International Labor Office tells us that almost 218 million children in today's world work instead of being in school. It is possible to find smaller estimates, because some count fifteen year olds as adults, or only count these children as workers if they are working excessive numbers of hours (over 43 per week for teenagers, for example). Children are more susceptible to exploitation than adults, and more vulnerable to health problems from harsh working conditions. Many children work under conditions that are much more dangerous than those we tolerate for adults in the United States. Far too many have simply been sold into slavery by their desperate families.

 The ILO recognizes that children work safely alongside their parents on family farms, care for younger siblings, and do other kinds of economic activity that are acceptable in their cultures. So when we talk about child labor as something to eradicate, we are talking about children who are being exploited, children who are working under conditions we would never tolerate for our own children or for ourselves, children who are prevented by their work responsibilities from attending school.

What can you do about it?

First, vote with your pocketbook. Don't support companies which rely on child labor. The chocolate industry is one of the worst in this arena. Nestle, Hershey's, and M&M/Mars all have documented cases of child labor and have failed to respond to the problem. Household goods made of cotton, rugs, coffee, tires, and many more items are produced with child labor. Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Lowe's are particularly known for their problems in this area. Wal-Mart, in particular, has enough economic power that they could actually end child labor merely by refusing to stock products made with the work of children; instead, thery are one of the worst abusers. Use the Responsible Shopper website or the Blue Pages to check on companies before trading with them. Support companies like Equal Exchange which not only refuse to buy products created with child labor, but work with communities to solve the underlying problems leading to the practice.

Second, let those companies know that you have stopped shopping with them and why. Here is a message for Nestle, one of the worst. Here you can send a letter to Firestone about their use of child labor in Liberia. You can visit the website of any company and choose their contact link to let them know that you will shop with them only when they clean up their act.

Third, educate yourself and others on the problem. Changes in attitudes toward child labor caused the end (or severe reduction) of child labor in developed countries. Share the documentary Stolen Childhoods with your book club, church, bowling league, or social group. Plan to observe the World Day Against Child Labor on June 12th.

Look at your children today, think of the children chained to looms in India or working 10 and 12 hour days on pesticide-ridden coffee plantations, and do not allow yourself to think that there is nothing you can do about it.