Since yesterday was Sunday, it began with church. We sang, "Silence, Frenzied Unclean Spirit," a song which I have of course wanted to sing ever since I first saw the title. Don't you?

Following that, the musicians hung out in the coffee area considering what song we should get the bright folks over at Brassmusiconline.com to fix up for us, and with which instruments, and in what key. We went with Wesley's "And Can It Be?" in E flat for voice, sax, and a couple of flutes. I sent my request in last night and had a clip to listen to by 10:30. They're keeping traditional chords and phrasing so we could use it with the choir, but have given it a complex, tinkly set of harmonies. I can hardly wait. We have a list of other pieces we'll be wanting them to do for us, and I think you should probably get your orders in, too.

As you know if you read my musical Advent calendars, I can always hear pieces in my mind with different instruments, but of course I couldn't actually arrange them to save my life. I love the idea of being able to say, "Will you fix this one up for us with three trumpets and an organ?" Or whatever.

Home again, I cooked and cleaned and read and lolled for a while, those being my goals for yesterday, and then watched clips from "The Big Bang Theory," knitting and giggling helplessly. There are no full episodes online, but it mentioned that it was on Monday nights. This is my last Monday without a rehearsal, so I am going to make an effort to watch it this evening. I'm not much of a TV watcher, but I found that funny.

I also was laughing about a collection of engineer jokes my Spaniard sent me, in return for some flow chart jokes I'd sent him.

Hmmmm. Somehow, while referring to one set of clients as "my Aussies" sounded okay, referring to this other lcient as "my Spaniard" does not. Numbers won't work now that I have too many to remember who was which number, locations are a bit difficult, I don't know these people well enough or tell you about them often enough to give them all nicknames, and many of them have professions that are either too complex to encapsulate or else they're engineers and IT guys and there are too many of them.

Never mind. The engineer was not the point. I'll soldier on.

So at the end of the day, #1 daughter called me to vent a little about the disrespectful way the computer salesman treated her. I get the smae thing. In fact, last time I wen tcomputer shopping, she was with me, so I know just what she means. As far as I know, I have no computer salesmen among my readers, but if you are out there, then you guys just have to quit trying to size up your customers' needs based on their looks. You're not good at that.

#1 daughter is planning to take some web design courses. She's good with graphic arts and with computers, so that makes sense to me, and of course I love the idea of having someone to talk about these things with in real life.

She said we could be geeky together.

I resist that term. I don't think of myself that way at all. Looking back on the day, though, it is possible that someone who starts the day with discussions of key signatures, continues with engineer jokes and humorous flowcharts, and finishes it up with "The Big Bang Theory" shouldn't resist it so strenuously. Perhaps I'm judging on the basis of looks.

If #1 daughter and Pink Hebe, delectable creatures that they are, can be computer guys, and a nice matron like me can be a computer guy, then perhaps it is the stereotype that needs to change. Perhaps we've outgrown that. Maybe there was a time when people who could read were automatically assumed to be socially inept folks who had pocket protectors on their jerkins.

Last night's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration was inspiring. There was a lot of music, and prayers in several different styles, including one that finished up, "black and brown and white and Jewish and Christian and Heavenly Father even those who don't believe in you, we all stand up and shout 'Hallelujah!'" There were liturgical dancers, which I always enjoy, and a speaker who shared her personal experiences at the places we know from our history books: Little Rock, Selma, Montgomery, Watts. For me, there was poignancy to the fact that a descendant of slaveowners could join with descendants of slaves to celebrate not only the life of Dr. King, but also the fact that United States has within a human lifetime gone from the horrors of segregation to the election of an African-American president.

Not that we've entirely conquered racism in our nation. So perhaps you might like to attend some of the MLK events in your area. We have some good ones coming up, with fine music planned. And joining in with these may help mitigate the unseemliness of those MLK Day sale flyers we've been getting.

I guess we've adjusted fully to the thought of the birth of Christ as a suitable opportunity for hawking cut-price items, but I'm still a little shocked that Dr. King's birthday, within human memory of his death, should be treated this way.

I got home at 9:00 and my menfolks were still waiting around for someone to feed them. There's something wrong with this, in the 21st century, isn't there?

We were all hungry, though, so I rustled something up.

If you ever find yourself in this position, you can make an egg burrito. These are good for breakfast, too.

Chop up some bell peppers, tomatoes, and green onions. If you don't have a bunch of anti-vegetable boys breathing down your neck, mushrooms and avocado and spinach are also great in this. If you do have those anti-vegetable guys with you, then chop up some ham or sausage as well. #2 son demonstrated his favorite approach, which is to cook a sausage patty and then use a food chopper to mince it up into miniscule bits. Scramble all these things up with a few eggs.

 Warm a tortilla on the grill, sprinkle on a bit of cheese, and put a spoonful of the eggs in the middle. Roll it up and eat it.

Sit with other people at a table, though. Don't eat it in front of your computer.

I got the job with the guy from Arizona, which means that for this coming week I have the full number of billable hours I want. If I can keep from having more than a matching number of unbillable ones, I'll be very happy.

Heck, I'll be happy anyway. But I'm really trying to get the hours question settled. Not that it's something that can be settled, exactly, since as a freelance I have to come up with my billable hours all over again every week. I have good prospects, though. Sometimes I look with happy surprise at my boys and say, "You know, this might work out." They agree with me, in equal surprise.

Once I get my work schedule where I want it, I can pay more attention to my non-work life, which still exists, contrary to appearances.

I'm slowly but surely getting the Doctor's Bag knitted. It's a thick fabric, and will need blocking, but since it's all going to be sewn up into a purse, that's what it ought to be.

 I spent some time yesterday reading in the shiatsu massage chair, and my back is a little better. I only got to the gym three times this week, so I'm hoping to get a good Pilates or dance stretching in today, but I need an empty house for that. There may be some of you who are happy to have spectators for your workouts, but I don't feel that way.

Church this morning, grading of papers this afternoon. More housework, homework for the Tuesday class, and perhaps some lolling around. That's the plan.

Today I have two things on the calendar: a party in the afternoon and singing at a Martin Luther King Day celebration in the evening.

I also have papers to grade for my online class, but I can't get in to get them. This is not good, but it does shorten my to-do list. I asked one of my students, via Facebook, to post a message for the others in the discussion group so they won't think I'm ignoring them.

And I have a request for an estimate on a large job. It would involve perhaps 25 hours of work, with a team in India, for a guy in Arizona with a company in Colorado. I'd like to have that job. At this point, I have a lot of jobs with that kind of geographic range. Having analyzed last year's work and discovered that my local clients can easily involve eight hours of work with only three hours on the invoice, I have plunged wholeheartedly into the global marketplace.

We global marketplace denizens don't care about physical location any more. We have transcended it. In some jobs, the company is in one country, the owner in another, I'm in a third, the webmaster is in a fourth. Under these circumstances, it doesn't matter at all where information workers live. Workers in a cheap place have an advantage under those circumstance. This is rough on American developers and coders, but as long as English is the language of the global marketplace, we native speaking writers are sitting pretty. Especially those of us who can spell in British and Australian; we're going to be a little off for our cousins across the ponds, perhaps, but closer than the Pakistanis. When and if that ceases to be true, we'll have trouble.

In The World Is Flat, Friedman said that as this spreads from information workers to other types of workers, there will be three kinds of workers who still have jobs. First will be those whose work just has to be done in situ, like hairdressers. I teach a face-to-face class, which requires physical presence, but I'm doing the same class online, so that may be heading out. Painters and plumbers still have to be physically present to do their work, but cooks and farmers and bakers no longer have to even though local is better with those things. It's hard to know which jobs really demand physical presence and which we're just used to.

The second group of workers who'll still have jobs, Friedman says, are those who are special. I think I have a bit of that, myself. Lots of people do the kind of work that I do, but many of them do it badly and few do it as fast as I do. Once this type of work starts being taught in colleges, that may change and I won't be so special any more.

The third group of workers on Friedman's list is the flexible workers. I think that nowadays we more often use the word "agile" -- being able to see something coming and grab the opportunity, being able to change focus as the marketplace changes, being quick to adopt new technology and ideas. Those who are just flexible in the sense of being willing to do whatever's asked get caught in the commodity trap and find that their value sinks, so they can still work but they get paid very little. My colleagues in the Phillipines are the fastest-growing group for outsourcing, but their wages are falling instead of rising. They've become known as the place to go for cheap workers who'll do anything -- flexible rather than agile.

A few years ago I was talking with The Empress, who has a degree in economics, about the turn of the century. It seemed to me at the time that we were on the verge of some amazing economic changes. I said that this time period would be in the economics books like Tulipomania or the South Sea Bubble. Who knew what those changes would be? I didn't; it just seemed impossible that we could continue in the path that we were on at that time. I guess we still don't know what's going to happen, but I feel that I'm getting to join in with the changes rather than fearfully watching them, as many of my countrymen are.

I need to cook and clean and grocery shop, though I'd far rather sit around knitting and reading. I didn't even get to do that last night, as I was talking with the guy in Arizona. If I do my domestic chores right now, in fact, I could then loll around for a couple of hours before setting out on my adventures.

Except for the estimate and the papers....

Yesterday was filled with client contact. I have two new clients and three new assignments from ongoing clients. This was a good use of billable hours. However, it means that I will not complete all my billable hours today, because I only managed about three yesterday.

This means that I have work for next week, not that I should panic and work all night, I'm reminding myself.

It also means that I graded papers after last night's rehearsal and didn't get to bed till 11:00, which is past my bedtime. And then didn't sleep well because of my aches and pains. Possibly because I spent hours discussing interesting technical questions and therefore didn't feel that I could take time for stretching. Pretty pathetic, eh?

The lesson there is: do the gym stuff first, or at least right after class, because once the day begins it's very hard to fit it in.

The people I was talking with yesterday were all over the place. One guy is right here in my town, though I've never met him. One is in Spain. One is in New York, another in Philadelphia. One in England. Another hasn't mentioned where he lives, but his emails arrive festooned with what looks like Swedish or something. I still find this kind of cool.

There was a time when having an international clientele was a sign of success. Now it's probably just a sign that I have a computer, but I still find it cool.

I read the first crop of papers from my face to face class. There are some that are hard to grade. One was a challenge because it's obviously someone who has limited English. We've been told not to use a different grading standard for ESL students, but it's hard for me not to make allowances. The other that really made me puzzle over it is written in blank verse, more or less.

I asked #1 son to read it for me. "Do you think you should tell him he's supposed to write prose, or would that stifle his creativity?" he asked me.

That's exactly the question. I'd like this guy to harness his language and put it into some paragraphs and things, but I don't want him to start writing "There are three reasons... In conclusion, I have shown that there are three reasons..."
We had snow yesterday. Since I have to drive today, I am hoping the roads are nice and dry by now. I went out last night, but I wasn't driving, so I didn't look.

I have a bunch of aches and pains. I report this with a sense of surprise, because I don't think I've done anything to warrant aches and pains. And yet my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, my neck hurts.

Maybe I'm getting old.

As to my goals and resolutions, the importance of planning continues to be apparent. I didn't pack my gym bag on Tuesday, so I didn't have my gear with me when I passed the gym after class yesterday, so I just went home. Fortunately, I had a call from the nice woman who cuts my hair, saying she had an opening for me, so I quickly packed said gym bag up and went and got my hair cut and went to the gym. Thus, when I got home, it was quite late for me to be starting my computer work, so when my son assured me that we had Nothing In The House To Eat, I sent him out for pizza.

Apart from these slips, I'm keeping up with the health parts of my New Year's Resolution fairly well. By dinnertime last night I had discovered all kinds of  meats and vegetables and grains and things in the house. I don't know where they had been when my son looked for them at lunchtime.Today I think I'll do some good stretching -- the NYC Ballet DVD or Pilates On the Ball or something like that.

I asked the hairdresser about my hair, which is getting gray. Overall, I think this is okay, because it's graying nicely, but I think it does make me look older, and I work in a field in which this is not a good thing. I had toyed briefly with the thought of some very natural-seeming coloring, like the commercials in which men color their hair and everyone thinks they look well-rested. In fact, I think that the commercials for the men's haircoloring and the commercials for "natural male enhancement" are now both suggesting that the users do whatever it is that they do with the products, and people are just struck by their new wonderosity without any particular awareness of what has happened to them. Sort of like what really expensive lingerie is supposed to do for women.

The hairdresser assured me that I couldn't be trusted to do the kind of upkeep involved in hair coloring, and regaled me with horror stories of people who didn't keep up with their hair coloring and had to go around with bandanas on their heads, crying. "Hollering," in fact, was the word she used. One of the example women later had to be institutionalized. She didn't exactly say that it was all caused by her attempts to color her hair in spite of a fecklessness that made that unwise, but the implication was there.

She tells me that some morning I'll wake up and my hair will be a lovely white. My mother has lovely white hair, so I believe her. I'll look like Jean Harlow then, right? In the meantime, I'll just have to look old, that's all. Since at the moment I sort of feel old, too, what with all the aches and pains and knowing who Jean Harlow was, I guess it's appropriate.

I'm also keeping up with the billable/unbillable hours part fairly well. I've been spending a good deal of time in client communication as people get back from their holidays and decide they need things, and there was all that extra time in course prep, but my billable hours are rising. As the people who've been telling me they need things begin to approve actual hours, my calendar is filling up nicely. Only for a week or so ahead, and I want to be like The Computer Guy and have it full three months out, but he has a head start. I may be there myself by the end of the year. That would lessen the suspense of freelancing.

I have a phone interview this morning with an engineer who's starting up a sensible service. You can post jobs you need done, like plumbing or fixing your garage door, and people who do plumbing or garage door fixing can bid on the job for you. Doesn't that sound logical? So far this week I've been writing tech stuff, and for the rest of the week I'll be writing educational stuff, but if this guy decides to hire me, I'll be writing home repair stuff. I also have some more drug stuff coming up. And, since today is Amazon Vine day, I must also sneak in book reviews and I have papers to grade as well.

Variety is the spice of life.

Last night I went to a meeting at which the speaker told us that our state was #50 in women with college degrees and #50 in women executives.

After a bit of stunned silence, someone piped up with what I'm sure we had all been thinking: "What about Mississippi?"

For as long as I've lived here, we've relied on Mississippi to keep us from being fiftieth among the states. We were never the poorest or most miserable, because, as we always said, "Thank God for Mississippi."

We could hardly accept the idea that we had slipped down to a point lower than Mississippi.

Fortunately, this was a meeting of the AAUW, so the speaker was merely getting our attention before alerting us to an opportunity to do something about it. If you happen to live in my state (and you'll know you do, if you recognize the slogan above), check out the Women's Foundation and the Girls of Promise program. you may be young enough to benefit directly from the Emerging Leaders program, and if not, I hope you'll consider adding one or both of those programs to your list of good deeds this year.

I have to hurry off to class. We had a transatlantic or possibly transpacific phone call in the middle of the night and I couldn't get back to sleep for hours, and therefor I overslept and am still sitting here in my nightie drinking tea when I need to be out the door in five minutes for class. Eeep!

Yesterday's class was in some ways different from my class in the fall.

For one thing, it's in a strip mall next to a Eureka Pizza. I'll take a picture for you on Wednesday. There's a uniformed guard at the door. I asked him where my classroom was, and he told me, and then I asked where I could make copies of my thesis, and he directed me to a coin operated copier. After a little cross-talk, I clarified that I was teaching the class and he directed me to the teacher's room, where I found things in my mailbox, and a copier.

This is the second time I've been taken for a student. I kind of feel as though the gray hair, briefcase, and jacket ought to cover that, but there it is.

The things in my mailbox were information on what to do if there were a bomb threat or a "shooter." I tried to sound serious as I explained that we should lock the door, turn off the lights, and calmly hide under the furniture. One of the girls asked what we should do if the shooter was in the room with us.

"Hmm...." I frowned, reading through the paper for clues. "Maybe we should push them out the door first, and then lock it and hide under the furniture."

Last term I had moslty girls and this term I have mostly guys. Several of them flunked the class last term and are trying again. It's a more ethnically diverse group. We have computers in the room, but no projector, so the thoughts I had about PowerPoint (peer pressure, you know) are a thing of the past.

Stopping off at the gym on the way home worked out well. I also had to stop by the optometrist to pick up #2 son's contacts, so by the time I got home and showered and dressed, it was past 10:00. Without extra errands, I think I can be at work as a computer guy by 10:00.

This is good, because assignment and interviews are trickling in.

Yesterday, however, was just teaching and unbillable hours. I did my blogging, Dark Art Lite (not unbillable, actually), a bunch of back and forth with clients, my Amazon Vine reviews, and finished reading the sample section from Build Your Own Website the Right Way. So little of that book was new to me that I'm thinking I might spend some of today's unbillable hours taking the html certification at oDesk. Not that I want to code anything, but it could make me look more knowledgeable and versatile, right? I also need to take the opportunity to do some SEO for my own site. The cobbler's children go barefoot, you know.

However, I have 7.75 billable hours today, plus of course gym time, followed by an AAUW meeting and my Tuesday class (for which I haven't done any of the homework during the Christmas break). So chances are some of the billable stuff will have to carry over to tomorrow.

And it is my eldest kid's birthday today. She is not close enough for me to bake her a cake, but I'll think about her all day.

We're hosting the town Martin Luther King celebration at our church on Saturday. We had a year's notice, but the committee didn't continue to keep in touch, so I guess it was forgotten. Now we have a week to plan and arrange everything.

The task is complicated by our white choir director who, though he actually loves music from the African American tradition and routinely performs it, is convinced that having white people sing this music would be offensive. We have African American church members, and participate in group singing with the historically African American churches in our neighborhood, so why this is an issue now I don't know. I suggested that Martin Luther King Day is not actually a block power celebration, and that as Americans we are entitled to feel proud of the diversity of our cultural heritage. I asked him whether, when he sees African American opera singers, feels that they are mocking his European American heritage. I don't know whether this helped at all.

We also have people focusing on the sound system. The pastor said he would have to hire someone, and began discussing elaborate plans. Since the church website has been through the same process -- deciding there was a need, deciding to hire someone, going through all kinds of planning and preparation -- but then stalled while waiting for funding to be approved, I don't see any chance that this will actually take place by Saturday night.

The worship team meeting last night went well, though, I think. We were efficient, but also addressed everyone's concerns, though I did stop a couple of rambling conversations and suggest that they belonged in another meeting.

I had a couple of contacts from potential new clients yesterday -- an interview request and a request for a site analysis. I also had a developer from New York say I seemed very plugged in, which was nice. I mean, here I am all rural and everything, and also someone's mom, so having a developer from NY be impressed with my level of plugged-in-ness was cool, right? He also remarked that my style of instant messaging suggested that I had a sharp mind, but while it was a kind remark it's not really news. I said I wouldn't deny it -- would he?

Lively conversations are also going on in my online class's discussion room. I'm really happy about that, since feeling disconnected appears to be a big problem with distance learning. The students are not only talking to me, but also to each other, and they're helping one another figure out how to make their homepages and everything. This makes me feel optimistic.

I meet my face-to-face class for the first time this morning. My class list suggests greater ethnic diversity this term. I like that because it'll help me learn their names faster. The class is early, and there may be lots of traffic. I fear that it will interfere with my blogging, but it might just mean I'll have to leave my email till after class.

My plan is to leave quite early in case of traffic, and to take my gym bag, so as to stop by the gym on my way back. At the moment, I have no billable hours for this week except for my teaching and a little Dark Art Lite. This is of course not good news,  from a financial perspective. However, I still have quite a lot of unbillable stuff to catch up with, so I'm trying to look on it as a positive thing. And it does mean that I should be able to go to the gym without feeling stressed about how late I get back to my computer.

My classroom is near a waffle emporium, and I was giving serious thought to going up really early and treating myself to breakfast out, but of course I can't do that when I have hardly any work this week. Maybe I'll pick up some hours before Wendesday's class.

Last night's party was mostly sitting around the dining room table swapping stories. It was a lot of fun.

I learned about tickle grass, and working in freezers, and interesting expressions used in rural Georgia, and boiled peanuts.

The Divine Mrs. M had brought her famous manicotti, and there was a chocolate cake called "Cousin Mildred's Chocolate Cake," so you know it had to be good. Apart from that, it was all vegetables. I took a cucumber salad made from a recipe in Prevention.There were three other salads, the provenance of which I don't know, and a bit of bread. We all marveled at how gorgeous the plates of food were with all their colors.

Another plus about healthy eating.

My husband said, as I made the salad, "You're cooking for the party. Not cooking for the people at home."

He was invited to the party, of course. He never goes to social events with me, but he's my husband. He's always invited. A lot of the women I know have the same experience, so I don't hold it against him, but it does seem to me that he shouldn't complain when it's his own choice.

Besides, I knew I'd be leaving the menfolks to fend for themselves, so I got a revolting and enormous package of pre-seasoned ribs for them to cook.

#2 son said, "We'll feast like kings!" His stance while saying this was the one used in movies to show that some foe has been vanquished. Then the camera, presumably in a helicopter, wheels away into the sky in a circle so you can see the man exulting against a background of impressive scenery.

His brother consulted with me on how best to prepare a jar of baked beans to go with the slabs of meat. They were fine.

I've met my cardio goal two weeks in a row. I've sort of gotten dressed and ready before starting work on most days, kind of. Healthy eating? Occasionally, in between rushed grabbing and random snacking. 15 hours of billable work this week -- my average from last year.

Today I'm going to set myself up for success on all my resolutions and goals. Doesn't that sound grand?

I'm going to make a meal plan like CraftymommaVT and do the grocery shopping for it. I'm going to clean my house and catch up on laundry, pack up my gym bag for Monday, and work out a schedule for the semester, since classes begin on Monday.

Yesterday I finished up my assignment for the drug training guy in Guilford, learning a lot of things about the British approach to substance misuse (they don't say "abuse" over there) in the process. It sounds as though he wants me to continue working with him. I had a long walk and talk with Janalisa, a brief visit with The Empress, and finished up with my Dark Art Lite people.

Then I was supposed to have an interview for a job, via IM or phone. I got stood up. I was dismayed, because I wanted that job, and also because it meant I had to stay somewhat alert all evening in case. I sent off an email this morning making the main points I had planned on making. We'll see.

Okay, off to begin the highly productive day I have planned.