Sad to say, I didn't finish that cleaning yesterday. I did the grocery shopping, plus a bat for the quilt at 52% off (Hancock's, if you need any quilt batting, and McCall's patterns are 99 cents, too) and then had to rest.

Fortunately, Netflix sent me The Big Bang Theory, so I spent some time lying on the couch watching that.

Then I had a virtual meeting with The Firm. #2 daughter and I felt that we were accomplishing a lot and getting things all figured out. #1 daughter, our Project Manager, was aghast. She pointed out that we had already done all kinds of things for our project without having a budget or a timeline. We had engaged people without getting estimates and even paid for things, and we had tech and logistical issues that we hadn't worked out at all.

"Think of us as a new client," I said. #2 daughter suggested that #1 could make us a proposal. She took the position that clients never came to us with so much stuff to disentangle.

I said encouragingly that it would be good practice. #1 didn't sound encouraged. And in fact, the more that #2 and I reminded her that this was exactly why her PM skills were so essential in The Firm, the more she decried all the abstract thinking we had going on, and said we were bad clients.

I think this was all done in a happy collegial spirit.

The meeting ended promptly at the two-hour mark, and I went and put the borders on the quilt. I'm toying with the idea of pressing it before I sandwich it, since I should have been pressing all along and haven't been.

It may be too late, though.

I went to bed early and read.

Today begins Master Bedroom Week on the HGP. I didn't do everything from last week, but really any little bit you do makes things better than if you do nothing. I did order the supplies for the handmade gifts I'm planning, and I may just extend last week for one more day to get the living room finished.

Here are the other things we're supposed to do:

• Make one batch of Holiday Goodies.
• Make one extra meal for freezer again labeled HOLIDAY MEAL.
• Buy two canned food items from menus (get 2 of each item, one to use and one to donate to food drive).
• Buy 1/8th of TO BUY gifts. Save all receipts, note return policy before buying. Ask for gift boxes
• Wrap and label packages. If needing to ship, get some shipping boxes now and store packages in them.
• Work at least 1 hour a day on homemade gifts.
• Make list of any table and bathroom linens that need replacing before the holidays, and pick up a few each week.

You can see that all this relies heavily on our having done the stuff we were told to during List Week.

Mostly, today, I plan to take it rather easy. I have a lot of things on my to-do list, but I'm staying home from church, so that automatically gives me five hours for resting. I'm going to make some tea and put a spinach and mushroom quiche in the oven. While the kettle boils, I can put chicken in the crockpot, and tonight I'll make two pans of King Ranch Chicken, one for the freezer. If I do a bit of cleaning and/or stir up some cookies while the quiche bakes, I'll be caught up on the HGP.

I have papers to grade and my Next Steps from yesterday's meeting. I need to retake my html certification test, but there's no great hurry ont hat, and I may wait till I feel completely recovered for that. The whole point of retaking is to get a better score (I passed it last time, but I didn't get the score I wanted). I also have to find a photographer who's in my editor's budget and can take on a job at short notice.

But there is definitely resting on my schedule, so I'll be completely recovered tomorrow.

I got up at 4:00 to work a little and send a birthday greeting to #2 son, who is 18 today. Pretty amazing.

It is also International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
 
I went back to sleep for a couple of hours at 6:00, and am now up and ready to start the day, feeling quite a bit better.

I'll be better still once I have some tea. I plan to clean my living room thoroughly -- a big task since I have things like a nearly-finished quilt and all its scraps, a half-moved office area, and bunches of bookshelves to deal with.

I also mean to finish that quilt top.

I had a lunch to go to, but there's a baby involved, so I don't think I should chance it just on the strength of feeling slightly better.

I am in fact ill. Yesterday devolved into head-swimming feverishness punctuated with stomach cramps and nausea, so at the point where I had begun not to get things properly attached to the emails I was sending out, I gave up and went to bed. Today I have to teach class, and then I'll just be doing the highest priority things before going back to bed. TGIF.

Not that its being Friday matters much in my world. You know, I worked only from 4:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. yesterday, and got up this morning to find emails and second emails asking why I hadn't answered the first emails. Something wrong there, where a 12-hour work day isn't enough to keep clients from panicking.

Up at 4:30 again, grading papers. Worse, I slept only fitfully last night -- I guess I ate something that didn't agree with me, or perhaps I've caught one of the illnesses that has been keeping students out of class. In addition to intermittent stomach cramps, I also had a dream in which The Firm got a $100,000 assignment, but the client couldn't articulate what was wanted. A music video of some kind, apparently, or maybe an online commercial, but no music was provided and no product was specified. So in my dream we were crewing up for this without actually knowing what we were supposed to do. I'd wake up and remind myself that it was a dream: that I didn't have any such assignment in real life and didn't need to panic, but it got in the way of sleep.

So now I'm starting the day exhausted.

Yesterday I had a meeting with The Computer Guy and a couple of clients. I was briefly tempted to complain about overwork, till he mentioned that he had fried his adaptor cord and taken that as a sign that he had worked long enough. Clearly, he wins.

Good meeting, though. I've got a couple more jobs coming up with him, and he's feeling sanguine about being able to fit my new website in. #1 daughter also got a positive though noncommittal response to a proposal she sent out, and I was invited to interview for the marketing team of oDesk. I've been at oDesk for just about a year, and I think that being invited to work for oDesk itself (they hire all their staff through their own service, admirably enough) is something of an honor, even if I don't get hired. I went to bells and choir practice and came home to a new magazine assignment (from the magazine that pays me, not the one that doesn't pay) to do the cover story. I now have to track down a photographer. I've done my own photos for them before, but I think the cover is a bigger deal and requires someone with actual skill and training.

Did you notice that I went to bells? We had two new people who are as bad as I am, but also had several people missing, so I didn't get to opt out.

So I hope I'm not ill, since I have a lot to do. I think a nap may be part of today's plan, though.

I'm up at 4:30 grading papers. I didn't have time to do it yesterday, and I have to turn them back this morning, so I had no choice.

I'm not sure about the new Tuesday class. I've been going for the past seven years to Tuesday night class with Partygirl. That Tuesday class was a deep, thought-provoking, sometimes consternation-inducing study of the Bible. I often found myself at odds with the readings, the lecture, or the group, and it was quite stimulating. Much of the value of it was the discussion Partygirl and I had in the car on the way home.

We've now read and wrestled with the whole Bible, except the book of Revelation. I don't know why they don't do that, but they don't. They just start over again.

Having finished that, I thought I might take the Tuesday night class at my church. One of our questions last night was "Why are you taking this class?" For me, it's probably because without it I wouldn't get around to reading the Bible because I always have papers to grade. For others, it tended to be because otherwise they'd just read their favorite parts.An excellent point. You turn to Proverbs and Psalms, don't you, and skip Malachi, if you just read what you're in the mood for?

The woman sitting next to me has been in business for herself for fifteen years. She has five employees. Monday night she was up until midnight dealing with the details of a couple of new hires. She got teary-eyed at one point, saying she always has to worry about the business failing. She worked at a salaried job alongside running the business for the first half of those fifteen years, and this is the first year that she has taken enough time for herself that she's able to attend an evening class. She's hoping to get to know people better.

She doesn't have to grade papers, though. And she does need a website.

I got a walk in yesterday, updated three websites, and did some further planning for the new website The Firm is doing. #1 daughter has been contacting people who at one time expressed an interest in doing websites, but hasn't gotten any nibbles there, so I'm hoping that we can get our new website going  by the end of the month.

The other thing we're supposed to do on the HGP this week is to buy the materials for our handmade gifts. We should put the tools, materials, and instructions for each into a plastic bag so we can grab it conveniently and get started rather than having to search around. This will speed up our gift-making and increase the likelihood of our actually getting it done.

Rehearsal last night included "The Lord Gave the Word," another of those parts of Messiah that I've never heard of. It's kind of odd to me that there are so many of those. I've sung this thing for decades by now. You'd think I would have noticed all those pages we skipped, if nothing else.

We also worked on "His Yoke is Easy and His Burthen is Light," which always makes me think of a horse race. You can get that as a ring tone, by the way.

#2 son called me last night while I was in rehearsal. He was watching a game when I called him back, so then he called me back. After all the phone tag, it was nice to hear that things are going well. He's in his first round of tests and thinks he's doing well and getting good grades, he's having fun, and there's a gymnastics studio within biking distance of the school where he's applying for a coaching position. He hasn't been able to get a work study job for some reason, so this is good news.

Here it is Tuesday and I haven't even mentioned the HGP this week, let alone done it. The cleaning task for this week is the foyer. If that's where you keep your grand piano and your chandelier, then you better get cracking. I always just treat this as a second chance to finish cleaning the living room, which I haven't done.

This is also the week to begin putting cookies in the freezer, as well as another meal for when things get busy. Hollow laughter is permitted here.

You put two boxes in your pantry this week: one for the holidays and one for charity. Then, when you go grocery shopping this week, you buy two extra canned goods from your master holiday grocery list. One goes into each box. I don't buy many canned goods, even at the holidays, so I extend that to nonperishable foods generally. If you do this, then you won't be looking at your grocery list in shock come mid-December, and you'll be ready for all those extra food drives.

I have a couple new Dark Art people through The Computer Guy, plus a little site update for one of our shared clients, and a big site update for another. I have papers to grade and my Dark Art people and a couple of prospective clients I should follow up with. Then this evening I'm starting my new Tuesday night class. At some point I need to get to the bank, the gym, and the grocery. I guess I'd better get going.

We had new choir robes yesterday in church, and a fancy arrangement of "Amazing Grace" which got a standing ovation, which seems somewhat peculiar for church, but it was done in memory of a favorite tenor who died last year.

Plenty of crying.

The UMW had made picnic boxes of barbecued chicken for us to carry out, so I grabbed a few and took them home for lunch with the menfolks.

I spent a few hours grading papers, and then moved back to the quilt. I added another row of blocks. Here you see the central pieced section lying on a bed to get a sense of how much bigger it should be.

After this, I put on a 4" border of the background fabric. I arrived at this measurement by dividing up the remaining fabric. I think I have enough of the sashing fabric for a 3" border of that, and then I can sew together all the scraps of the other fabrics (mostly 2.5" x 6" pieces) for the binding.

It's going to be a small quilt. I don't see why it should be, actually, since the pattern called for a jelly roll and 3 yards of fabric, while I used all that plus the 3 yards of sashing fabric as well. I probably did it wrong. I could buy another yard or two of one of the fabrics and give it a deep border, and make it bigger. I may do so.

However, it will be pretty on this little daybed in the office, and nice for snuggling up on the couch with in winter. I can probably have the top finished and get it sandwiched together next weekend.

  I spent some time working on the new website The Firm is planning. I'm going to move my educational blog out of xanga to its own domain. It'll be an expense, but #1 daughter thinks we can monetize it, and she may be right. It'll be fun, regardless, and a good learning experience. #2 daughter looked at this template and said it was very like my website. In the picture here, I just stuck the new logo (done by a designer I work with at oDesk) in, but really I am going to get The Computer Guy to incorporate it into a header to replace the bit with the tree. Then I'm going to get #2 daughter to do a video demonstration of a lesson and add that to the page, along with the blog. At some point, I'll collect my lesson plans on various subjects, get the designer from oDesk to make a cool cover design, and sell them as e-books or something. I don't quite know yet.

We got the Advent and Christmas music for the early service planned yesterday, Elkhart and I. I'm commissioning a new piece from the Danish orchestral composer who was once my client and since then has done several lovely pieces for the church. Elkhart had the idea of combining "People Look East" with "Bring a Torch, Jeannette Isabella," and I am really looking forward to seeing what BrassMusicOnline does with it.

Today is class, lots of work, and rehearsal of Messiah.

Canadian National asked for a picture of Salt Peanuts, and here it is, with a cat to add interest.

I've put the picture of how it's supposed to look when it's finished below.

I had to tear out the entire arm scye and neck and shoulder shaping and start over.

I've found, looking around the web, that other people have had the same experience, so it may be that the directions are not written as clearly as they should be.

On the other hand, I'm lacking in both spatial intelligence and accuracy, so it could be user error.

It's pretty, though, isn't it?

I did the tearing out and starting over last night while watching DVDs with #1 son. We were also discussing poetry.  Can a poem's meaning be other than what the poet thinks it is, to be precise. We were talking about Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan. He probably should have been writing his paper, but it may be that having discussed the topic and thought about it will make all the difference.

I was supposed to be at Book Club. However, I haven't finished the book, and I also really didn't feel like going out, so I didn't go. I still got literary conversation.

My usual book club meets when I'm teaching a class, so I can't go to it any more, and this new one has people in it whom I don't know at all well, but whom I like and would like get to know better. So far, I've missed it two months in a row.

It's the AAUW book club. So far, I've been at some pains to establish myself in this organization as a computer geek who can't be expected to attend meetings or be on committees or otherwise join in any real world activities. It's amazing how handy that attitude can be in groups. I can only do this in groups I've joined since I became a computer worker, but I hope it'll keep me off committees in all new organizations.

I also worked on the Dutchman's Puzzle quilt yesterday. I took out the wonky square and fixed it, and made one more row. I think I have enough fabric for one more row beyond this.
 
Do you think it'll mess up the proportions if I add another? I plan to do a narrow border with the sashing fabric, a narrow border with the background fabric (or possibly one pieced from all the fabric scraps, if I get ambitious), and then a deep border with the sashing fabric. Then I believe I'll applique a bit with the remaining scraps. I really like pieced quilts with appliqued borders. But I don't want to mess up the ratio of the inner rectangle and make it ugly.

Have you ever thought that making a scrappy quilt is like sudoku? You have to keep any identical blocks from touching each other, and make sure not to have too many of the same color in one row, in both directions. A really disciplined quilter probably makes all the blocks first and then lays them all out, sudoku-like, to make the best possible effect, before sewing them all together.

That would be someone else, not me.

It's beginning to look like fall, isn't it?

This is downtown where I live. Those of you who live in big cities won't think it looks like a downtown at all, but  it's a really charming little downtown, and has won prizes.

When we first came here, I thought it was so cute that there were parking meters when it obviously wasn't a big enough town to need parking meters.

There is a rumor that the LYS is having a Yarn Tasting today. Sounds fuzzy, but I'm likely to see friends there, and next week on the HGP is the week for gathering up all the materials for your handmade gifts, so I'm thinking that I might go. The LYS is downtown, as is the farmers market, so it would be no additional effort to check on that rumor. However, there might be timing issues. I might need to plan my marketing to mesh with the yarn party.

You may be thinking that I should check their website. I did, but there's no info there -- and it's clear that they don't keep it updated (last blog post in April) so the fact that a party isn't mentioned doesn't mean there isn't one. There's a lesson here about websites.

No matter. I need to clean my living room today, and do the grocery shopping, and grade papers. There's a book club meeting tonight, though I haven't read the book and am terrible about going to meetings, so I may stay home.

I stayed home last night and watched The Big Bang Theory. I should have folded laundry and worked on my quilt while doing so, or finally frogged back Salt Peanuts and figured out where I went wrong, but I sat idly. I was really tired. Around 9:00 my husband and I took the dogs for a walk. They like going out in the dark, and argued considerably when he said they had to go back. When I take them for walks we usually go a couple of miles, but my husband is a to-the-end-of-the-street-and-back dog walker. It was a nice walk. I don't go walking after dark by myself, or even with dogs, so I particularly enjoyed it for the novelty, even if it was a very short walk.

With any luck, I'll have quilt progress news tomorrow.

I got in from the choirlet rehearsal last night (at nearly 10:00) to find that a website I'd drafted that day needed to be redone entirely.

They wanted it done in a way that is ... hmm... how to say this... not the way we do SEO nowadays. Naturally, I hadn't realized that. It's sort of like "Didn't I tell you I wanted this done badly?!"

So I didn't get to bed until nearly midnight and now I'm up early to get my husband off to work and get the remaining papers graded for my 8:00 class.

I got quite a bit of fun work done yesterday. I also had the bookkeeper in. She was being kind but mystified about a lack of invoices. I don't invoice people if they pay me before my invoicing date, I explained. We have contracts or verbal agreements, after all, and they know they're supposed to pay me. And of course the designers I pay don't invoice me. I just pay them.

She also didn't quite get what was going on with the business bank account. I have one, but we only use it for group projects of The Firm, of which there has only been one so far. When I'm paid by the hour for my work time, I put that into my personal account. And since there's not much money in the work bank account, I pay the costs of the business from my personal account. I assured her that I was working my way up to doing it right.

As I say, she's kind.

I don't actually know what she's doing. She has spent a lot of hours on it, whatever it is.

I carpooled to the choirlet rehearsal with Elkhart, who is job hunting. She wants to teach, but has had no luck getting a teaching job. We were wondering whether there could be age discrimination involved, or a desire to avoid paying as much as they'd have to pay her for her level of experience.

She said she wished they'd just tell her so, so she could quit wasting her time. I pointed out the pesky laws that keep them from doing so. She has been subbing for a couple of years. Subs, when you count prep time, make less than $10 an hour. The only reason to do it is in hopes of impressing the school enough to get hired.

I suggested that she think about doing something other than teaching. She mentioned her lack of computer skills. They say this is a big problem for older workers. I suggested, since I was already meddling, that she get some computer skills. It doesn't take a whole lot of skill, really. She's smart; she could learn enough to do well in her interviews and pick up the rest on the job.

The conversation reminded me how lucky I am. Good thing I had it before the rewrite.

Here's X-Entertainment's Halloween Countdown, because otherwise you're not going to know about Dots Halloween mix.