My eye is all swollen and painful, something that happens to me sometimes with allergies, and I have to work today. I also need to clean  up a bit, do the grocery shopping, catch up on my homework, and have a virtual meeting with my daughters.

I finished up the bra I was making last night, except that I need to find wires. I went to Hancock fabrics last week to buy a set, and the nice lady there showed me that they were being discontinued and therefore were all on clearance, 65% off, so I went ahead and bought all they had.

She had agreed with me that it was a shame they were discontinuing them, so I did at least say, "Is this your size, too? Did you want any before I buy them all?"

But I did buy them all. They are not by any means the right size. I only spent $5 on them, so it's no great tragedy, but there isn't any local source of underwires now. I'll have to order some, and of course you can't order a $2 item without paying $10 shipping, so I'll have to wait till I actually need something else from a lingerie supply shop.

I hope to go walk around the lake today. This may be an unreasonable hope. However, I was talking with #1 son yesterday and we concluded that, if I can't get my work done in a week when I did nothing else but work, then I should go ahead and take time for gym visits and walks and meals and stuff. I still may not get my work done, but I'm already not getting my work done, so what's the difference?

I've been self-employed for a year. I should have gotten this under control by now, it seems to me. Sigh.

#1 son has the car -- he went camping yesterday -- so I can't run down to the farmers market for some fresh veg and strolling about. I think aspirin, maybe Benadryl, a smoothie, a few hours of work, and then some lolling around playing with my quilt fabrics will be the plan.

Have I told you about the computer guys names issue? Probably not. I don't tell people's names here. I think I mentioned that the two web firms I work for have foolishly similar names -- I think I said it was as though one were called Allbright and the other BrightDay.

In addition to this, the individual computer guys all have very similar names. As it were, Kit and Kat and Kyle and Kale and Kim. Three called Kim, in fact. And then, let's suppose, there was another called Jim. Kim and Jim -- not too bad. However, I've just had a request to interview for an ongoing position with a new guy called Jim, and #2 daughter has found us another addition to the freelance stable also called Jim.

We think we may need to reject the two new guys on the grounds that they're named Jim.

I'm not exaggerating. If I could tell you their real names, you'd see that it's really worse in real life. I'm going to start calling one of them "Rupert."

I've spent a few hours already this morning doing linkbuilding for an environmental lesson plan. I love this lesson plan -- if I could get this designer to snazz up all my lesson plans that way, they'd all be equally impressive. I've thought about hiring him to do that and making an e-book to sell. In my copious free time.

I realized yesterday that I just flat wasn't going to get all my work finished this week, no matter how much I work. I still took the sample chocolates to The Computer Guy. I asked him straight out who he was planning to hire in July, and he plans to hire a developer. True, this makes his remarks about the three of us working together in one place even more confusing, but he apparently isn't offering me a job, so I just made helpful suggestions about where he could find a developer.

My family had been opposed to my accepting his hypothetical job offer anyway, and I'm already fully employed, so I quickly overcame my mild disappointment and fed the guy chocolate. He was enthusiastic enough for me to send a favorable report to The Chocolatier.

I did tell The Computer Guy that I was taking a web design class, and I also spoke pretty freely about my other designers. It is possible that this was slight pettiness on my part, occasioned by my slight disappointment at his not offering me a job, even if it wouldn't have been the best thing for me.

"You wouldn't want to do the whole thing yourself," he said. "The cutting, the coding..." he continued, but I interrupted and agreed with him.

"Oh no," I said, "but my eldest has pointed out that my just passing the work on to people while I put in all those hours on project management isn't a good business model."

Whereupon The Computer Guy reminded me of our special arrangements, and also offered me another special arrangement for his hosting services.

I can't swear that there were no undertones in that conversation. Remember Captain Subtext from Coupling? I don't know quite what the subtext would have been, but there could have been a little bit of this:

"Yeah, I know it sounded like I was offering you a job, but I changed my mind."
"Well then, let me remind you that I could compete with you."
"Yeah, but you won't, right? We're friends, right?"

I'm making that up. I'm not much on subtexts, and The Computer Guy is so much on subtexts that I can't even guess what was going on in his head.

My students made me very proud yesterday. Several times they said, "There's no support" and "Where are the references?" and "can you support that?" and similar things. I told them that if they all left with that attitude, I would feel that I had succeeded with them.

The Chocolatier asked me to re-submit my proposal with my retainer doubled, which I did, and then later in the day asked me to re-re-submit it at the original rate, which I also did.

This weekend, in the unlikely event that I get all my work finished and am thus able to play around with my new quilt, I am going to make a sample block with a plain pale pink and see what you guys think of it.

I did actually do a little bit of sewing last night -- small progress on the bra I'm making -- as well as some of my homework for the web design class.

And I'm meeting Janalisa at the gym after class today, a circumstance which decreases the likelihood of my getting my work done, but is probably worth it anyway.

Here are  the goodies sent by the German chocolatier.

The eggs are real eggshells, filled by a magical sanitary process with chocolate praline truffle.

The white ones can be stamped with a logo -- in fact, one has the Starbucks logo, though you can't see it.

Then there are also the highly realistic pebbles and seashells. The company can do custom labels for these, with logos or "Boston Seashells" or stuff like that.

The quality of the chocolate is very high.

The chocolatier is seeing these as great choices for promotional items, souvenirs, etc. with custom labels. I think they'd be charming wedding favors, too.

As you can see, I have a very tough job here.

I"m taking the box up to the computer guy for a photo shoot, and then I guess I need to determine the best use of the samples for market research or something.

We certainly needed to see and taste them, but I don't know that The Computer Guy and I really need to eat all of this in order to make a great website.

I am supposed to watch his response, though, and report back to the client on whether he showed sufficient enthusiasm for the product.

The client is concerned about this.

Princess Smartypants very insightfully commented that the amount of time we spend on a quilt makes it reasonable to spend lots of time thinking about how to create exactly the quilt we want. She's right.

The time we spend on work makes it reasonable to spend a lot of time figuring that out, too, I suppose.

Yesterday I took care of the bruise treatment people and the file replicating software people and then went to class, where we worked on the idea of support. One student suggested for our example the question of whether or not homosexuality is genetic. I had the students look for information on the internet and then write sentences reporting the facts. We looked at problems like saying, "Research says..." or "It is said that..." and being careful to report data accurately, and not in a misleading way.

Two students refused to participate. Apparently looking up information on the topic of homosexuality is distasteful to them.

"We're practicing writing and research," I said. "We're looking at information."

We were looking at research reports on biology from Stanford. I hadn't asked them to review gay porn sites.

Having gotten through the class, I stopped at The Computer Guy's place. I'd had an inspiration about a site we're working on and wanted to discuss it with him. Also to apologize for having arranged to work with another designer on a nonprofit's site -- I'd asked him over the weekend, but when he didn't get back to me instantly I thought he was too busy for it, and then Monday morning he emailed saying yes he'd love to do it. By then, I'd already arranged to meet this other designer.

We talked about our various sites and clients, and an upcoming project, and then he told me that he'd been working every weekend with Natasha, a coder who helped him on my website. For a moment, I thought he was telling me that they were dating, in some really geeky way, but then he said he was going to ask her to come work for him full time.

"I have three workstations," he said, gesturing to the three desks in the office. "And you two are the ones I've kept on all along." He riffled through his design sketches and said he'd like to design and pass on the coding to her, particularly since Natasha works almost to the standard of perfection he expects ("She only makes a few mistakes" is how he put it). Then with my content, "and if we're all in the same place, we'd be coining money."

He said he plans to "hire people in July and launch in September."

Now, he said that he was planning to hire Natasha full time, not me. At no time did he ask whether I still wanted to work for him on a salaried basis. And yet, it sounded a lot like a plan to have me and Natasha and The Computer Guy band together to churn out "great websites at a reasonable price." He's gotten an entrepreneurial grant (I recommended him) and is ready to take the next step with his business. He may be assuming that I'll assume that the three workstations include me. He asked about my teaching schedule. It's possible that he's planning to offer me a job. It didn't really register until after I left.

#2 daughter says it's like that to date him, too.

So, while I'm not taking that conversation as a job offer, I'm wondering whether that's what he meant enough to be considering whether I'd want to do that or not.

Next, I met with the designer for the nonprofit site, Job. He's a new designer for me to work with, and a new designer, for that matter. He's a student and has taken a couple of web design classes and built a couple of websites. We discussed the site we're planning. We considered different options for their blog. I explained to him why he ought to sign his work.

"Is this your main hobby?" he asked me.

I do this for a living, actually. It's his hobby. I was kind about that. He seems like a nice guy. He drives a bright red Mini Cooper with a bumper sticker saying, "Give me the coffee and no one gets hurt." He says our town, where he's lived for nearly a year now, is "Goofy." He says this in a completely positive way.

Then I picked up my swag from a recent charity auction (an iHome for #2 son, whose graduation we've never celebrated in any way, a bottle of Veuve de Vernay Brut Rose, and some decorative objects I'll show you sometime) and went home to get The Computer Guy's content finished up and sent off to him.

#1 daughter called me in a bit of a panic over something going on at her work, and I took the opportunity to tell her that they're exploiting her. "You had a good job that you loved, where they were supportive about you going to school, and you left it to take a job where they work you like a slave and pay you way too little, while the guy you're supposedly supervising makes half again as much as you do and spends his time schmoozing with people."

My husband said that's how it is when you work for someone else. You work very hard and they don't appreciate you. He said this in a meaningful way, as though I should think about this before accepting The Computer Guy's hypothetical job offer.

Today I have an a job for the skydiving company, and I need to get the content ready for Job. There's also choir practice, I have to take #2 son to the high school and the IRS office, and of course I'm teaching. Also, my husband wants me to pick up some flea spray for the yard. I begin to feel that I will never get to the gym.

As I said, I have a lot to say about quilting.

My camera was in the lost and found at the school, where I hadn't checked because both #2 son and one of my students had highly circumstantial stories of camera sightings after I had taken the camera to school.

Here I have my collection of art nouveau fabrics -- reproductions and  retro-styled  ones I've been collecting.

And there is the pattern I want to use with them: Birds in the Air, with an applique border.

It's in a mix of dark and light prints, all different colors hsading diagonally through the quilt, and it looks very cool.

I had an assortment of dark and medium prints in the art nouveau style, ranging from black and brown through purple, pink, and green. I searched high and low for lights, and found the stripe you see. It is exactly the hard-to-find shade of rose beige which has been my favorite color for several months now. It has stripes with very pale, thin stripes within the stripe, and then it has the sort of flowery border stripe effect. I don't know how to describe it, but here's the picture so you can see what I mean.

The fabric was 40% off, which is of course a mystical message saying, "True, you have no time to make a quilt, but you should start one anyway."

Each stripe is a bit less than 2" wide.

That's the problem. I figured I could just use the pale stripey bits for the piecing, and then use the flowery bits for borders and binding and whatnot.

However, the pattern specifies 3 and 7/8" strips.

So I made a square as directed, and you can see it, the great big one below.

There's a whole lot of the flowery bit showing in all the pieces. It is conceivable that I could, by cutting the triangles with a template rather than in strips, get all the small triangles just from the pale stripes. It would be impossible with the large triangles.

I also made a small one, just as big as could be made by cutting the stripes out as strips. The larger triangle, even at that size, probably can't be made just with the stripes.

The question, then, is this: can I use the rose beige fabric and get the effect I want, or should I just use it to make a nightgown and start over looking for lights?

And, whichever way that goes, should I make the squares as big as the pattern suggests? They seem enormous, too big for a quilt, really. But even with that many, they say it'll require forty-two of them. The smaller ones would require 168, and I really don't have time for that.

#1 daughter claims that she and I share a tendency to over-analyze things. I tend to think that analysis is a good thing, just by definition. But the last couple of posts here may be making you think that she's right about that.

I think I can say with confidence that very pale art nouveau prints aren't generally available. But I could use white. or cream. or even a very pale pink, which would have such a similar effect as using rose beige that there would probably be, in real life, no discernible difference. I'm not sure how much of the cooolness of the effect of the quilt in the book relies on the combination of dark and light prints.

Your views are solicited.

I have a lot to say about quilting, but it would require pictures and my camera is still missing, so I'm going to talk about business.

Last year, I had the occasional person needing a new or redesigned website, and I'd fix them up with a template or tell them to go to The Computer Guy. This year, I've been getting lots of those people, and The Computer Guy has only taken on three or four of them. So I started setting the others up with designers. At first it was just a favor for a couple of ongoing clients, one of whom pointed out to me that I was doing the project management for free. But now I'm doing it on a regular basis, and for new people as well.

I find the designer, negotiate the price, plan the navigation, facilitate the discussions between client and designer, write the content, oversee the project, keep things on track, arrange for the upload of the files, check the site and correct any errors, and watch the analytics to make sure it's working as it should. I get paid for two or three hours, and the designer makes two to ten times what I do.

From a business standpoint, this may not be the best plan. #1 daughter points out that merely having the responsibility for those things would be paid for in the corporate world, regardless of the amount of time involved, and the amount of time is hard to predict. She thinks I should double the designer's price, charge that to client, and split the fee with the designer. She points out that the total for the client would still be less than if they went through  The Computer Guy's firm.

Here are the advantages to doing that:

• I'd be paid for the project management.
• The client would get the one-stop shopping they'd get from a firm, instead of having separate contracts with two freelancers.
• I'd be building toward actually being a firm.
• I'd be developing a different relationship with the designers, which would be good if and when I end up being a firm.

Here are the drawbacks:

• There would be tax complications; I'd have to produce 1099s and stuff.
• I'd have to pay the designers, whether the clients paid me or not. I just had an email this morning from a designer who finished our joint project three weeks ago and hasn't been paid. I was able to say, "Remind her." If I pay the designers, then I'm the one having to remind them. Actually, she hasn't paid me yet, either, so we're both having to remind her, but I don't have to pay the designer while I do it.
• I'd be in direct competition with The Computer Guy, who has been such a good business friend to me this year. Even when we talk about making a firm, we haven't been talking about offering web design.
• I'd have official responsibility for any problems, rather than just de facto responsibility.

After discussing this at length with the daughters yesterday, I've decided to do the two newest sites in the way that they recommend. We'll all keep track of the time involved, and they'll help me, and we'll see how it goes. A closely-observed experiment should allow us to determine the best procedure, and perhaps to identify the drawbacks, and then we can make a good decision on the basis of the data.

This week and next I ought to get my two remaining pro bono projects completed, as well as the summer class I'm teaching. I'd say that things would settle down then, but maybe not. I find it hard to believe that the three projects I volunteered for last August, when I needed stuff for my portfolio, are still not finished.

I just realized that I never posted to my blog this morning. This is probably the first time int he past four or five or however many years that I've actually forgotten to post.

And now I'm on my way to a meeting, so I'm still not really posting.

Sigh.

Yesterday during class the security guard rushed in to warn us about a tornado. We have no windows in our classroom, so we just carried on with class.

When I went out to my car, though, I discovered that I had left one of the windows partly open, so it was completely drenched, with water standing in all the cupholders and things. I was already wet to the skin anyway, but the windows were fogged, and every time I turned or hit a bump on the drive home, cold water would sluice onto my feet from the car's innards.

So I came home and built a Squidoo lens for the bruise treatment people, plus one on teaching technology. I drove through for kung pao chicken and fried rice first, making it about the third day in the week that we had carry out food for lunch. I have to do a better job on shopping for lunches, obviously. I rewrote the church website, corresponded with some new potential clients (and started wooing designers), and  stopped working at 6:00.

At that point, I sat down with my knitting (still making Salt Peanuts, and I'll show you a picture when I find my camera) and watched Clatterford. It's  BBC comedy with an assortment of actors you've like in other BBC comedies, but older. One of the first scenes takes place in a church. A woman is chatting with the vicar, a stack of crocheted and knitted rectangles in her arms.

"But what are they?" he asks querelously.
"Oh, they're hymnal covers," she beams. "Or chalice mats. Or anything, really!"

The camera shot widens and we see that the entire church is festooned with odd afghans and shawls and things. And throughout the entire funny and touching series, which I watched in a marathon, there are odd, lumpy knitted and crocheted things, dreadful hats, peculiar sweaters -- it's great.

I set my knitting down after a bit and played with fabrics. I have a plan to make a quilt. I'm thinking of a Birds in the Air quilt with my collection of Art Nouveau fabrics. You can see what this quilt block looks like when set together here. The Quiltmaker's Gift has a beautiful example in Japanese prints shading from dark to light and back, with sinuous applique around the outside border. I think it would be great, though I'd need to come up with a good light color for contrast -- I have 16 assorted mediums and darks.

I was also thinking how nice these Moda Patisserie fabrics are, and contemplating what sort of a quilt I could make from them.

I think we all know that I don't actually have time to make a quilt, whether from fabrics I now have or from fabrics that a person with two going to college in the fall shouldn't consider buying. But it was pleasant to sit watching British comedies and looking through quilt books as though I were actually going to make a quilt.

What I really need to do, once it cools off in the fall, is quilt the one I already have made. I have quite a beautiful quilt pieced and sandwiched with batting and pinned and ready to quilt, and we've been sleeping under it with its safety pins and all.

Quilting that would be sensible.

Someday.

Today I have to drive #2 son to his meeting place for his trip to the Governor's School reunion, get my hair cut, do the grocery shopping, finish my homework, take care of the Aussies' linkbuilding for the week, and sing at a charity do.

Onward!

At last night's rehearsal, we had another soprano and a fiddler whom CD picked up at the farmers market. Yes, we have a really excellent farmers market. I plan to go tomorrow, see whether mandolinists are in season yet.

Kidding.

We really did get a fiddler that way, though, and the rehearsal went pretty well. I barged in asking, "Does anyone have a bruise today?" and passed out samples. No one asked about the ingredients or anything. I just said, "It's a natural remedy" and passed out the pills. Suwanda remarked later, as we were munching on raspberry scones, that it had been way too easy. "You could have been a drug dealer."

I'm going to check in with the ladies on Sunday and see how their bruises are. Suwanda and I are singing "Beautiful One" on Sunday. It's quite a nice song, though #2 son says, "Why is that contemporary Christian music all sounds the same?" It has a good tune, I think, and we have a pretty arrangement.

It's Friday and therefore I have a backlog of stuff from the week.

However, I do have some good news on the Lead a Normal Life front. I get this magazine called Lucky. I never subscribed to it or anything, it just comes in the mailbox. I get a lot of stuff that way. This particular magazine contains a witty monthly column by the beauty editor (this month she wrote about eye makeup remover), a bunch of stickers saying "yes" "no" and "maybe" that I think I should be able to come up with a creative use for, and is otherwise filled with pictures of products. Occasionally they try to organize the pictures into something approaching a story,a nd this month had one of those occasions.

They showed a working woman and her outfits for the week. On Monday, for example, she had a client meeting, so she wore cropped cigarette pants, a piratical blouse, a corset belt, and boots, which is I suppose what all of us wear to client meetings. For a market research tour, she pulled out a tulip skirt to go with the same piratical blouse, and added an enormous tote (in case she had a sudden desire to shoplift, perhaps) and chunky beads or something -- I forget the details, but you see the concept.

This story caused me to notice that I have gotten through three weeks of teaching every single weekday without wearing the same outfit twice. Clearly, #2 daughter's shopping prowess made all the difference.

I've only made it to the gym once, though. Here's how it happened. My computer beeped at me that it was 14 minutes before time to be at the gym and I realized that, on that particular day, I had no deadlines. I therefore leapt up from the desk and --- well, as it happens, realized that I had forgotten to eat breakfast. So I grabbed a granola bar from the enormous stock in the pantry and scarfed it down while getting into my gym clothes. Ten minutes later I was out the door, and I got to the gym only about ten mintues later than I should have. I read Lucky on the treadmill, and got home about an hour after the initial reminder from my computer, having done 30 minutes of exercise, showered and dressed and grabbed my stuff, and headed off to class. Very inefficient, isn't it? it was better when I stopped off on the way home from class.

We're planning to get #1 son a bike for his transportation to school in the fall. His car is older than he is, and not really safe to drive any more. #2 son is biking to work this summer, so we know it can be done. Since he bikes to work and work is coaching gymnastics, and then he bikes home, and spends half an hour or so lifting weights so he'll be strong enough to continue this work regime, he is growing ever more buff. He has little ripples and bulges of muscle all over the place.

We could achieve this too, if we did three hours of exercise a day.

I have a lot of homework to do this weekend, but no work deadlines that I won't meet today. I have stuff scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night, and a hair appointment tomorrow, but I think I can have a hike in there somewhere, and perhaps sewing. A weekend.

My students' Squidoo lens is up: 21st Century Skills. They'd love to get your feedback. In particular, we put up a "duel" module where people agree or disagree with something -- in this case a list of essential 21st century skills. It would be so kind of you to go over and participate. I think the kids would be thrilled.

In addition to finishing up the Squidoo lens, I also did my required blog posts for various people, a newsletter, one of my weekly reports, and some linkbuilding. Today I'll be rewriting a website, looking after my Dark Art people, and catching up on my homework -- I hope.

I'm reading Deer Hunting with Jesus for Book Club. It's an itneresting book, filled with politics and economics and other jolly stuff. At one point, author Joe Bageant says, "Until those with power and access decide that it's beneficial to truly educate people, and make it possible to get an education without going into crushing debt [there will be workign class anger and misery and so forth]. And that means educating everybody, not just the small-town valedictorian or the science nerds who are cherry-picked out of the schools... What about this latest generation of kids left to suffer the same multigenerational cycle of anti-intellectualism and passivity?"

This struck me because yesterday, in the course of practicing the idea of supporting a claim, my class discussed whether poverty is a choice. While there were a few students who felt that poverty was the result, at least in some cases, of injustice, a majority believed that it was all about education. Since they are, in many cases, making some serious sacrifices in order to get their educations, they tended to feel that other people could and should do the same.

It was interesting.