Last night I played bunko (AKA bunco) with the Oakland Zion Ladies' Missionary Position Society, a very ribald group of ladies who made lots of funny jokes I can't repeat in mixed company.

I had never played bunko before. I went with CD, who was also completely new to the game. It's very popular among suburban women of a certain age, and I'd heard about bunko parties for years, but this is the first time anyone has invited me.

My mother doesn't get invited to bunko parties, either, I bet.

Anyway, I won. Not the big prize, I am relieved to say, but the second prize.

People who know me IRL will not be surprised. I always win.

Now I know that this is mathematically impossible. When people were saying, "Ooooh, you're good at this!" I always responded with, "It's complete random chance."

Note to self: people playing games of chance with prizes don't want to hear that it's random.

The thing that's strange to me is that I continue, even with the knowledge that it's random chance, to believe that I always win. I've had to leave PTA meetings because my family and I were winning all the prizes and it got embarrassing. Last fall I won several random drawings at an event, and the hostess said, "Who'd have thought?" at which point my table chorused "We would!" This is because I am very lucky and always win.

So I knew ahead of time that I would win, and of course I did.

All I can figure is that, had I not won, I would have thought, "How strange!" and promptly forgotten about it. Equally, there must be people who have that same reaction when they win, and continue to feel that they don't win anything.

How does this persist in the face of actual knowledge of the math involved? I don't know.

I'm just very lucky, that's all.

This morning Janalisa's coming over for a walk, and then I have more hours for my client from Guilford (like Ford Prefect and also, I now know, Alice in Wonderland), and I have to finish up my classes, since they start on Monday. In spite of my goal for increased billable hours, it's a good thing that I didn't get all the expected projects in from my apparently still partying clients, or I would not possibly have finished.

Yesterday's faculty meeting was the usual kind of meeting. The department chair couldn't figure out how to get the computer and projector working. I didn't want to push myself forward, but when she went to call the IT people I did just go up and turn it on. I went to tell her and she said, "Oh, Dr. L was able to get it going?" I somewhat resented her assumption that the man had been the one to fix it, and I'd just been sent as a gofer to tell her about it, but there it is. Shortly after that, I also turned on the projector for them. They appeared to chalk that up to magic.

I just don't look like a Computer Guy, I guess.

Before the staff meeting, I merely answered emails, installed software, did financial tasks, blogged for my own blogs, worked on the WebCT course, and negotiated with potential clients, none of which is billable, so yesterday was an entirely unbillable day. Today, however, I have about seven hours of billable work.

I don't think I'll hit twenty this week. However, goals don't expect that you'll meet them first crack out of the box.

Resolutions do. In fact, resolutions usually assume that you'll do really well on the resolution for the first few days, and then taper off to nothingness.

I hate to think I've tapered off already. But yesterday I had planned to go to the gym after the staff meeting, so I didn't go in the morning,  and then I left without my gym bag, so I didn't go in the afternoon, either. By the time I got home and answered all the emails, I had to leave for rehearsal.

Today I should already be at the gym. However, I started the day with several blog posts in my mind, and I have a noon deadline for one of them, and there were client emails, and ... in short, not only have I not gone to the gym, but I've been sitting here in my nightgown for a couple of hours, working. That was another of my resolutions: to get ready for the day before beginning to work.

My third resolution, healthy eating, is teetering on the precipice. I had a balanced breakfast yesterday, but then ran out of time for lunch before the meeting. As I drove home at 4:00, not having had lunch, I had to stop for gas, and bought a package of Junior Mints. I ate them in the car as I drove, marveling even at the time at what a bad choice that was.

The boys and I made fried rice for dinner. That was fun, but they heckled me mercilessly about putting vegetables in, so the entire pan contained a bit of onion and minuscule dice of one carrot. In a rush to get to rehearsal, I just grabbed a bowlful of that and had no salad or anything. When I got home from rehearsal, the boys were on their way out the door for a Taco Bell run, and I had them pick me up a taco. Which I ate in front of the computer as I read about the <cite> element.

Here's the point: you have to plan for making good decisions. If you've been making bad decisions for a while, it's because they're easier in your environment than the good ones, or because you're in the habit of it. Just saying you're going to do the right things now doesn't cause it to happen.

I needed that reminder today.

How are those New Year's resolutions going?

I have mostly New Year's goals and plans rather than resolutions, but I have a few resolutions.

Regular exercise is one -- it's 120 minutes of cardio and 2 strength training sessions each week for women my age, and so far I'm on it. Not starting to work until I've done my morning stuff (xanga, breakfast, gym, getting dressed like a grown-up) is another, and I'm not quite there yet, but closer. Healthy eating and not slipping any further into the Geek Lifestyle is the third.

I think that mostly requires organization.

Fortunately, my planner arrived. A dear friend of mine from my college days sent me a check as a Christmas present. I was amazed, but I knew just what to do with it. I had been mooning over Franklin Covey's Design It Yourself planners, and so I ordered one.

You get to make it exactly the way you want it, uploading your own pictures and choosing how the pages are laid out and everything. You can even have all your regular stuff and upcoming appointments put in for you ahead of time. It takes them a long time to make it, so the thing to do would be to plan for it in November. This way you can get all the little details done and still have it in time to get your new year planned.

Mine reminds me to hit the gym every weekday. Not only did I not have time to put in lots of other details, I also didn't have a clear enough idea of what I'd be doing this year to be able to say. I have goals, and plans for reaching those goals, but 2008 contained enough Complete Surprises that I don't really think I can put much into my planner yet for 2009.

I'm starting class Monday, and today I have a faculty meeting, at which we will be finalizing our syllabi. I have to drive to the Next County for said meeting, and I figure I'll go find my classroom while I pass through the Next Town, where it is located. I also have a plan to hit the gym on the way home from this class (7:30 a.m., MWF), so I'm going to load up my gym bag and practice that today, too.

I've calculated that my salary from the college is the equivalent -- on my current pay scale -- of five hours per week, so I plan to spend as little more than that as possible. Realistically, I think that my face to face class and online class will take about 10 hours a week. Many freelancers, at this point, would figure that it was ten hours a week and paid half the hourly rate, but I am resisting this. I have read tales of people teaching 20 online classses at once, so I'm thinking that I will work toward teaching four online courses, which would still take ten hours, but pay ten hours, too. Until then, grading papers will still be unbillable hours.

I'm also getting my house back in order. Not very exciting, but I did want to show you how well you can store your handbags with shower curtain hooks over the clothes rod in your coat closet.

I have too many handbags, I think. But I like them all.

I also think I will end up liking the one I'm knitting right now.

And I guess that frequently changing from one bag to another is one way to keep your purses orderly.

#2 daughter gave me for Christmas a very cool billfold that holds absolutely everything. and a pretty faux-croc makeup kit, so I can just grab those two things and my planner and stick them into whichever bag I'm carrying that day, so it's not too bad.

Another order came in the mail. It is not really related to being organized, because it's a bunch of gorgeous hair ornaments made by Rivkasmom. If you click on the link, you can see them, which you cannot in this typically bad photo. She sent them all dolled up in a fancy case, with a snazzy free bookmark for me. I sent the hair ornaments off to long-haired friends and relations who have things to celebrate right now.

The organized part of that was the fact that I immeditely went to the post office and packed them up in the packing stuff they had there, which was quite festive, and sent them right off. It cost $10 and took me about 30 minutes. Normally, I would have searched around for recyclables in which to pack them, and made birthday and congratulations cards by hand, and not gotten them sent out for a couple of days.

So I guess I'm doing better on that.

I'm still doing more unbillable hours than I want to, but that's the difference between goals and resolutions. I've already spent more than five hours on the college, because I'm still building that WebCT course and planning my face-to-face course and whatnot, and today will probably be another five hours, with the driving and so forth. I've spent five hours on my Dark Art clients this week, which is good. I have a new client at oDesk, a substance abuse counselor trainer from Guilford, and we've agreed on five hours tomorrow, which is perfect. In analyzing last year's financials, I can see that working through oDesk and The Computer Guy's firm, even though I charge only half as much per hour, is actually more profitable because it doesn't involve nearly as many unbillable hours. I've therefore mentally adjusted my pay scale to that number. I'm hoping to do five hours a week on oDesk this spring (twice my average from last fall) and work up to ten for them next fall. If I do ten each for oDesk and the college, I will earn enough for my simple needs. If I average five hours for The Computer Guy and for the IT guy who has asked me to do 5-10 for him beginning next month (and who knows -- neither of those guys has signed a contract), then I would be fulltime. The true beauty of this plan is that it would mean that instead of my unbillable hours going toward marketing, meeting with clients, unbillable Dark Art scope creep, and paperwork for multiple small clients, it could go toward improving my skills and pro bono work, which go hand in hand.

Guilford, I believe, was the putative home town of Ford Prefect. Overseas clients sure make it evident that I don't know much about other countries. But if you find yourself in Guilford and need a drug counselor training center, or rather centre, I can definitely hook you up.

Yesterday also involved a planning meeting with the pastor for this week's worship team meeting, hemming pants for #1 son so that he can go jobhunting, and helping him set up a CafePress shop which he did in lieu of jobhunting. I had a request to interview for a large classical music related SEO project, preliminary work for the FAFSA, an informational meeting for #2 son's college, an emergency grocery store run, and an absolute mountain of laundry. I was able to get a few unbillable things crossed off my marker board. Today is supposed to be the launch date for a site The Computer Guy and I are working on, but I've had no content update requests, so I have the feeling that wer'e going to be late on that, or else I'll be at my computer all night. One or the other.

Grapefruit now.

I'm reading Think and Make It Happen, by Augustus Cury. Cury's premise is that we mostly live in our minds, and that our quality of life depends on whether we are in the audience, watching ourselves have thoughts which may be unpleasant or destructive, or become the authors of our own stories. I suppose the stories are being played out on the stage of our minds regardless of whether we are the helpless actors running through lines determined by our histories, or boldly declaiming things we decided to write.

This is a well organized book. There are twelve principles, and each one gets a chapter, from "Be the Author of Your Own Story" to "Turn Life into a Celebration." Each chapter begins with a list of the characteristics associated with the principle. For example, "Direct Your Thoughts" includes "decides to become the lead actor...is free to think but not a slave to thoughts...governs thoughts... has a relaxed, tranquil mind" and so on. There is a discussion of the problems created by failing to live out the principles,  and instruction in a technique or strategy (in this chapter, the key strategy for the book, which is "DCD": Doubt, Criticize, Determine). Next comes a passage showing how Jesus embodied the principles, a case study of someone who used the techniques to overcome the problems, questions for discussion, and exercises. For example, in the chapter on directing your thoughts, there is the exercise, "Practice not clinging to problems that haven't happened yet." The book concludes with a discussion of ways to use the book in therapeutic groups or classrooms.

Cury has a lot of useful suggestions. I'm generally a happy and indeed disgustingly mentally healthy person, but I recognized some incorrect thinking in myself from Cury's descriptions. For example, I've been sort of clinging to the possibility that I met end up starving in a gutter ever since I lost my job last April, but it hasn't happened yet by any means. I'm also subject to a bit of a phobia, so I read his suggestions about that with interest. He recommends an internal "roundtable discussion" involving things like, "What is the logic behind this? I demand to be free."

I have shared with you the kind of internal discussion I have when dealing with my own phobia, and I have to say that mine never get as far as "I demand to be free."

Cury's principles and characteristics embrace joyful attitudes toward life as well as what we might think of as remedial or therapeutic ones. His exercises include greeting people in ways that show how important they are, surprising people, paying attention to the beauty in small things, spending less than you earn, loving your school or work.

So there's a lot of good in this book. And yet, I can't claim to be enjoying it or finding it life-changing. I think it's the language. "Here's a tip that will greatly improve your ability to dialogue: never critique people until you've affirmed them." I don't disagree with that advice. But reading a sentence filled with words like "dialogue" used as a verb, "critique" and "affirm" -- and such a stilted sentence, too -- well, I find myself turned away from the wisdom of this book by the difficulty of slogging through it. The case studies never become interesting enough to read like stories instead of case studies, the advice feels like Polonius, and overall it's just a boring book.

Perhaps it belongs in a classroom.

In spite of that, I can see this being a very useful book. If you're comfortable with therapist jargon, it might be completely enjoyable. And if you can struggle through it, it has some good lessons.

My skirt fell off at church.

This is the absolute literal truth. The reason I haven't taken to my bed and Gone Into a Decline is that I had no witnesses except one of the Suwandas, who assures me that no one else was in the room at the time, except Bigsax who sat with his back to me.

Listen, if you ever are with a friend and her skirt falls off, you must immediately assure her that absolutely no one else saw it happen. Even if it happens at church during the coffee hour, insead of afterwards.

Another fortunate thing is that I was wearing opaque tights and a jacket, not tiny dotted swiss panties, because I could not possibly have lived that down, no matter how few witnesses there were.

 The skirt in question is on the left. It's made from the pattern at right. When I made it, Pink Hebe told me that the waist was way too big when she made it. I said, oh no, it's just designed to sit at the hip.

Man, was I stupid. An inch below the waist, okay, but actually riding that low... I mean, if it sits at the hip, what's to keep it from falling off? Nothing, that's what. I just reached over to get coffee, and it slipped right down to the floor. I dipped swiftly down and pulled it back up, thanking God that it hadn't happened while I was singing in front of the early service. Then I went and put on my choir robe.

You might think that this would solve the problem. Nope. There I am in the choir loft for second service, standing up and sitting down, thinking about what I'll do if my skirt falls off again right there during the service. Pick it up and carry it out with me? Wriggle into in the choir loft, hoping the men behind me don't notice and the sopranos in front shield me from the congregation?

I left after the anthem, slipping down the side aisle with trepidation.

Then I went out to the parking lot and discovered that #2 son had taken my car to go to work, so I had to walk home.

Waiting for my skirt to fall off as I walked.

That skirt is getting a waistband. And if I make it again, which could conceivably happen,because I liked it very well rigth up to the moment it plunged to the floor, then I'll go with a smaller size or make adjustments in some way. You can't have an untrustworthy skirt.

The song for today us De Tierra Lejana Vienemos, an epiphany carol from Puerto Rico. English and Spanish words, in case you want to sing this. It's very pretty.

Another thing that happened yesterday is that a company contacted me about making my professional blog the sample for their new platform, in exchange for my continuing to write it. I couldn't do that, actually, since it would amount to letting them use The Computer Guy's design for their advertising, but I was flattered that they offered. If only they had wanted my educational blog, which needs rescuing from the lovely social neighborhood it lives in.

And another thing that happened was that I talked with an experienced WebCT instructor, who told me that she doesn't put her whole course up before class starts, but rather just prepares lessons a week or two at a time, in the normal way. This takes some pressure off.

And the big thing about my traumatic experience in church yesterday is that I have, this early in the year, already had the most embarrassing experience I could possibly have this year. Now I can sail bravely into all situations, secure in the knowledge that the worst is already over.

The song for today is "Behold That Star," because we're singing it in church this morning. It was written by Thomas W. Talley, the son of a slave, while at Fisk University. Here's the sheet music, and you can hear it there, too. I'm the soloist, which #1 son said is no big deal, but he's not the one singing a high E at 8:30 in the morning.

So I need to wake my voice up. I haven't sung since Christmas.

#2 daughter and I were talking last night about how worship planners who are concerned about time always go after the music.

A typical hymn lasts for about three minutes, maybe less. Cutting a verse probably saves forty seconds. Ministers are fine with starting the service three minutes late, with spending forty seconds walking to the lectern, with a minute or two of banter and introductory chat every time they stand up -- and then want to sing just one verse of the hymn.

Once, faced with this attitude, I said, "Oh, sure, the congregation is just sitting there during the hymns thinking,'I wish we'd finish this song so we could get to the sermon.'"

My sarcasm was met with silence. I'd like to think it was the silence of people who hadn't thought of that before, but of course it might have been an offended silence.

I agreed to lead the worship team this year. For my first act, I sent out an email to the people who had agreed to find team leaders for each of the little teams within the worship team, giving the names of the people I'd found and asking them to give me the names and email addresses of the people they'd found.

My email also was met with silence.

Last year at this time, I was leader of the music ministry (and I suppose I still am, since no one else has stepped forward) and the worship team's first job was to find leaders for all those little teams -- the communion stewards, greeters, ushers, lay readers, acolytes. The team leaders would be in charge of finding people to do these little jobs, so that we didn't have to grab people right before church every week. Obviously, this would be a timesaving and stree-reducing thing to do. We never did it.  It wasn't my job, so I didn't do anything about it, but it still startles me that in an entire year we weren't able to accomplish this. Or get our website live. Or, indeed, anything else we had claimed we wanted to do, except for fixing the music in the early service, with resulting increase in attendance.

So this morning I intend to track down all those people and ask them kindly how they're doing on finding the team leaders.

Yesterday, we undecorated our house, pulled all the furniture out of the living room and vacuumed, dusted, and cleared up some of the disarray. I also scrubbed the kitchen pretty thoroughly. After that, I lolled around reading and knitting and talking with assorted family members.

Today is the last day of the winter break for us; everyone goes back to work or school tomorrow. My husband is going back to work, even though they've sent his machines to Texas. He has no idea what he'll be doing, and is in fact expecting to be sent home with a pink slip, but I don't think so.

In any case, I'm thinking that today is the day to finish and/or throw out all the remaining holiday goodies, and to loll around with a will, in order to recharge sufficiently to meet tomorrow with zeal.

That's the plan.

I got back to strength training just slightly yesterday, doing a couple of sets each of lat pulldowns and leg presses. Lost two pounds this week. Made it about halfway through building the WebCT course and saw some activity on the discussion board. Got about six inches done on my current knitting project, at a rate of knit four rows pull out two. And I worked all week except on New Year's Day, and did exactly three billable hours, and I have at least another full week's worth of unbillable stuff to do.

Today I believe we'll undecorate our house, even though it's not yet Epiphany, and clean up. Then I'll do The Clearing, which is the HGP New Year's ritual of going around your house, pen and paper in hand, and listing all the things that need to be done.

I could probably use my list from last year, since I didn't get many of them done. The Clearing will therefore be a process of thinking, "Well, I didn't fix that. I didn't fix that, either. There's something else I should have done."

I also have to gather up my tax information. I had a brief conversation on this subject with The Computer Guy last night, in which he used algebraic equations and words like "accrual," thus causing me to waken this morning with a deep sense of dread at the thought of even gathering the stuff up. The Empress has offered to do my taxes for me, at a reasonable price. Blessing has a person she recommends, as well. Either way, my job is to gather up all the expenses I possibly can, in order to avoid having any profit at all. For 2009 I have to do quarterly estimated tax payments, a thing which of course I don't understand or know how to do at all.

I'm reviewing a tax-related book for Amazon, but so far it has only told me that I have to declare the fair market value of my barter arrangements, which is hardly good news, is it?

And I didn't manage to come up with enough money to pay off #1 son's tuition from last term. He didn't help, regardless of the number of times I pointed out that he needed to take a job over the break in order to get that tuition paid, and my husband has been laid off. This means that he probably won't be able to go to school this spring. His sisters feel that this is okay: he can work and save up for the fall and will be less cavalier about it. I hope they're right.

This post just gets more and more dismal, doesn't it?

I'm going to blame this on my having spent yesterday evening all alone watching "Smart People," a very depressing movie about a bunch of horrible, miserable people. Sarah Jessica Parker plays a nice, though sort of miserable, person who gets mixed up with the dreadful family. With the credits there's a montage of photos intended to suggest that, contrary to all reasonable expectations based on the movie itself, everything works out and everyone becomes happy and life improves. It's completely unconvincing.

I think I had better get a cup of tea and dress. The song for the day is "Our Festive Song," a New Year's hymn by Fanny Crosby which features, along with another year being gone and a new one beginning, cold winter flying away and blushing fairy spring coming tripping o'er the lees, which isn't likely to happen all that soon, but it's a nice thought, isn't it? I considered offering you the New Years' hymn which reminds us that our bodies will all soon in narrow beds be lying dead, but that wouldn't cheer me up any. "Our Festive Song" will sound good with all your bluegrass instruments and six-part harmony. I'm hearing a mandolin solo.

I took the day off pretty completely yesterday. I did some applications at oDesk, since one of my plans for 2009 is to work there more steadily. Applying there can be depressing, since it means I'll get a barrage of emails saying "Your candidacy for job #XXX has ended. Reason: rate too high."

Not that my rate is too high, and of course it's nice to have a response, since most applications outside of oDesk are simply ignored, but it's still kind of depressing. I know that every opening at oDesk will have dozens of applicants, and many are willing to work for much less than US minimum wage.

I went for a walk. The place where I live is not at its best in January.

I watched the Monk marathon, with some assistance (?) from the boys.

I did some knitting.

This is the Doc's Bag from Knit 2 Together. I'm doing it in  Knitpicks Sierra, I believe. The pattern is badly written, but I feel that any minute now I'm going to be able to do it without reference to the pattern. The herringbone stitch makes a nice texture, and the combination of bulky yarn and small needles makes a good sturdy fabric.

I've had one assignment this week which could have been paid, but I swapped it for tech assistance. I have two big projects going on which are unbilled but worth doing as investments -- creating my online course and rewriting that book proposal. I have one paid job waiting to be done (spring deadline) and several waiting for start dates to arrive. I'm also going to email all my worship team members today with a rallying call, and see how that works.

So I'm through with days off. I'm not through with Christmas yet, of course, since we still have clear up to Twelfth Night. But before we consider more fine Epiphany hymns, let's rejoice in the surprising fact that there are whole bunches of New Year's hymns.

I was surprised by this. I don't think I've ever actually sung a New Year's hymn in church. The beginning of the church year is advent, and New Year's isn't even on the liturgical calendar. Plus, the new Year's hymns aren't very good overall. The words for all of them basically say, "Thank God for looking after us last year, and this year, let's pray we do better than we did last year." But "New Year's Hymn" has a sweet little tune and a request to "bless every scholar here" which ought to inspire my online course development.  I was told that it would take thirty hours to make it, and I'm making it a lot fancier than the training assumed we would, so I have no business getting tired of it, but I sort of am tired of it. no doubt once I get back to it, I'll be swept up in enjoyment of the task.

Gym first.