Yesterday I received the meanest set of emails I've ever seen. I don't know the guy who sent them to me. They were in response to a request to a webmaster, and my emails all consisted of "please, thank you, sorry" in varying amounts. His were filled with personal abuse and vituperation.

Now, this poor man has to live inside his own nasty mind all the time, and may have -- well, perhaps not friends, but maybe a wife or relatives who have to put up with him, so my having to read and respond to his nasty emails was not the big a deal. I was doing some linkbuilding work for a client. Linkbuilding isn't for the thin-skinned. Even if you're very white hat about it, as I am, you have to push the envelope a little bit, and I do sometimes get emails accusing me of attempting to do marketing.

Well, what can I say? That's exactly what I'm doing. Do people in advertising agencies have folks spit on them and accuse them of doing marketing?

Well, anyway, these emails were so nasty that they stayed with me all day. I sort of cringed a little as I sent my link requests, and felt less confident when I applied for gigs, and just sort of generally colored my day.

I had nice emails, too. I had a client telling me how much he enjoyed reading the blog posts I write for him, and asking me to remind him to hire me again in a few weeks. I had one of my developer clients IM with a plan for a new website. I had a webmaster thank me for my link request, because the resource I had pointed out to him was so useful.

None of these things stayed in my mind. The unpleasant attacks did.

The nasty man in question? I guess he probably felt satisfaction that he had told me off for daring to ask him to do something at his website. He may have felt that he was standing up for his rights, or --- well, really, I don't know what that guy felt. I'm thankful to be able to say that I can't really imagine what goes on in the minds of such nasty people. But I am quite sure that he thought he was in the right and that I deserved his abuse.

So I guess the moral of the story is this: next time you're tempted to send someone some horrible screed because you think you're right, consider whether you want to spoil that stranger's day or not. If not, then keep it to yourself. Tell some likeminded soul how right you are and how wrong they are. Put it in your xanga.

 Of course, if you like to spoil people's days, you could leave me a comment and explain your point of view. That could be interesting.

I had put these pictures in at this point with explanations and stories about them, and then I attempted to save the post and xanga ate it.

This could easily happen again.

So I'm just putting the pictures in with no stories, because I'm running out of time here. Enjoy your weekend!

So, yeah, I've had an eventful week.

Actually, Monday began with a good class. I had the students do some group work at the computers, followed by drawing graphic organizers showing their conclusions on the white boards. There was a moment, with all these nice young people in their ethnically and linguistically varied array working in groups with a nice variety of tools, when I felt that I was conducting a perfectly 21st century class. Collaboration, critical thinking, global awareness, technological savvy -- very uplifting.

Almost immediately came a funeral. This was for a friend of mine, just a few years older than me. He sat right behind me in choir, making jokes. It's very hard to sing at a fellow chorister's funeral, with his empty space there, and we were running through Kleenex briskly, but it was a nice service.

I got home in time for the ice storm.

The first day we had electricity for a while, sort of cutting in and out as I tried feverishly to get some work done. Then the power went off entirely and we sat huddled by the fire, reading with flashlights and having peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

We have good camping skills, and enjoyed some nice candlelight games of Scrabble and guitar playing. My husband decided that we would die from the cold and I fretted over missing work (he and I both missed several days' worth, leaving our income for the month very low between the holidays and the storm, but I'll end the suspense by letting you know that this is the worst consequence of the storm for us), but mostly we tried to stay warm. A couple of times I attempted to do something useful, and I did in fact do filing and hem pants for my son and read a stack of web design magazines, but mostly I was bundled up in down jacket and gloves and hats and blankets, reading.

My daughter posted at Twitter for me, in hopes that my clients whose work I wasn't doing would see it. My mother gave me, some years ago, a magical radio/flashlight that gets power from a crank-driven dynamo. The menfolks went out on the second day and found (on the third try) an open grocery store, where they bought chips and Pop Tarts and canned tuna, so that's what we ate.

No class this morning, so I'm going to have a proper cooked breakfast and then get back to work.

Here's how it looks at my house.

I just got my electricity back.

I'll come write more when I get caught up.

  These were our tables at the Ministry Fair yesterday. We signed up quite a few more volunteers.

I went home then and graded papers and took a nap. A friend came to visit, then, and we had a good talk about the economy, education, and 21st century skills, not to mention No Child Left Behind and Unitarianism.

Following this pleasant interlude, I went off to the Worship Team meeting. I chivvied everyone into listing goals and action steps. It is possible that they all hate me, but I figure they can return to inactivity and ineffectiveness next year, perhaps with a sense of relief. Or maybe they'll like having accomplished things.

Then I came home and cooked dinner, during which The Computer Guy got to me with the cue for a website we've been working on for a while. I spent some time on that, and on laundry, and then went to bed at a reasonable time.

Today I got up and had more work for the week waiting for me. I like that. Recently I read someone who buys work from people like me saying how great it was to get up in the morning and see how productive he'd been while he was sleeping. For me it's more like I get up and there are links to websites and spreadsheets waiting for me to do stuff and I get to feel like a slacker for having gone to bed.

However, it also means that I often wake up and find that I have work for the week, so that's good. I think I got in the goal number of billable hours last week.

This morning I have class, and a funeral, and then four assignments.

So Id better hurry.

I'm having trouble waking up this morning.

Yesterday I did that grocery shopping, laundry, and not nearly enough housekeeping. Then I spent some time on the book proposal with Chanthaboune. We are inching toward completion at glacial speed. An hour or so with a book, and then I headed on to Janalisa's inauguration party.

She has a talent for these things. Her house was decked in red and blue with lights and sparkly stars and things all over. The menu:

• President Obama's favorite foods, including Chicago-style pizza and peach cobbler made with the recipe from the Dixie Cafe.
• Sloppy Joe Bidens
• Lipstick on a Pigs in a Blanket
• First Ladyfingers with Chocolate Dip
• George Bush broccoli (an empty dish)
• tropical fruit
• Dick Cheney Jello Shooters
• Reagan and Carter snack mix (jelly beans and peanuts)

There were party games. I was enormously impressed. I mean, we often play games at our house, but not specially-prepared party games. I won the Presidential Food Quiz, but none of us won the bingo game, though we all listened closely to the speech waiting for the words "troops" or "Michelle."

We had a few serious conversations in the room, but mostly it was fun and frivolity.

Today I have two church services, a mountain of papers to grade, and -- I hope -- more housekeeping.

I've been getting these announcements that So and So is following me on Twitter.

Initially, I treated these the way I do friend requests here at Xanga or at Facebook: I make sure that it's not a request from a bad neighborhood, and then I say yes.

I don't invite friends at either place, because as you know I'm a) not that friendly and b) too busy to be seeking out virtual friends. But I also don't say no, because --- well, I'm not that unfriendly. I really like my Xanga friends, and my Facebook friends are mostly people I know IRL. I eagerly read the new developments in your lives, and I'm happy to throw the occasional snowball, too. I work and teach and live in cyberspace, so it's very nice to have friends here.

Twitter is different.

First, there are people at Twitter who tweet ten or twenty times a day. I make a quick visit on most mornings.

I'm not saying that my way is better. It's like email. I know all these people who firmly check their email at Email Time, and rave about how much time that saves them. I respond to every email chime when I'm at the computer, because there are so many people with whom I use email as real-time communication. I get messages like "please start on the project" or "I need to talk to you about these revisions before I shoot them off to the guys. Are you available by phone now?"

But since I am only an occasional visitor at Twitter and don't have tweets forwarded to me, following one of those frequent tweeter means that my whole Twitter page will be filled with their tweets, and I'll have no idea what Alissa is cooking or whether Tom ever found those library books.

Also, the sad truth is that some of my followers don't really want to be friends. Some of them have thousands of followers and are really using Twitter for marketing purposes alone. I don't mind following a company under those circumstances -- I mean, I want to know what SitePoint is up to. We have a relationship, if my buying their books and their letting me download free chapters is a relationship. But that dog breeder isn't contacting me because she found my tweets compelling and wants to be friends, and I'm not in the market for yet another dog, either.

So I'm ignoring some of my followers and feeling a little bit uncomfortable about it, socially.

New technology creates new quandaries.

Today I have a lot of domestic stuff to do, and a date to work on that book proposal. Lolling, walking, and knitting may be features of the day.

But cooking and cleaning and shopping are unavoidable. I suggested last night that the whole family get together and clean this morning. There was a signal lack of enthusiasm.

I got my class schedule for next fall, and I have three classes -- two face to face and one online. Teaching is my least profitable work activity, but I was still glad of it. I was talking last night to a teacher friend about how I'd internalized the concept of billable hours and given up being scornful of clock watchers. I could tell that she didn't get it. I understand, too. I had a hard time adjusting to hourly work myself.

This came up because I'm meeting her this morning at the church to set up our table for the Ministry Fair.

"I think we should get all the tables set up and make sure --"

I interrupted her.

"Our table. The rest of them are Not Our Problem."

She looked at me with that familiar teacherly gaze that means "If we don't do it, it might not get done, so we have to do it."

I explained about billable hours and scope creep. We just do our part that we're responsible for, and the rest is up to some other member of the team.

I can tell that she didn't get it, but I'm getting it.

I got up this morning to a flurry of emails from other team members on this reservation management software site I'm working with. My colleagues are in India. They claim to have common American names. I'm not sure that I believe them.

When I taught ESL, students often took up American names when they came to the U.S., especially those from Hong Kong. Often, they chose names like Ethel and Agnes. I always wondered how they made that decision. Was it a joke the students perpetuated themselves? They'd say to the new people, "Oh, call yourself Elmo. Elmo means 'Love Tiger' in English." That made up for their having chosen "Dwayne."

My Indian team members claim to have names like people on American sit coms, a more sophisticated way to choose an alias if you want one specially for working with Americans. But it makes me feel a bit separated from them.

Still, if we continue working together as a team over the length of the project, I might begin to feel as though I have coworkers. Janalisa and I had a nice long walk yesterday, and at one point she was sharing some concerns abotu her coworkers. I remarked that stories like that made me feel better about not having coworkers.

Even when teaching, I have no coworkers. This is because I just go to class and leave again. The facility where I currently hold class has a uniformed guard at the door, whom I smile at when I arrive, but that's the closest thing to a colleague. Maybe I should introduce myself.

I'll be teaching at a different location next fall anyway. I have no idea where it is, but I have a while to find out.

Yesterday was a day full of cool stuff.

My class went well, though I still didn't get pictures as I promised I would. I got the first set of papers downloaded from my online class, graded, and uploaded, so there are no more new tech skills to work on there. I had a couple new jobs begin and a phone call from someone who seems pretty serious -- I've had a query already this morning, and am getting at least one new thing a day, so that's pretty cool. I've been doing a lot of work through oDesk, but #1 daughter gave me a stern talking to about failing to build my business with private clients, so I was happy to be able to pass along to her this morning the initial contact from a smart phone app developer. I'm having to put people out on my calendar, which makes me feel like a real computer guy, though it also makes me wake up at 4:00 a.m. and skip going to the gym.

I will get to the gym today.

In fact, I've been tracking my billable and unbillable hours this week, and so far there have been two kinds of unbillable hours: talking with clients or prospective clients, and figuring out how to do stuff. That seems good. It also seems okay to me that I'm working more for oDesk, since I'm not ambitious at all and I'm having lots of fun, but I see her point. She feels that I'm weakening my brand, as it were, by doing mostly agency work.

But there was more cool stuff.  Hancock's of Paducah sent me a catalog. I'd never heard of these guys before, but I have never seen so many lovely quilting fabrics in my entire life. They have art nouveau prints, and retro cartoon elephants and fairies and all kinds of extreme tropical prints which I could make into Rosie the Riveter shirts if I wanted to defy my daughters.

True, I haven't sewn at all in months. But there could come a time, once I get my billable hours and unbillable hours in proper alignment, when I could return to it, and when I do, I'll be secure in the knowledge that I have a source of more fabrics than I could imagine on my own. In the meantime, it's like a seed catalog in January.

And it's January. So that works.

In amongst the communications on upcoming and in-progress jobs, I had an invitation to a party.

Then came bell practice, and we did singing bells. This is a technique in which you sort of stir your handbell with a wooden stick. After a while, it sets up an impressive vibration. I tried to find you a picture of this, but I only find things assuring me that this type of music will unblock chakras. I don't concern myself with chakras, but I did really enjoy the singing bells. If you ever have the opportunity to try this, go for it.

The next cool thing was the arrangement of "And Can It Be," which was very nice with two flutes, a sax, me, and The Baritone when he wandered by. We can bring the choirlet in as well, perhaps.

And finally, having come home and found that a recently completed job had left me really nice feedback on my oDesk page and enjoyed a conversation with #1 daughter, I finished the day with a new book from Christopher Buckley, Boomsday. The title refers to the time when the baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) all retire, putting an enormous strain on the economy and leading to -- well, I don't know yet, because I just started reading the book. But this is a favorite author of mine, and just having a new book of his to read is enough to make me as happy as a couple of clams.

Last night I had a lively discussion with a complete stranger about the ritual uncleanness of women in childbirth, according to the book of Leviticus.

You, too, probably.

Seriously, I think that was a first. But it was very interesting.

I think modern people have a lot of trouble with Leviticus. There's all that stuff about going bald in various patterns and which ones are unclean, and mixing fibers, and not eating camels. It's hard for us to relate to that. Our lecture last night compared these things to the idea that doctors should wash their hands between cadavers and childbeds: it was a wild idea when it first was considered, and most people just couldn't see the point of it.

That attitude is what a lot of modern readers do with Leviticus. "The bit about not eating pork," they say, "was to protect these people from trichonosis. They just didn't know it." Without the technology needed to do it right, mixed fibers would make a weaker fabric. Eating cooked meat that sat around for three days could lead to food poisoning. Eating camels... I don't know. But there must be something about it that's not good for you.

The ritual uncleanness of women? Hard to see anything there but sexism. And while we can certainly see that the culture was sexist, and even attribute some of Paul's odder remarks to his human sexism, Leviticus is supposed to be God's instructions to the priests. God's not sexist. Look at the life of Jesus and you'll see that.

Our lecturer cautioned us against trying to make Leviticus be all about health and wellbeing. The book is making a point, she said, about holiness and being set apart. Having to follow rules that were completely different from everyone else's way of life was the point. That was what the people needed at that time. Uncleanness was not the same as sinfulness. If people used those rules -- and they did -- to display their lack of compassion and desire to be better than anyone else, then that was a human issue.

But Partygirl and I, talking it over later, thought that perhaps the position of women in those days might have had something to do with it. Without the notion of ritual uncleanness to give women a little rest, they might have been expected to hop right up and get back to work, without time for resting or bonding with their new babies or healing. Having come up with this theory, we felt better. We hadn't been planning on eating camels anyway.

I guess it's the human drive to make sense, which is perhaps only slightly stronger than the human drive to discriminate against others.