While of course I didn't get to my own choir practice last night, I went with #2 daughter to hers. I was on the only female singer. There were two men. One had a little songbook which he had picked up at a yard sale. It contained the words to hundreds of songs, including "Glow Worm" and "Cecelia."

I didn't know "Cecelia," but I can now tell you that it begins "Does your mother know you're out, Cecelia? Does she know that I'm about to steal ya?" This sounds creepier to us now, I feel sure, than it did when it was written.

The songs reminded me of P.G.Wodehouse's stories based on his years as a lyricist for Hollywood musicals, which are quite funny. It appears that he wasn't exaggerating.

The guy with the songbook wanted to sing the songs in his book, rather than "My Shepherd Will Supply My Needs."

It was a brief practice.

I went out for a walk yesterday. I walked up to the Garment Distric Museum again. It was still locked up, but there were people inside. I walked around to the other side of the building, where there was a desk with a girl sitting there looking like a receptionist. I asked her about the museum in the back of the building, but she behaved as though I were imagining things. She didn't call anyone, or look it up, or anything of that kind. Just went "Huh?"

I may try again today. Perhaps I can look it up myself before going, and call them, and ask where their door is.

#2 daughter and I strolled out for coffee yesterday morning and ran into a friend of hers. He lives in a loft upstairs above the coffee house, which makes them fairly near neighbors.

She asked what he was doing these days. "I work in a bank," he said. She works in an insurance office. Since she lives in a city now, many of the people she knows work in the city. This is different from the people I know. The people I know are math profs or preachers or IT guys or shopkeepers or teachers or bakers or, for that matter, hypnotists -- people whose jobs are like an identity The employer is secondary, and can change. Corporate workers don't say, "I'm a claims adjuster" or "I'm a clerk II." They say who they work for.

I've been getting some unbillable work done this week, though not my accounting, since that's at home on my computer.

My husband says he's almost dying. He says this a lot. The boys say they're fine. They spent a lot of money with the Schwan's man, so they have food to eat, and otherwise it doesn't matter much that I'm not there. 
 

Working here in the big city is a lot like working at home, except that there's a lot going on outside and you can't just step out for a breath of air. I actually wasn't conscious of doing a lot of stepping outside, but I have been missing the outside enough that I think I must have done.

Also, there are no dogs and not many boys. Not physically present, at least.

Yesterday included bits of work-related excitement, and then we went to a used bookstore.

I restrained myself, actually, since they had lots of out of print books by favorite authors of mine. There was a sign explaining the prices: "$2.50 or half of current cover price." Frequently, there were no cover prices. Also, it didn't say, "...whichever is higher" or anything like that, so it wasn't really possible to tell what anything cost. They might as well have put up a sign saying, "We charge whatever we feel like for the books. Get over it."

In keeping with this overall usability problem, they had all the fiction sorted by author's last name (probably the least useful method there is), but some was upstairs and some downstairs. Thus, if you wanted to find some books by Edmund Crispin, you would have to look on both floors. If you were looking for some good mysteries, you had to prowl through all the books, but you'd have found plenty.

As I say, I restrained myself. I did get a nice stack, though, plus a wonderful book on textiles of the Arts and Crafts movement, a topic which I find fascinating. The nonfiction was shelved by subject, sort of, with very random labeling practices. Their website also doesn't have their hours or contact info. This is an anti-usability icon, this store.

However, they had books by Edmund Crispin, Tom Sharpe, Peter Cheyney, Patricia Wentworth -- people like that.

There were glitches yesterday in my class registration, a domain transfer, and a Twitter system I'm trying to set up for a client. In all cases, human error was the source of the problems. I also have a couple of people contacting me for work, for whom I'm not sure I want to work. One is offering a commission deal and wanting me to discount my monthly rate, and the other is just in a field I don't care to work in.

I would sort of like to say, "Sorry, I don't do that sort of thing." However, it sounds ... judgmental? elitist? scornful? So I'm sort of putting off any response to either of them.

#2 and I are going to go out for breakfast. Yesterday afternoon, we played Project Manager. When she got home, I told her where I was with the six websites I'd done stuff with. She felt that there should be more information written down somewhere. Files. Something like that.

I see her point. An enormous collection of emails isn't really a filing system.

Yesterday I mostly spent working with (at? on?) #2's laptop. At the moment, I dislike laptops a lot, but presumably by the end of the week I'll be used to it and contemplating a laptop of my own.

I'm a mouse user, not a keyboard user, that's the trouble.

I did go out for a walk. #2 lives in a loft next to a coffee company. Not a little charming cafe or something, but the Folgers plant. It smells like coffee all day long. Often it smells like burnt coffee, but even that is nice.

So I walked around the buildings nearest to her, making sure not to leave the coffee-scented area so that I could be sure to find my way back. I found the museum of the garment district, but it was closed. Disappointing, that, since I love weird little historical museums. I didn't find any bookstores, but there were cafes. I could take the laptop along today and go to one of those and work there.

After work, we went to a concert in the little town where #2 went to college, which is about 15 minutes from the big city where she now lives. This was a concert of children ages eight to eleven playing cellos, a violin, and a piano. They were pretty amazing. I love it that they have a community theater in an old drugstore, and that the town can fill the house for a concert of children playig cello trios.

We finished up the evening with Nachos Supreme and flan, which tasted as though it were full of alcohol. Or possibly poison. We debated this as we ate several bites. Nice texture, whatever the explanation for the burning sensation might have been.

Now I'm back to work, hoping that I'm getting all my emails, but not feeling at all certain.

I decided to come up to #2 daughter's place with her. #1 son is going to come up and get me at some point, and we'll all go to the zoo.

We arrived here around ten last night, and moved the furniture around a bit. #2 has never really moved into her chic loft apartment. I'm going to help her. Since I have no classes or meetings this week, I can work here just as well as at home -- except that Outlook on my home computer is apparently still open, so I may not see emails.

From some of my accounts, that is. It may be a good thing that I hadn't yet gotten them all set up for Outlook yet. I got a communication from one of the new prospective clients offering me a commission on traffic and sales from his website. I never respond to offers like this, normally, nor do I ever apply for jobs set up like that at oDesk or other places where I might apply for jobs. It seems shady to me. On the other hand, I've been talking with this guy and he hasn't seemed shady yet. So I don't want to ignore his offer entirely or tell him that it sounds shady to me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with him.

I'm watching the sunrise over the city and drinking tea. I hope my husband got off to work okay this morning, without me to make his coffee for him. He probably feels abandoned. He spent all yesterday afternoon fixing the hot water heater (I sent it cleaning out the pantry and killing the mold with bleach), and now he's having to get ready for work all alone.

#2 daughter came in  yesterday morning. We went down to the farmers market, where we bought radishes of various kinds, and onions and mangetout peas and strawberries and gooseberries, and thence to the LYS where #2 daughter bought a sweater's worth of Creative Focus Silk, and lovely stuff that is, too. You can see the beginnings of her sweater, along with the middle of my Salt Peanuts cardigan. Next was the bakery for croissants and multi-grain bread, and then the meat market for chicken, garlic, and dark chocolate.

Our lunch was pleasant. The guests were The Computer Guy and his good friend from high school who is in visiting his parents for the week. This young man is also a good friend of my girls, and was in my Sunday School class in his younger days, and his parents are old friends of mine, so we have a long history.

All the women of my generation wanted this guy as a son-in-law. None of our daughters had any interest in marrying him. They all like him, and went dancing with him and hung out with him and probably complained to him about the completely unsuitable boys they chose to date.

He told us, in his polite, preppy way, about his plans to overthrow the government. He's in law school. #2 son joined us, too. He talked about "Waiting for Godot," Camus's The Stranger, and Metropolis. Also about his new coaching job. We all talked about economics, Facebook, Twitter, TV, mint juleps, board meetings, final exams, distance learning, farm animals, child abuse, the justice system, con men, music, and why young people don't read fiction.

After our guests left, we failed to go to the crawfish boil, and instead stayed in watching Hot Fuzz and eating popcorn and all the leftovers from lunch.

A nice way to spend a Saturday.

Here's this morning's breakfast. We are engaged in becoming late for church.

My husband had a day off yesterday, so he did some yard work. This is the same corner of the garden I photographed yesterday.

Quite a contrast. They'll be happier now, though I like the whole jungle zeitgeist.

I wish I could take pictures of flowers that showed them as flowers, rather than pale blobs.

Oh, well. Some of us have these talents, and some do not.

My lettuce garden, at the bottom of this post, is quite easy to photograph.

I have a small complaint to make.

I now have to check too many places every day. I have all these email accounts -- business, personal, school, and now I have a client who needs me to check my gmail account as well. I have to check Basecamp accts and Google docs. I have dozens of Analytics accounts. 

This is not billable time. Neither would it be billable for me to take the time to learn how to send everything to Outlook, which is probably the most sensible solution. The Northerner had to walk me through getting my email account with his company into Outlook. And then he needs me to post my hours for him in his in-the-cloud billing system, too. And also use a CRM. So what I gained on getting his mail to Outlook I lost on these other things.

David Allen, GTD guru, says we should give up the idea of billable time and unbillable time. Assuming that we're not wasting time, he says, all the interruptions and filing and sorting and organizing are needful, they all affect our business positively and increase our incomes over the long term, so it's all just work.

He may be right. Maybe not. I don't know.

I know that at noon yesterday I had done, according to Toggle, a grand total of 13.37 minutes of billable work.

Today I have no billable work planned, though I'm going to do a little Twittering for my financial software guy, and I've answered business emails.

I'm expecting #2 daughter and an old friend of the family for lunch. I have to decide what to have, hit the farmers' market and the grocery and the baker, clean house, cook -- stuff like that.

I may buy some annuals to fill in the spaces in the garden.

All the roses are opening now, and we're getting the bower of roses effect out the window by my desk.

Last night was the rehearsal of the choirlet. We're preparing some secular songs for a charity gig, so we sat around singing folk songs. Then we had cookies and grapes (and in some cases, cheesecake) and talked about our kids.

We're different ages, from different places, with different numbers of kids (including one who has no children, but that didn't stop her from joining in), but we all had tales to tell.

I have wonderful kids, but I was still able to join in with the story of my slacker son, who is a handsome musician who, as he explained to me, has "no problem with not working."

"You need a roster of jobs," said the Bostonian,   in her very cute accent, "and if he doesn't do it, kick him out."

I think we all know I'm not actually going to kick him out, don't we?

Look at this handsome crop of poison ivy, with the pretty lamastria and hostas in amongst it.

There's a lot of yard work to be done.

I'm hoping that my husband, who has the day off, will get our slacker son to join him and get some of that yardwork done.

There's also plenty of housework to do, if he'd prefer to do that.

On the other hand, as the other ladies were telling their stories of ne'er do well kids featuring drugs and abusive marriages and jail terms, I was able to feel some relief that mine hadn't been that bad. Yet, at least.

I have a new assignment from the magazine editor, invoices to send out, further discussion with the chocolatier, and with any luck, some GTD.

It is possible that #2 daughter is coming down this weekend. There's a crawfish boil going on tomorrow night. While I don't eat crawfish (I don't eat arthropods, just as a general rule), it is one of the ladies of the choirlet holding the event, so I'm going to see if #2 wants to go. We can be vegetarians for the evening.

Do these count as the first roses of the year?

We have hundreds of buds ready to open, but the first  full-blown bloom is a real surprise -- a white rose. You can see it below.

This is a surprise because I have no white roses. So Iguess one of the bushes must have died over the winter and the original root stock has sent up a shoot. Or else New Dawn got pale down on the patio.

I had to drive up to the college (in the next county to the north) yesterday to sign my contract. I also arranged to withhold a bunch of money for taxes, since I never did figure out the quarterly estimated tax payment thing.

The lady in the HR office was very nice. She said, "You can fill these forms out here if you want, but you can also take them with you and discuss them with your tax person" in a kind voice.

"If I had a tax person," I said crisply, "I wouldn't be in this position."

I also signed up for an online class for the summer. I was really disappointed with my online class this spring. I don't feel that they got an equivalent experience. So I thought I'd take an online course. I'm taking web design, since that is something I need to know more about anyway.

The class is free since I teach there, but the book was $65 used. I know everything in about the first half of it, so I figure I'll be able to take the class without enormous effort, get the practice and feedback I need, and have more insight into the distance learning process, all in one fell swoop.

That's the plan, anyway.

My unbillable hours have increased badly as I negotiate with all these new prospective clients, and it's mid-month invoice day and I haven't yet been paid from my beginning-of-the-month invoices. So I'd like to get some oDesk (guaranteed payment) hours in today, but my list of billable stuff is very long. Also my list of high-importance unbillable stuff.

Yesterday I wrote a website on liquid backhauling, yet another example of how much new stuff I'm learning about, and had more lengthy conversations with people who haven't actually signed contracts yet, and might not. Then I went to the American Association of University Women meeting, which was very nice, and then to see Fiddler on the Roof, with Chaim Topol, the actor from the movie. It was wonderful.

Seeing it done with clever sets on a fairly small stage (I sang on that stage last month, so I know) really made me appreciate the quality of the script and the acting. We get so accustomed to having special effects provide much of the drama, it's easy to forget.

La Bella had a couple of tickets, and her husband didn't care to go. They're leaving for D.C. this morning, so he stayed home and packed and I went with her to the show. It is actually better to go to musicals with a girlfriend, since you can cry at the sad parts without having your husband roll his eyes at you, which both of ours would have done. Also, the men around us were all trading stories of how their wives had inveigled them into going, while we both enjoyed it enormously.

La Bella is also in AAUW. We met at the president's house, a wonderful place designed by our local famous architect. It was suggested that I should be on the board. I assured them that I couldn't.

"I'll be happy to work," I said, "but in the work that I do there are often sudden emergencies, so I can't go to meetings."

I said this with a straight face. As though I were a surgeon or something. What could they say, though? "Oh, come on, a developer telling you that 'the guys in India' are waiting on your content update' isn't a real ememergency" would have done it, I guess, but they didn't actually know what I was talking about, so they didn't say that. They just nodded.

Having left directly from work for the meeting, I had three crackers, a bit of exotic cheese, and a couple of almonds for dinner. Also a bit of red wine at the meeting and a sip or two of Chardonnay in the intermission at the performance. I came home and had a bowl of Cheerios, rounding out the meal. They had actually given out little boxes of Cheerios at the performance, since General Mills was sponsoring it. No walk or other exercise yesterday.

My husband waited up for me, and went in late to work today, so we were able to sleep in till 6:00. So I feel like I'm getting a late start. I have bunches of blogging to do today. Better get at it.

Yesterday I got 15 minutes of Pilates in before the phone started ringing, and then embarked on an enjoyable 12-hour workday.

I made beef stew toward the end of it, then talked with another possible new client -- he asked me to send him a contract, and I did, so I'd say we're very close to a deal -- while it stewed.

In case you're counting, this makes four new clients from the WSJ story. I sent the author a box of champagne truffles.

Then #2 son and I gathered up all the dogs and took them for a walk. The big dog tugged at the leash in an apparent attempt to pull my arm from its socket, while the smaller ones toddled -- or, in Spicer's case, waddled -- along together.

We ran into The Chemist, who assured me that I hadn't been missed when I ducked out of the second service to go to brunch, though I was the only one who knew how to pronounce "Jochabed."

We had a nice family meal together, sitting at the table and everything, and then I decided to try out the Cupcake Bath Bombs from Brambleberry.

I bought the kit during a moment of sleep-deprived self-indulgence, while I was ordering the entirely necessary soap base. I make all of our bath and spa products around here, and I do it with an annual order from Brambleberry that comes to a bit less than $1.50 a week, so it wasn't a horrible self-indulgence, but I wouldn't have done it when fully awake, so let that be a lesson to me.

You know how it is, though -- you do some craft and get good at it, and then you want to step it up a little. And these cupcakes are very cute, and I thought they'd make a nice gift.

Mine aren't very cute. You have to click the link and look at how they're supposed to look.

Anyway, I followed the very easy directions and mixed up the cake part, which is just your ordinary bath fizzy recipe, and packed them into the cupcake liners.

Then I mixed up the icing, which uses SLS powder. There is a note to be careful with it in the directions. They explain that it's very fluffy and might make your throat tickle.

Another way they could have said it is, "This  stuff will invade all your breathing passages and cause you to hack and cough throughout the rest of the evening."

Just be careful with it. This may be my excuse for why I totally messed things up at this stage. Because if you look closely at the picture you will see behind the pastry bag a little bottle of jojoba oil which should have been in the frosting.

I left it out. I added water, as the directions said, but the directions were expecting there to be several ounces of oil in there, and just a little bit of water. This is, I'm sure, why my frosting melted from its lovely cupcake-like glory into flat runniness within an hour.

This morning I scraped up the more dried-out icing and put it into my Pampered Chef decorator and tried again.

However, while I was able to extrude some snakes of icing with brute force, and mounded them onto the bath fizzy cakes, they certainly aren't nice enough to give anyone.

They do smell just like cake, having been made with the "Cream Cheese Frosting" scent included in the kit. The boys were moved to ask me why I never make them cake.

A couple of years ago, #2 son had a running joke which involved his booming "Make me some cake, woman!" at me in stentorian tones, but I actually haven't made them a cake in some time. I may have to, since my kitchen now smells like cake.

I think that, if I had done it correctly, these would have been very charming. I may get a refill kit sometime (they're sold out right now) and try again.

In the meantime, I have lots of work to do, and am hoping to get through more of the Pilates DVD today.