My family have all gone out to parties, so I am here at home in the quiet thinking about my New Year’s goals.

I suppose we should always have goals for all the important areas of our lives: spiritual goals, mental goals, physical goals, goals for friendship and family, for our homes, for our avocations and pet causes.

I might come up with a whole panoply of goals, but at this point, I have two sets: work and health.

These are not unrelated. Indeed, as I read around the internet this week I came upon a bunch of writings on the health challenges of “the geek lifestyle.” I don’t think of myself as a “geek,” of course, but I had to admit that I’ve succumbed to the lifestyle as described.

See, here’s what happens. You wake up in the wee hours of the morning thinking about some exciting project, and since you work online, you can go work on it straightaway. Like as not, other tech workers from your buddy list are online, too, so it feels downright normal. You can even chat with colleagues in other hemispheres.

At various points during the day, you step away from the computer, perhaps even leave the house, only to be drawn back by the pinging and chortling of the machine, which is sometimes a new job or important question. During one of these forays into cyberspace, you get drawn into something really interesting, and then it becomes 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. and you have only eaten things people brought you in front of the computer, usually not vegetables, and have to call out for pizza.

This typical behavior leads to eye problems, physical unfitness, and “really poor sleep hygiene,” which sounds pretty serious. Also lank hair and blotchy skin. And dressing badly and blinking and going, “huh?” when human beings speak to you, but that may not be a health issue.

So I need to have a normal schedule including gym, balanced meals, and sleep. Also eye drops, which Dr. T gave me along with instructions about looking away from the computer every 20 minutes. And a Sabbath, and time with my family even when I have deadlines. And perhaps turning off the computer at 5:00 even when it burbles trustingly, because for heaven’s sake this isn’t a TV show, and stuff can wait for twelve hours.

I think this plan will cover the health issues.

As for the work issues, well I am about to move into numbers, and my feelings will not be hurt if you go read some other xanga where they’re talking about Tara Reid and/or sex. Or knitting, for that matter.

I calculated everything up for the past eight months, which is how long I’ve been a Computer Guy, and I find that I have averaged 15 billable hours a week. My goal is 20. This is clearly a realistic goal. I’ve added an online class and several new clients for the spring, I plan to make more of an effort to get oDesk jobs, and I think I’ve developed a certain amount of momentum.

However, I think I’ve averaged 30 or more unbillable hours a week, and my goal for those is also 20. That may take more doing.

The average could be the issue here, since there were several months when those hours included searching for, interviewing for, and turning down salaried jobs, something which I’m no longer doing. However, there are some things I’ve been doing the whole time:

• Meetings and preparing for meetings. This is good, of course, since it’s networking and spending time with clients and potential clients. However, I want to cut back on the time spent with people who don’t end up hiring me. Since I can’t tell in advance, I think this means that I need to develop an efficient system for my pre-meeting research, and maybe get better at qualifying people when meeting with them.
• Learning things. I’m all for learning things, but I’d like to do less fevered tracking down of stuff in order to finish a project, and more organized study of things like all the software I use. This would be more efficient, it seems to me, and more enjoyable, and less likely to lead to bad sleep hygiene. (Somehow that word makes it sound really ominous.)
  
• Business and paperwork stuff. With this, too, I bet I could streamline it and make it more efficient. I want to spend more time on SEO and SEM for my own site, though, and perhaps more networking.
  
• Unpaid projects. I definitely want to continue doing volunteer work for organizations I want to support, and I agree with the common view that it’s essential to have creative projects outside the assigned stuff. I don’t want to do as much unpaid stuff for clients (i.e., scope creep) and I noticed particularly severe scope creep in the volunteer projects, possibly because they’re not paying by the hour.
• Grading of papers, corresponding with students, etc. This goes with the job. However, I won’t have as much driving, which was also part of the unbillable aspect of teaching. And the teaching job keeps me up to date and authentic for my gaggle of educational clients, so it’s worth it.

If I increase my billable hours, reduce my unbillable hours, and alter the focus of the remaining unbillable hours, I should have an excellent year. Doing this should also make it easier to get the gym time, healthy meals, and sleep.

So now I will go enjoy the quiet. My husband said he’d be home to “enjoy midnight” with me. Happy New Year’s to all!

Today’s song is “The Freelance Writer’s National Anthem”, just because I thought it was funny. Or you could go with “Deck the Halls,” which contains the immortal lines,

Fast away the old year passes,
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!

That accurately describes the situation today. We get a whole new year tomorrow, and how cool is that?

I swapped some publicity work for tech assistance from The Computer Guy, and my WebCT course will be, if not a thing of beauty and a joy forever, at least something that tells the students that I made an effort.

Someone recently described me as a perfectionist. People who know me are frowning in consternation now. I am so totally not a perfectionist.

But a lot of things I’ve read lately have been talking about quality. In Defence of Food traces American health problems to the moment when we chose cheap and plentiful foodlike substances over actual, you know, food. The Designful Company says that, now that we have mastered efficiency and large scale commodities, people want beauty and virtue. Life@Work says, “Skill is understanding something completely, and transforming that knowledge into creations of wonder and excellence.” The Baritone said that the reason church music has to be excellent is so that it won’t distract people from worshipping God.

I agree with all these things. I think we should experiment and explore and feel free to do things badly while we’re learning to do them well, but it also seems to me that creations of wonder and excellence are worth the effort.

I hope you have lots of fun planned for tonight. I think it very likely that I’ll be home knitting. None of the kids will be here, and our local New Year’s Eve community celebration has moved to the mall and therefore no longer appeals to me. The younger, single members of the community have been getting new party dresses for the occasion. The Computer Guy says it’s just another day on the calendar. I hope that whatever you do this evening, it suggests the promise of an exciting new year filled with wonder and excellence.

I worked hard on my WebCT course yesterday, but only got a quarter of it done. I stopped to run to the bank, to have tea with The Empress, to answer questions from my family, and for meals. I also did blogging and applied for writing gigs.

And in and among all that, I took a couple of tests. I don’t usually do online quizzes. I’d gone to Brainbench to take a couple of their free tests when I felt that I needed a break. I started the MSWord test with confidence. I use Word all the time. I could tell in the first few questions, though, that I was not prepared. Quick, what’s the keyboard shortcut for a new document? The fastest way to save (no, it’s not control S)? Look at this little arrow here — what does it do?

Embarrassing. And I guess it’s a good thing I don’t bill myself as a typist.

Anyway, after that fiasco I sure wasn’t going to try any more tech tests there. So I took the free personality test. “It’s so nice to be you!” it said. I looked around to see whether they were being sarcastic, but apparently it’s just a nice, reassuring test for people who’ve bombed with a piece of software they’ve used ever since it came out.

Then I had an email offering me the GTD test to see what quadrant I was in, and I turned out to be Captain/Commander, “on top of your game.”

These things were well-timed. Not only had I spent the entire day (save interruptions) working on a project and only getting through .25 of it, but I had also gotten back to the gym at last and felt like it was my first day there.

The Empress and I both are recommitting to healthy living for our New Year’s Resolutions. Her mother moved in with her, bringing her fried foods with her, and she’s gotten sedentary. Me, too. And I don’t have a mother excuse.  For me, it’s been the tech worker schedule and the resultant late-night pizza deliveries.

So I spent 30 minutes on the treadmill yesterday, at an incline of 5 and a speed of 3, and it felt like a workout. Sigh. I’ll be at the gym every day now. Even if it does mean that I don’t get as much work done as I want. I’m also making balanced meals and eating them at the table.

I decided that another thing I need to do for 2009 is make friends with more computer people. My husband still hasn’t grasped what I do for a living, and I can’t bore my daughters with it whenever I want to talk about work. I’ve tried just talking less about work, but then all my thoughts on the subject end up here at xanga, and how dull is that?

I also have work goals. They’re pretty rudimentary: get my business systems in place, work 40 hours a week/20 billable, get to know all my software thoroughly, have a more balanced life. Or, as one of the articles in Life@Work puts it, a rhythm. “Balance,” they say, implies perilous teeter-tottering, while “rhythm” suggests an even, serene sort of life. I’m working through the second of the Life@Work books now, and finding it very beneficial.

I did agree to head up the worship ministry at church, so I have a generalized goal to do that well which ought to settle into a more specific and useful goal at some point. I have some leftover ongoing goals, and I also have both WIPs and a stash to use up. So I guess I have a pretty good collection of goals for the New Year.

I’m leaving room for surprises.

My planner hasn’t arrived yet. I’m not going to make that into a crisis, but I hope it gets here soon. My whole end-of-year ritual depends on having it.

The song for the day is “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” It isn’t New Year’s Eve, of course, but I’m doing year-end reports today, and deciding what to do about people who haven’t paid me yet, so it’ll put me in the mood. Maybe it’ll put you in the mood to think of something exciting to do tomorrow night, or to come up with some good 2009 goals, or projects to use up your stash. Or to loll around eating chocolates. That could be good, too.

My favorite songs for the period between Christmas Day and Epiphany are those that tell of the journey of the Magi through Provence. Just as we in the English-speaking world have songs about the Baby Jesus lying in the snow, the French-speaking world has songs about the Three Kings’ triumphal procession through France, with all the townfolk joining them as they went.

“The March of the Three Kings” and “Tous Les Bourgeois de Chartres” are two examples of these. Here are the English words for “March,” but I’ve been unable to find a good source for the other song in English. You can sing these on your way back to work, if that’s what you’re doing.

That’s what I’m doing.

But first, the FOs of the year 2008:

Tailored lace shawl, of Knitpicks Shadow in Redwood; no pattern.

Jean Greenhowe’s elephant, of scrap yarn.

Kwik-Sew shirt of Pendleton wool

Alice Starmore’s Erin, with lots of adaptations and alterations, of Wool of the Andes.

Skirt of Pendleton wool.

Soap. Yeah, this is cheating, but I didn’t have many FOs this year.

Scarf of Touch Me; no pattern.

Headhand. See previous excuse. No pattern.

Butterick blouse. I hemmed it after I took this picture.

Jewelry made from beads.

Rosie the Riveter shirt from Folkmanis pattern. I’ve heard all about why not to wear tropical prints, thanks.

Detail of some of the jewelry.

Table runner from fabrics bought from Keepsake Quilting. No pattern.

Soldered charms jewelry.

More soap. See previous excuse.

Prayer shawl from Homestead.

 

 #2 daughter goes home today, and I’m planning to get the house back in order. We didn’t do very well on our book proposal, I’m sorry to say, but we had a nice visit.

Yesterday, we enjoyed the rain, watched movies, and talked.

 I started working on the Doctor’s Bag from Knit 2 Together. I started on this last year, using a poor choice of yarn and getting too cross with the badly-written pattern to continue.

The pattern is still badly written, but this time I was forewarned, and I’m using the yarn recommended by Knitpicks, as seen in the photo below, snitched from their catalog.

The pattern is written to produce an 18″ purse, which is just too big for me. #2 daughter was speaking out in favor of big purses, but she’s tall. Actually, I think that really big purses are the fashion right now. I like a purse big enough to hold my organizer and billfold, maybe a little knitting, and that’s about it. If I’m carrying more than that, I’ll take a briefcase. The young girls who rely on their phones as organizers and never even carry cash, what do they need giant purses for? To carry their dogs?

It may not be about need, though. I don’t need another purse. I just want to make this one.

I got my WebCT course looking pretty nice.

In fact, I went in to yesterday’s post and updated the pictures, which was a mistake.

I should have kept the early screenshots there to show the contrast.

I’m polishing up my CSS on this project, at least.

It’s time for end-of-year updates and thoughtfulness. First, though, comes church and housework.

Both church and housework can be good opportunities for contemplation, actually.

“Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning” is the song for today. It’s a pretty Victorian Epiphany hymn, suitable for gentle singing in the parlor with the piano’s soft pedal down, wile you think about the preceding year and plan your New Year’s goals or resolutions.

I’m through eating holiday food.

In other news, I’ve been working on my WebCT course. In case you’re unfamiliar with WebCT, it’s an industry-leading Academic Enterprise System (AES) built on an enterprise technology foundation to support mission-critical e-learning … oh, excuse me, that’s the official description. Really, it’s a very clunky content-management system that allows teachers to put courses online in only triple the length of time that it would take to do it with Adobe or Google products.

On the right you can see some examples of what WebCT courses normally look like.

Mine. below left, is somewhat jazzier. However, it is not possible to put things where you want them to be, so mine are kind of 2003, while the typical one is more like 1999.

It is possible that my pages, constructed as they are by choosing  colors and adding a graphic, all with drop-down menus offering very limited choices, are no more attractive or usable than the standard ones, but at least they show that I tried.

Also, since I forced the program to let me into the html, I was able to make the words behave. In 2008, I reached the point at which I can bend words to my will no matter what content management system I’m saddled with. Perhaps in 2009 I will reach this point with images and design elements.

In addition to clicking myriad little boxes and using stupid drop-down menus, I also sat down with #2 daughter to work on the book proposal.

For some reason, #2 daughter gets extremely cross whenever we try to do this. She reads out the name of the editor venomously and announces that our topic (which we chose) is stupid.

Also that the publisher and the books produced by the publisher are stupid.

At one point, I think she was saying that dynamics are stupid.

Also, the software and the machine we’re using are stupid.

Fortunately, she really loves her Christmas gift whiteboard, and was able to work off some of the fury engendered by this project by writing on it with great energy and pointy-ness. She wasn’t using a bayonet to write on it, but she was able to give that impression.

It’s possible that trying to work when fueled only by holiday food is not a good plan.

However nice the cupcakes may be, they aren’t really food, are they? And the cheese and crackers and sausages and chips aren’t much better. A girl who has eaten nothing but simple carbohydrates and saturated fats for three days might be excused for losing her temper.

 

We may or may not try again today.

I will definitely be continuing with my web course, though. I have 25 students registered, and all of them can go look at the course right now. It is possible to lock them out. However, one of the examplary courses I looked at in the research phase of this project had students go hang out in the discussion room before school started, to get to know one another. I’m trying to do the same, since we were told in our training that feeling disconnected was the main reason people drop distance learning courses.

At the moment, there are only welcome pages and a list of assignments. The class begins on January 12th. between now and then, I need to produce all the content modules for 16 weeks of classes.

When you teach classes on the physical plane, you can get your materials together a week at a time.

You do your syllabus ahead, of course, and work out all the chapters you’ll be using and all, but you don’t actually have to write up all your lectures ahead of time. And you can bring stuff in to class with you on a given day, rather than having to link everything up. And all my cool lesson plans are hands-on anyway.

 

I also have to figure out how to arrange for peer feedback for the papers students will be turning in.

It gives me some sympathy with the designers of the example courses I’ve found, when they do things like link to Wikipedia in every lesson.

If you have any favorite websites about grammar or writing, please let me know.

I’ve known that I needed to do this for a month now, I think, so I may not deserve to have good websites pointed out for me. I know that it takes me an hour or two to create a good online lesson plan every morning, so why I thought I could knock out a semester’s worth in between Christmas and New Year’s while eating pie and cake I don’t know.

Oh — it’s Saturday, isn’t it?

Maybe I’ll go back to bed and read, and think about all this on Monday. I have housework and errands today, and that may be enough.

This kind of thinking is probably what led me to this point to begin with.

The song for today is “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright.,” a fairly clunky hymn suitable for Epiphany. The Bach harmony makes it wonderful.

I have a picture of my kids below, but it won’t stay there long.

My sons fear that their friends will chance to read my blog, figure out that I’m their mother, and tease them mercilessly about it, thus ruining their lives.

I have therefore been strictly enjoined to maintain complete anonymity and never show the face of a human being here. Also no recognizable landmarks that would allow a casual reader to connect the dots and figure out my secret identity.

Therefore, I’ll take their picture back down before they get out of bed, so if you’ve ever been curious, look quickly.

I will leave the pictures of cupcakes. I was trying to get a pictues that showed the true beauty of the frosting, but was unsuccessful.

Homemade from scratch cake is good stuff, you know?

We still have quite a lot of cake and cookies here, and some pie as well. #2 daughter has agreed to take most of it with her when she leaves.

#1 daughter and her friend have already left, and I have a bit of work to do today, but we can still celebrate till Epiphany.

Some people will then start right in celebrating in anticipation of Mardi Gras, but I figure I’ll tone it down a little.

I hope to clean up a bit today, and #2 daughter and I are going to work on our book proposal. I may start my WebCT course design. I’m reading yet another book about the central importance of design, and have to do an actual design, whereas normally I write the words and send them to a designer, or stick them into something that has already been styled or whatever. Also, the book proposal itself is very design-centered. And I have another design job on my marker board, as well.

My mind is therefore on design to an unusual degree.

The scarf I’ve been making is in some sense my own design. Since it’s basically just a rectangle, and I was inspired in the main idea by a scarf over at The Anticraft, I can’t claim to have designed it, exactly.

At least I finished it by Christmas Day. This is a slightly lacy scarf made of Knitpicks Shadow in Redwood. It is very soft and light, but probably also warm. I made it for #2 daughter, who isn’t a lace kind of girl. She likes scarves, though, and lives in a place that gets cold in the winter, so she may like this.

Today is the Feast of Stephen, so the song for the day has to be “Good King Wenceslas.” John Mason Neale wrote it in the 19th century. Enjoy it on YouTube. Here’s the story.

We haven’t had a whole lot of music around our house the last day or two. Usually we sing a few carols at the piano, but we’ve been distracted by Wii Music, an extremely fun game which #2 son received for Christmas. #1 daughter is also trying to help #2 son come up with an audition song so he can try out for a choir scholarship at the very expensive school top which he has been admitted for next fall. And #1 son got new guitar strings and a new songbook, so he has been noodling around quite a bit. So I guess we can say that we’ve had some music, but no caroling.

 I had quite a lot of gifts this year, myself. Slippers, a very fancy billfold, a new reed scent diffuser, a collage of family photos from my mother, an enormous cookbook, a T shirt with #1 son’s clever drawings on it, a box of chocolates…

Yep, it’s pretty lavish chez fibermom. No wonder I can’t think seriously about design. I’m more  in a gently ruminating frame of mind. I’ve eaten oatmeal. I will now get dressed. Then I’ll pick up the house a bit and do some laundry. By then I should be restored to some sense that life is real, life is earnest, and then maybe I’ll be ready to do some design work.

 

We’ve been having a wonderful Christmas. There were some particularly memorable bits:

• Cooking and talking all day on the 24th.
• The church service, with candles. I like the way each person helps a neighbor with the candle, and the light reflects on all the happy, peaceful faces as it goes down the rows.
• Me, racing in and out of the house between church services, saying, “The service ran over — don’t wait for us!” as everyone stares at me vaguely.
• The only second soprano singing in my ear — not sure what she was singing, but it wasn’t what Mr. Rutter had written.
• Opening presents in a welter of paper and laughter.
• Playing Wii music, with trios of handbells, ukelele and  harp. Three conductors trying to lead the orchestra of Miis in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” while the rest of the family watched, helpless with laughter.
• Pulling Christmas crackers and reading out the jokes, including this gem: “Q: What is yellow and white and goes down a train track at 100 miles an hour?” “A: A train driver’s egg sandwich.”
• Heading out for the grandparents’ house with my knitting — and noticing that the ball of yarn was outside of the car. Fortunately, I discovered this before we headed onto the road trailing laceweight wool behind us.
• Wearing our paper crowns and playing with the toys from the crackers.
• Doing crosswords collaboratively.
• 
• Playing Catchphrase and Music Catchphrase.
• Making homemade eggnog cake with Swiss meringue frosting and inadvertently covering the kitchen with sugar.
• Listening to Grandma’s stories about grant-writing and the Native American studies department.
• Listening to #2 daughter’s stories about her new job, which has cool spy-like features. She has always wanted to be a spy. #1 daughter, who works in the District Attorney’s office, has what may be a more exciting job, but their stories are equally good.
• Catching up on all the family news.
• Nibbling holiday leftovers all afternoon, instead of cooking a proper meal.
• Agreeing not to do any work all day long today. Everyone’s picking up their trash behind them anyway.
• Enjoying presents, music, treats, movies, and hanging out with the kids and the dogs.

Here are my “after” pictures. I recognize that there may not be much visible difference, but it was an improvement. Really.

Further cooking and baking took place as well, and then #1 daughter and a friend arrived with plentiful amounts of meatitude and sweetitude, including the friend’s Grandma’s justly famous pecan pie, so we went ahead and moved into full-scale revelry.

Well, talking and eating and playing games, at least. I guess full-scale revelry would involve dancing and singing and carousing, none of which took place. #1 son did play his guitar, and we had Pandora on, but that’s still pretty low-key. We have lively conversation at our house, but carousing is rare.

Tonight is Christmas Eve, so the song for today has to be “The Twelve Days of Christmas.“ There is some information on the concept of the twelve days of Christmas here. The essential point is that they are beginning now, not ending. People who start celebrating early and are anxious for the whole thing to be over by December 26 are doing it wrong.

This song is a fun one, and it makes a good party game. You divide up the verses so that each person has one, and the game is for each person to sing his or her verse at the right moment. If you don’t like this game, your obvious solution is to choose “12 drummers drumming,” cause you only have to do that once. If you have extra people, put them all on “five golden rings” so they can sing harmony.

It has been named the 2008 Carol of the Year, and yet it is not popular with everyone. For one thing, it’s hard to remember the words. For another, it goes on for a long time, and many people nowadays can’t focus for six minutes at a time. It can be hard to fit all the words in, too. These flimsy excuses for not singing this song should be ignored.

I have some fancy cooking and baking to do today, and further revelry. #2 daughter is expected, with or without a friend. I’ve got a couple of church services to sing at, and Bigsax and The Organist are coming by in between services, and we’ll have Christmas crackers and stuff.

I have a few inches more to do on one of my Christmas knitting projects, so it may well be that it won’t be finished in time.

Oh, well.

Once I got into the whole not-working thing, I did pretty well. I checked out the survey at oDesk, and the majority of workers there aren’t taking any days off. In previous years, I’ve usually been at the store on Christmas Eve and also on Boxing Day. So taking three days off is a pretty big deal. I intend to enjoy it to the fullest.

I hope you do the same.

Today I’m going to roast a turkey, bake some more, pay some holiday calls, and possibly clean house but possibly not. The director and organist are coming over tomorrow night in between services for a quick snack, and my houseguests arrive today, so I am hoping that I’ll clean house. However, the truth is that I haven’t done it yet, and I have been planning to do it since Saturday.

Peg Bracken said, “You never hear anyone say, ‘I just adore Marcia. She’s such a meticulous housekeeper.’” And that is true. On the other hand, I don’t want them going away saying, “Good Lord, have you ever seen such a tip!” Perhaps thinking what a happy, busy family we are would be a good compromise.

#1 son said to me yesterday, “If you want a tidy house, you should clean it up.” He also made some austere remarks about the amount of unnecessary stuff we have around our house. My husband also makes comments like these. Evidently, I need to clean the house.

So these are my “before” pictures. Because part of the problem of housework is that no one really notices it, at least not at my house. They don’t admire it or express appreciation or anything like that.

The boys, in fact, if I specifically say, “Isn’t it nice to have the house tidy?” will disagree with me.

Or remark that we just have too much stuff in our house.

But I can see my “before” pictures and my “after” pictures and feel as though I’ve accomplished something.

Plus, you’re nicer than my menfolks, and wouldn’t be scornful even if I didn’t clean up.

Though you wouldn’t want to roast a turkey in this messy kitchen any more than I do.

Hmm…. I seem to be having trouble talking myself into this. What I need is a really fun and lively song of the day. “Run Run Rudolph” may be the best choice, but I think you’ve heard that eighty-eleven times by now this season.

I offer you “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” a medieval carol which we just hardly ever sing nowadays. Here’s the tune I prefer

Find the words here. Then, if you find yourself wondering, “What the —?” you can find a variety of expanations of the words here.

Basically, we’re looking at a very old song from the days when a carol was a dance. Later puritanical traditions separated dance from Christmas carols, and from worship in general, but we don’t have to be bothered by that.

As for today’s baking, it’s time to bring out the scrapbook of family recipes. In this tattered book, we have all the great favorites for Christmas. I have noticed quite a bit of talk about ginger cookies around here lately (and by IM as well), so today we must have Ginger Crinkles made, and then either Venetians or Napoleon’s Hats, depending how ambitious I feel at that point.

As for the guests and the housework…

Perhaps, if there is enough good food around, they won’t notice what the house looks like.