We went to the farmers market. 

We went to the art show, which was filled with wonderful stuff at reasonable prices. There was one particular  artist, Judd Mann, from whom I'd like to buy Christmas presents for everyone I know. I gathered up everyone's cards, so that I can approach them later about their websites if my Big Client leaves room in my calendar.

We talked with old friends and had fun.

Later, we went to the mall in the Next County. I drove there, and didn't die.

#2 son came with us, too.

This mall is designed to look like a town. It is in the middle of nowhere, but they are building around it so fast that at some point in the future, it will actually be part of a town.

We wandered around and did some shopping and compared the place unfavorably with our own town, which is better than any of the neighboring towns, but suffers from a bad case of smug as a result.

#2 son suggested that we make a sign welcoming people to our town with the words, "It's hard to be humble when you're perfect."

There was something going on called UR Vote Counts.

I liked their sign.

At various times in the journey, I used the phrase, "I should get points for that."

For driving on the freeway. For continuing to drive in spite of the great desire I felt to stop the car and abandon it on the freeway. For going into stores. Lots of stores. For trying on blouses. For actually buying a blouse.

"These points of yours," said #2 son. "What do they go toward?"

I had to laugh.

He continued. "I have a sneaking suspicion that you don't even keep track of them."

I'ts true.

In the food court of this mall, they have these translucent balls. There are lights inside that change colors.

They look like frogs' eggs, don't they? Or some organ, maybe.

Rather late in the afternoon I learned that I am supposed to sing something with #2 daughter this morning. It's by Ed Harris. It's very beautiful. It has all these accidentals and things. I'd never seen it before, nor heard it.

There is some suspense about whether or not I'll be able to learn it in time.

She's trying not to be cross with me about being so lame at reading music, and I'm trying not to be cross about her expecting me to be able to read music, when she knows that I can't. I'll let you know how that goes.

I'm reading Up for Renewal by Cathy Alter, one of my Amazon Vine books. They also sent me Rosetta Stone Italian. I am still working through the French set, but I haven't actually learned any new words yet. I hope it is improving my grammar and so on, but I think I'll be able to judge the software better with Italian. I don't know any Italian, except music words.

Alter decided, in the first chapter, that her goals could easily be phrased as the headlines on the covers of women's magazines. For example, she had the goal of "being successful in whatever I do." Not much of a goal, you're thinking, for a 37 year old woman. But it could be rephrased as, "Be successful in whatever you do!" And indeed, this was true of all her goals.  So she decided to follow all the advice in women's magazines and see what happened, oh, and write about it and thus have a book, along the lines of My Year of Living Biblically.

I have been thinking about goals a little bit lately. I read a book by Peter Walsh that suggested comparing your current life to your ideal life and then just adjusting it. And I read a persuasive blog post that said freelance workers ought to have goals other than just finishing the current contract and then getting another one. After I read that, I actually Googled around and looked at some freelance writer's goals. They were not impressive. "Invoice $3,000 a month" sounded good to me, but the rest were quite airy-fairy and artistic, or more on the order of "Sell a blog post!" I assume someone is supporting those people.

The life goals I already had before I changed jobs wouldn't look good on a woman's magazine cover. "Produce four productive adults!" "Strive continually and bootlessly for personal holiness!" "Learn to read music properly instead of just faking it!" "Clean your house occasionally!"

But I am looking forward to reading about Alter's experiences.

Speaking of Amazon, Lostarts has an Amazon store with yarn in it, including things like Artyarns Regal Silk. I obviously have no business even looking at yarn. Not only do I not need any yarn, but I have to pay for tuition, dental work, and my website, and I have bought clothes recently, and I still have no clue what kind of contract my Big Client intends to offer me. But still.

And speaking of blogs, my work xanga has the dubious distinction of being #2 on Google, right behind Google itself, for "SketchUp Lesson Plan." So what, you're thinking. I can hear you. And that was my initial reaction. That xanga is #1 on Google for lots of phrases of the shape "_____ Lesson Plan." Including stuff that people are actually looking for.

But then Client #2, with whom I did the teacher workshop on SketchUp and who has been making SketchUp pictures for the blog in question, asked for the permalinks so he could make a SketchUp lesson plan page over at his website.

Naturally, I want to see him skyrocket on Google. Or, at the very least, I am interested to see how manipulating this obscure search term turns out. Usually, my plying of the Dark Art is all about finding what people really search for and helping clients get ranked for those things. Such efforts are enlivened by competition -- that is, at the same time that I am working on my client's ranking for "free ecards," the other companies who have free ecards have people doing the same thing for them.

It would be fun to meet those people for a drink sometime, I bet.

But "SketchUp Lesson Plan" is up for grabs. No one is working on it, no one is looking for it, no one is paying for it. I now have indisputably the best free content for that on the web (the other person writing lesson plans for SketchUp just has samples from the book she's selling), and it will be in two spots. I see this as a potentially fascinating experiment.

I can hear you thinking what a geek I am, all my protests to the contrary.

#2 daughter arrived last night and we have a fun-filled day planned. We're going to the farmers market and the Art Festival, and then I am going to drive up to the Next County on the freeway. Perhaps.

The reason this post is so disjointed is that #2 daughter has been talking to me the whole time I've been writing. In case you were wondering.

Here's my report on the mail-order clothing experience. (Just in case you haven't been hanging upon my every word this month, here's the background -- I have gone back to teaching, and the vague sense that I ought to dress better for client meetings than I do for The Dark Art at my computer developed a bit more urgency as a result. While I should have just gotten over my aversion to going to the mall, I didn't. Having had a good experience at a nice little dress shop but having found it expensive, I decided instead to order clothing online, and I told you I'd let you know how that worked out.)

I learned, back when I took up SWAPing, the perfect way to create a perfect wardrobe. You follow a mystical method to determine your best colors. From them you choose a neutral and a "fashion color." You choose a print containing these two colors. From the neutral you make a jacket, skirt, and pants. You make a two-piece dress from the print. You pull a contrast color or two from the print and use them for a top of some sort, and use this palette to work your way up to four skirts or pants, six tops, and a jacket. If you have done this correctly, making sure that all the pieces work together, then you have finished and will be able to get dressed every day, in the dark if need be.

This is not what I did with my shopping. I determined to end up with the right number of pieces, but I didn't want to go for perfect. I wanted to go for inexpensive. Not cheap, because I'm not happy with cheap clothing, and won't wear it, and then what good did it do you to buy the stuff?

So, since I was bargain-hunting and really have no skills in this area, I just decided that I would track down pants for $25 or less and tops for $15 or less.

I chose these numbers because I had bought a couple of knit tops for that price at Target back when I was interviewing for jobs. Now, several months of washing and wearing later, they look shabby. One was a print, and it has faded. Both have the dispirited look that cheap fabric gets after you wash it a few times. So I didn't want to go to Target and buy more, but I knew that those prices existed in the world, so they seemed good for a goal.

I told you I have no skills in this area.

I ended up ordering from four places: Amazon, Chadwicks, Land's End, and Coldwater Creek. While it would be more useful of me if I had researched all possible online clothiers and chosen these for some great reasons, they were just places that communicated with me and so I had heard of them. I checked to make sure they weren't known for using child labor or something, and went with them. I did have places suggested to me by other people, but they didn't fit my budget. The four places I mention had outlets or, in the case of Amazon, random low prices.

The Amazon experience was the easiest. I owned a pair of pants that had not just a manufacturer, but also a name in them (I bought them at T.J.Maxx, with the help of #2 daughter, a year or so ago). I went to Google, typed in the name and manufacturer, and found that Amazon had some marked down from $70 to less than $25. There were two shades of gray in my size, so I ordered one of each. I already owned a skirt I could wear to work, so I had the four bottoms. Amazon takes payment directly from my bank account, the items arrived quickly, they fit, and while I'm not mad about the fabrics, I don't walk around all day feeling miserable about them, so I'm okay with it. This was an efficient and successful method of shopping, and probably would work well for people like me who don't mind wearing last year's styles. I am not sure how common it is for RTW clothing to have names, as knitting patterns do, so I don't know whether that was a terrific piece of luck or an actual practical method for buying clothing that fits over the internet. Still, I was happy.

Having succeeded with that effort, I moved on to the top-buying part.

Since I had four neutral bottoms and a couple of neutral jackets, I figured I could buy any color at all. So I went to the outlets and searched for shirts or tops that could be worn under a jacket, for $15 or less. Since I did this at the end of the season, I had a lot of choices.

Again, this method is going to work better for less stylish people. Me, I will never think,  "I can't wear coral in winter!" and I won't care about sleeves, because I intend to wear these things with a jacket or a sweater anyway. So I basically chose the first six tops I found in the price range that struck me as reasonably attractive, likely to fit, and appropriate for work.

All four places were fast and accurate, and everything arrived safely. Chadwick's sends their things in plastic envelopes, while the others send theirs in boxes. Chadwick's sends you more emails than the others, but no one was excessive, and my spam folder didn't get much of a bump from the experience.

Chadwick's had the largest number of choices in the price range, but the poorest quality. Theirs were marked down from $25-$30 to $10-$15. My least favorite item was this one  of theirs. The fabric is very thin, almost sleazy, and they didn't even bother to finish the edge -- just serged it. The top edge is actually left raw. It might be worth the trouble of hemming it myself, but maybe not. The fabric is very poor quality.

I could have made this myself, for less, with a better quality of fabric. It does fit the nightgown-like theme of the things I sewed for myself this summer, though.

Since it costs you $7.95 in shipping to return an item to Chadwick's (they send a UPS tag with your order), it isn't worth sending back a $9.99 item, and this top is pretty tucked into a skirt, under a jacket, especially if you keep the jacket buttoned. True, there are bras for which you could say the same thing.

I had three tops from Chadwick's, and while this one was the worst, the others were not much better. They were shirts, and while the fabrics were not what I would have chosen, at least they involved enough sewing that I felt there was some point in having bought them rather than made them myself.

 My favorite item was this blouse from Coldwater Creek. It was marked down from $49.50 to $9.99, the same price as the orchid-colored number from Chadwick's, but it is a linen-rayon blend, and very nicely made. The other blouse from these folks was cotton, and also well made. I think this company may specialize in ladies my age and even older. #2 daughter is coming down this weekend, and we are going to visit their store in the Next County. It is very near the college, and it is conceivable that I might, in a couple of years when I need more clothing, be able to go and shop there if she assists me with an initial visit. (Yes, this is pathetic, but I answer my phone nowadays, so I can claim that I have improved.)

I have ordered from Land's End a number of times in the past, and was confident not only about their quality, but also about their sizing, so I took advantage of their outlet's under $10 section to buy the shoes below, as well.

It seemed odd to have to buy shoes, since I just bought shoes last year -- or I guess it was the year before -- but I have somehow nearly worn out the flat ones, and my teaching job involves standing, walking, and three flights of stairs, so it seemed reasonable to add a pair.

So what conclusions can I draw from this experience?

There were definitely some good lessons there. For one thing, a $9.99 shirt can be quite good or quite bad. While I tend to think that what it's marked down from is not a reliable indicator (many retailers put an inflated price on items when they first arrive, for a day or two, just so they can show a large markdown), it may be that for mailorder that's worth looking at. I also learned that the fiber content is a helpful guide. I really wasn't happy with any of the synthetic fibers. Why I thought they might be some kind of special, better polyester blends I can't imagine. After all, the pictures in the catalog have stylists and designers working with them, and I know what Photoshop can do.

So those are the lessons from an inept shopper.

The very good thing is that I am able to dress to go to class with confidence.

I had my second class meeting yesterday. Everyone showed up, all but one had done the assignment (she hadn't been there the first day), and they got into groups and did their peer review very cooperatively. This doesn't always happen. Sometimes you say, "Get into groups of five" and they stare blankly, even when you have -- as of course I did -- worked with them as a group on the concept. These guys did very well. One girl came up after class to tell me that she was a journalism major and -- shyly -- that she liked the class, and one wrote in her paper that her teacher (that's me) "had an ora about her that was comforting." Her paper was about how much she hates writing and how terrifying peer review sessions are, so that seemed good.

I can use that as evidence, I think, that I am harmless and not frightening, a question that comes up with surprising frequency.

Here are some pictures from my walk yesterday.

The walk got squished into the day yesterday between #2 son's dental appointment, which was followed by breakfast at Chick-Fil-A and driving him to school, and a meeting with my bookstore client to get her website content written up. Then came book club, the actual writing up of said website, psalms class, worship meeting, choir, finishing up of the insurance broker's website, and a look at the Democratic National Convention.

Today I must get up to the Next County for class, and then stop off on the way home to proofread the church bulletin.  The associate paster asked me to do so, explaining that he wanted someone else to blame.

I understand that. It's hard to proofread, or rather it's hard to catch all the errors when you proofread. I always like to get someone else to check over my work, if possible, and I appreciate it when people point out an error. At least if they point it out while it can still be fixed.

Since I feel that way, I also feel fairly free to point out other people's typos.

No, that doesn't mean I travel all over the web like an avenging madwoman, telling strangers when they've put an apostrophe in the wrong place or misspelled "fazed." But someone who is a friend or family member, a good writer, someone who I figure would like to know about their typo so they can fix it -- I might drop them an IM with a little mention. I hope they'll return the favor.

I'm trying to foster this attitude in my writing class. Respectful, collegial peer review, all us writers together helping one another improve so that we will be the finest tigers in the jungle. That's what I'm after. It's too early to say whether I've succeeded, of course.

 So a couple of times recently I've shot a little note over to Client #2, offering an edit on something he's posted.

I do most of his writing, after all, and he asks for changes cheerfully and I cheerfully make the changes. We have little discussions on whether to include hyphens and how the connotations of words differ in various audiences.

Both times, the posted item has been written by his new assistant.

This is embarrassing. The effect is as though I had tattled on the assistant. Not to mention the whole immediate pounce effect. We're down to, "Every time Sukey posts something, Fibermom emails about mistakes."

Obviously, I'm going to quit it. I just hope I haven't already created bad feeling.

In the writing class, however, I'm going to persist.

"Some people," I said on the first day, "don't even like to show their writing to other people, and they really don't like to hear comments. Do any of you feel that way?"

I acknowledged the raised hands.

"We're going to get over that," I said confidently.

I hope we can.

Do you see, in the picture on the right, some little yellow leaves on the ground? They are the first falling leaves. Autumn will be here soon. We can see it in the slant of the light in the mornings. In the Michaelmas daisies blooming. In the few small leaves drifting past the bushes filled still with honeysuckle and roses.

Here's Erin, who has gotten a couple of inches since last photographed.

Class went well yesterday, it seemed to me. I gave them the required speeches and pep talks, had them do something active and surprising, modeled a peer review with them, gave them an assignment, and left with the consciousness of a job well done.

On the way out to my car it struck me that I would have to go back over and over to the same group. It is a long time since I've done that. I generally go in, do a nice high energy presentation, and get out. Teaching a class is different. I have to learn their names and stuff. And yet they aren't clients or customers. I don't have to make sure that they like me, or that I like them. In fact, students often hate their teachers. And they don't pay me, either. Really, a completely different relationship.

So I was wandering around the parking lot in search of my car. I found it. I stood looking at it dubiously for a bit, thinking that my car wasn't that nice a car, till I saw the Sierra Club sticker on the window. I put it there so I could recognize my car. And then I thought that I might have a lot of trouble recognizing my students. Especially because, unlike the last time I had students, they are all from the same country. It is a little bit easier to distinguish Chang from Mohammed than to distinguish Ashley from Ashleigh. In fact, I have 25 young white people in my class. How can I be expected to tell them apart?

I should have instructed them to say interesting things to help me with this.

I went and took an online test for face blindness, because I have sometimes thought that I might have an actual deficiency there, what with my inability to recognize my car and all. I turned out to be above average -- 89% rather than the usual 80%. On the other hand, it may be that only people who think they have deficiencies ever go take that test.

In any case, I checked with #1 son about his freshman comp course compared with mine. He thought I gave them too much work. However, he is being taught by a graduate student.

In fact, half his classes are taught by TAs. At the community college where I'm teaching freshman comp, we all have master's degrees. At the university, where we are paying way more, he has TAs. Something wrong there.

Today I take #2 son back for a dental follow up, go to the gym, meet with a client on her website content, and then have book club. Later in the afternoon I have psalms class, worship meeting, and choir.

I have some computer work to do in there somewhere. I did a whole bunch yesterday, but only half an hour of it was billable. This may be why the computer industry's pay scales are so high -- there's a whole lot of work you don't get paid for.

Of course, that's also true of teaching and the pay scale isn't that high.

Here's Toby, deciding which of the pop math books I left on the floor he wants to read next.

I was needing some examples of mathematical writing, so I pulled out some of my faves and they ended up on the floor. They are in fact still on the floor, waiting for me to get back to the project they are for.

They would be just as accessible if I put them back on the shelf, perhaps in some special pop math area.

Not as accessible to Toby, though.

Yesterday was a good day. I got my morning work done, did a workout DVD, had a good meeting with nice people, got my errands done, enjoyed a healthy lunch at the table, not at my computer, and then worked steadily at a fun and challenging task -- I had the house to myself -- till time to make a nice dinner for my family. After dinner I tidied the house, did my lessons for Psalms class, enjoyed The Daily Show, did some tutoring, and spent the rest of the evening with my husband. This morning I got up to find interesting new assignments in my mailbox.

#1 son came home from his first day of school with some interesting stories and a positive outlook, and I was able to give him the funds he needed to buy the rest of his books. #2 son even had a more positive outlook, allowing as how he thought he probably liked his physics teacher after all, and had enjoyed the class discussions in spite of himself. I got him a cup that said, "A positive outlook may not solve all your problems, but it will irritate enough people to make it worth the effort." This is because he has, all his life, been known for his sunny disposition and enthusiasm about everything, but it's been slipping lately. Yesterday we saw more of the old #2 son peeking through the new nearly-17 coolness. Both my daughters are also embarking on new adventures in their lives.

How boring is that?

Seriously, when you think it's dull to write about your problems all the time, just consider how dull it is to write about how well everything's going and how much fun you're having.

Not only can this be boring, it can also make you unpopular. There are people who feel that good fortune is a zero-sum game, and if someone else is doing well, then they must be using up too much of the available happiness and leaving too little for other people. There are even people who feel this way about their own lives: if everything is going well right now, then they must be using up too much of the happiness available to them and will at any moment face some calamity.

I'm driving up to the Next County today for my first day of class. I have a plan. My syllabus printed out reasonably well (my printer has become unreliable, so that wasn't a foregone conclusion). I still can't get into my campus email, but I plan to leave early enough to spend some time with the IT guys. I resisted the temptation to make a PowerPoint.

Possibly something will happen today that will make my blog more interesting tomorrow. But I hope not too interesting.

My solo went well. #1 son starts school today. I got the syllabus turned in. The IT guy from church arranged a meeting with me. #1 daughter returned safely to Cowboy Land. I rearranged the kitchen for greater efficiency.Client #4 is, as she puts it, rompin' and stompin' with her newly improved website -- she passed the one order per day mark over the weekend, after years of languishing at an average of one order a week. I made a sales pitch for Client #2. I did a bit more hand hemming, moving the lavender linen tunic slightly nearer to FO status. I completed another unit of Rosetta Stone French.

So, even if I don't have that fall transition perfection that I expect -- and maybe the truth is that I always just expect it, rather than actually getting it -- things are going pretty well. I need to move both my health and my housekeeping to a higher level of priority. I might ought to pay more attention to my husband. It might be time to develop some goals for my freelance work beyond survival.

Nothing wrong with survival. It's just not an inspiring goal.

Now here's something surprising that I did yesterday: I opened PowerPoint.

If you don't know how much I dislike PowerPoint, then it shows that I have more self-control than I think I do. It's not fair of me, because it's just a medium, after all. I've seen some enthralling PowerPoint presentations. Okay, I've seen one enthralling PowerPoint presentation. And one that was quite interesting, except for the PowerPoint slides, which were merely decorative. Typically, PowerPoint presentations are boring, slow, and punctuated by technical problems.

I think this may be because people feel that they have to get 15 or 20 screens into their presentation. If they were writing on the board, they wouldn't go to the trouble of erasing and rewriting 15 or 20 full boards, would they? The effort involved forces you to limit your writing to things that people might actually need or want to see. With PowerPoint, it's the opposite: the effort is not so much in making the screens as in initiating the process. So people feel that they've gone to all that trouble, and ought to go ahead and make more screens. Enough that it will be worth the effort of opening the program and setting up the projector.

Then, having spent time making a PowerPoint presentation, people feel that they need to use it repeatedly. And probably email it to people, too. Whereas the simple fact is that a PP presentation is a slide show. Art history? Absolutely. 15 screens of graphs showing the difference between first and second world countries? Probably not.

So why was I fooling around with it?

Peer pressure.

It is years since I've been in the classroom, apart from teacher workshops and classroom visits, which are in some ways performances rather than ongoing teaching. I am aware that PowerPoint is now the Done Thing in classrooms. If I hadn't known it before, the faculty meeting would have alerted me to the fact, as there was a great deal of discussion about it, mostly of the "There wasn't a projector in there when I looked last week" "Well, maintenance said it was ready" variety. I don't want to be hopelessly vieux jeu in my new classroom, do I?

I asked #2 son about it. He said that his teachers use it, but it seems to him that they are just showing their stuff because it keeps them from having to remember the information. It isn't always relevant to what they're doing in class, he said. Some are adept with it and some aren't. He doesn't think I should bother. It is, in short, just another medium.

Today I have a meeting with Client #2 and a new client of his whose website I'll be writing, a few errands, and a tutoring appointment. I'll plan my class for tomorrow and see what I can do about learning the new software the IT guy from church recommended to me. And I'll get some housework and exercise in.

It's time for the seasonal transition. School has started for #2 son and will start this week for the rest of us. The HGP is starting up. Choirs will be beginning again. We'll be robing again in church next week.

The rule is that all the uncertainties and overwork and chaos of the summer are now supposed to end.

This isn't necessarily happening.

I ran into That Man and The Empress yesterday. I was sitting outside having tea with a friend at the little coffee house where #1 son occasionally plays, and people I knew were strolling by with their marketing baskets on their arms, as in the Lucia books of E.F.Benson.

"It sounds like everything is going very well for you," That Man said bracingly. He's doing accounting at a nearby hospital. It's a fulltime job with a living wage, and at 5:00 he can shut the door and not think about it any more.

As you know, I did not accomplish that. I have a variety of jobs, and yesterday, Sunday, during #1 daughter's visit, I was answering emails from clients, interpreting their desires for their webmasters, delivering kitchen gear, and finishing up my syllabus. And while so far I've made quite a lot more than I usually do, I am not assured of a living wage for the future, or even of fulltime work.

On the other hand, I am enjoying my work immensely. I'm looking forward to being back in the classroom. By almost all measures, in fact, my life is better now than it was before I lost my job.

Not all measures. That gives me something to work on.

A friend of #1 daughter's from Cowboy Land came to dinner last night. We had spent most of the day talking. #1 daughter and her friend played chess while I baked bread and the boys watched American Gangster. I peeked into the room where the movie was and they said, "You wouldn't like this" without looking up. Dinner was baked penne, homemade bread, steamed green beans, salad, watermelon, and homemade oatmeal cookies with pecans. Largely stuff from the farmers' market. We talked about Joe Biden, skydiving, roller coasters, the Olympics, God, my husband's father's supernatural powers, and altruism over dinner.

Quite pleasant.

The horrible dog (I won't name names) kept me up all night with his whining and crying, so I got up just in time to rush off to Jammin' Java to meet a friend for morning coffee.

Next was the farmers' market, where I scored some Cream Sausage tomatoes, bitter melon, late peaches, and some beautiful lettuces, as well as the predictable squash and filet beans. I hit the deli just as the sky opened with rain, and got home with the provisions shortly after #1 daughter arrived.

We are going to stay in today with the thunderstorms going on around us. Movies may be on the schedule.

Enjoy your weekend!

Yesterday was the day I thought would actually be a day off, or at least mostly a day off, but that didn't happen. In fact, I had this whole list of things I was going to do this month while on hiatus from my Big Client, including taking some time off before I begin teaching, and I haven't done any of those things.I don't feel as though I've been wasting time, except perhaps with job interviews -- I think I did a fair amount of that this month -- but I'm not at all sure what rushed in to fill the twenty hours a week I had been spending on my Big Client. I'll look back through my xanga in hopes of finding clues.

The amount that I earned this month was just about the same as the amount I have been earning each month apart from the Big Client. That is, half of what I need to earn. So whatever I was doing was apparently not paying me.

I did some hemming last night while watching Burn Notice with the family, but my husband told me to buy some clothes. Making them myself takes too long, he said. So I tried some things on at T.J. Maxx (the closest thing we have to an outlet store) and then, unhappy with the quality of the fabrics there (and the whole sequins bit... what does it say about us that career clothing for grown women has sequins on it?), I came home and ordered things in the styles I had liked from online outlet places.

Were you aware that a person can pay $49.50 for a T-shirt?

Having seen the customary prices, I wasn't too horrified by my totals, but I am still slightly horrified by them. Still, it's less than I used to spend on all the kids' back to school clothes, so I guess I won't complain. #2 daughter did complain. She doesn't believe in ordering clothes online. I'll report on my level of success with it, but I have a feeling that I am the least knowledgeable person here when it comes to clothes shopping. Still, I will feel properly dressed in class and in meetings.

My website is still not launched, I don't have a parking permit or access to my email for the school, I don't have a new contract from the Big Client yet, and my schedule is still tentative. Nonetheless, I'm feeling fairly well prepared for the fall.

Monday #1 daughter and #2 son start school, and so do I, except that my classes don't begin till Tuesday. I return to tutoring on Monday, and the HGP begins.

Now something I haven't gotten done yet is my syllabus. I was still working on it at 8:00 last night. We turn them in to the department, and have been given a list of things we should include for the sake of legal accountability. We also turn in our gradebooks, and have been warned to keep them clean and readable. I think I have to make up my mind about the syllabus and send it in this morning before I head to the bookstore.

I didn't get the syllabus done because... well, perhaps partly because I can't quite make up my mind about it. Partly because I am supposed to email it with my departmental email, which I still can't access. Partly because I got emails yesterday about clients, went to visit them and found them not in and lost time in the driving and talking with their receptionists and all, partly because I spent way too long fussing around with hex codes at my other xanga (it had to be done; I'm just not sure that it was enough better after two hours that it justified the two hours), and partly because I had to do a report for another client. Oh, and partly because of ordering clothes and #2 son's textbooks. Does that come to enough parts, do you think?

All that was enough that I completely forgot to hover vulture-like over the Amazon Vine announcements.

This is a good thing. By the time I remembered, at 5:30, the member's forum was already full of people's complaints about having wasted their whole afternoon poised at the refresh button, and the listing had only actually been up for five minutes. I requested software and a book, which are sort of my usual things. I wasn't offered the snazzy electronic devices. The member's forum often has speculation on how the people who are offered those things rate. I received one of those things, back when they were offering them to everyone, and it was fairly thrilling, but maybe my review of it wasn't useful enough.

Today I will be minding a client's shop for her. I hope to get my syllabus turned in first, and also to get to the gym. TGIF, in any case.