#2 son got home last night, and is currently out playing Ultimate Frisbee in a lumberjack costume.

I’ve done the grocery shopping and cleaned the kitchen, and now should do more housework and/or do the time for my Aussies and my Northerners, not to mention returning voicemails from clients, but it is a beautiful day and also my computer is running with such incredible slowness that there is hardly any point in trying to work.

Here are a couple of pictures.  First, one that attempts to show the neighbors’ Hallowe’en decorations, and then one that attempts to show #2 son’s sweater, currently a forest green stockinette rectangle, and how boring is that? However, the clear and brilliant sunlight of the morning has made my pictures even worse than usual, so you may not be able to see anything at all.

Regarding the grocery shopping, I was buying the ingredients for some dishes from a cookbook I need to review, Dawn Hall’s The Busy People’s Fast and Frugal Cookbook. It says it’s down-home cooking, but it is filled with exotic things like Chipped Beef on Toast Points, eggs with sauerkraut, and desserts composed of canned pie filling and Cool Whip.

There are Beefy Green Beans with potatoes and pimientos in them and a topping of French Fried Onions, and spinach salad with yogurt-covered raisins, Tuna a la King, Little Italy Sandwiches made with ground beef and pepperoni and a bit of cocoa powder, and canned peaches cooked with Red Hot candies.

What I’d like to know is, where do people eat like this? I’m thinking this might be Midwestern Cooking. If you recognize this style of cuisine, please let me know. We’re bold here, and willing to try these things out, but I want to know the background. The author doesn’t specify.

#1 daughter arrived in time for pizza and a concert last night. We went to the local university’s choral music concert — four choirs doing everything from Haydn to “Fields of Gold.” We met a lot of friends there, including my old voice teacher.

Several people remarked on how much #1 daughter looks like me.

“So,” the Bostonian queried, “is that how cute you used to be?”

I was pretty cute. It doesn’t last, so all you cute young girls should enjoy it now and not spend any time at all worrying about whether your dress makes your bottom look big.

We’re meeting with the CPA today after class. I was hoping that we could also work out things like reports and analytics, but #1 daughter is leaving early this afternoon. A lot of driving for very little accomplished — I hope the meeting is worthwhile.

I have an appointment with a CPA tomorrow morning, so I’m attempting to understand things like how to form an LLC and how to handle business finances. Basically, reading about this stuff, or discussing it, or listening to people talk about it, creates in me a strong feeling that I don’t want to own a business.

I’m having fun with the various jobs I’m doing, though I feel as though I’m falling further and further behind. Toggl tells me that I’m doing 4-10 hours a day of billable time — the 4 hour days were my teaching days, so that’s 2.5 paid hours plus commute and grading not counted — and yesterday I had to hang out with a disgruntled student for 40 minutes while he told me how he didn’t have time to do the assignments. He finally said that I might be thinking he could have done some of the work during the meeting time, which of course had occurred to me. So I’m doing roughly 7-10 hours of billable work a day.

I think I’ve reduced my unbillable hours as far as I can — indeed, I have lots of stuff that isn’t getting done, so I guess I’ve reduced those unbillable hours beyond what’s possible. And I’ve been trying to pass things along to the girls, whom I’ve hired. But I still have to do site analyses for prospective clients and phone calls and emails with current clients and support for former clients and somebody has to file and go to the bank and take care of the business’s social media.  So I think I’m working as much as I should.

However, I’ve also been walking, singing, and spending time with friends and family, so it could be worse. I did the grocery shopping this week, though I haven’t done any housework or gotten anything into the freezer. I guess I should get about a B for my attempts at normal life.

The Legal Guide for Small Businesses which I’m reading right now is Amazon Vine swag, and it’s certainly thorough and helpful. I may not want to think about audits and suits and stuff, but I’ll be glad to have a source of information about those things if they ever arise. And the whole taxes and incorporation bit is good to know about as well, unappealing as it may be.

The chocolate egg YouTube was viewed by 26 people yesterday at YouTube. It’s also at the blog and Facebook, so it may have been seen by more people than that, all together.

La Bella and I went to a Chanticleer concert last night. They were wonderful — a dozen men in swallowtail coats and gleaming shirtfronts, with tuning forks in their pockets. I couldn’t find a YouTube of any of the songs they sang for us last night, but here’s “Dulaman”.

La Bella is a Friend at the Arts center, so we also got to go into the special reception room for wine and conversation. It was fun. I’d been working on the Kennedy Center gig that afternoon, and one of the staff people is an old friend of mine, so I told her that we needed to do the same for our arts center. She agreed. Of course, we’d just been catching each other up on our children for fifteen minutes, so what was she going to say?

Still, I do have a fantasy of moving on from the Kennedy Center job to other, similar jobs.

The concert was amazing. They sang such a variety of pieces. “Straight Street” and a wonderful setting of e.e.cummings’ “in time of” and a collection of Spanish love songs and “Summertime.” Every single piece was wonderful.

Really, I wish I had time to write more. Sigh. Must go teach.

Lat night’s rehearsal was about cleaning up the runs and warming up the vowels.

Handel is of course one of the best composers for altos. One of the interesting things about it is that he treats altos as halfway between the men and the women, even though in his day he had female altos (earlier, altos were boys). So the frequent call-and-response kinds of passages in Messiah often have altos singing on both parts. “Who is this king of glory?” the men will ask insistently, and the women will come back with “The Lord strong and mighty.” Altos will be singing the question and the answer, like people talking to themselves.

I took cookies to rehearsal last night. We take turns on that — mostly, I’m sorry to say, just the women. I always pick the week of Hallowe’en because I have all these Hallowe’en cookie cutters, This year, I made chocolate cookies with chocolate-covered sunflower kernels. I’m going to put the recipe at the Sweetique blog. If you go there before I get the recipe up, you’ll find a video of #2 daughter peeling a Sweetique egg, so you might still want to go. The image of Fiona the dog standing patiently in the background is pretty funny.

If you make a comment over there, my client will feel happy, and I’ll be grateful. I don’t have captcha up or anything, I don’t think. If it turns out to be hard to comment, let me know.

I need to get dressed for my morning walk with #2 daughter. We go out at dawn — I into my neighborhood and she to her building’s gym — and it’s almost like taking a walk together.

Yesterday the choirlet went to sing at a church service being held by the Housing Authority in a nearby town. The service was held in what must be the recreation center of a low-income housing development; there was a pool table, a TV and VCR, and a dozen pool cues by the piano.

The piano sounded like a toy, but out of tune. There was a stack of tattered hymnals with the name of another church on the covers — donated cast offs, obviously. People sat in folding chairs, and the eight of us crowded around the preacher’s microphone to sing. The preacher stumbled through his sermon, which had interesting moments but clearly was an amateur affair.

I live in the Bible Belt, and there are churches on every corner. If it gets crowded in a church, the people immediately build another building, so there is always plenty of space. Church is free, and everyone is welcome. I sat through the service wondering why this group couldn’t just walk over to some nearby church where they could worship in comfort, with proper music and a chance of a well-prepared sermon.

The choirlet finished up with “God Will Take Care of You,” and it seemed like a horrible thing to sing. A young man with a baby in the front row was waiting, we were told, for an open bed at the jail so he could go serve his sentence for a crime committed when he was distraught over the death of another of his children. A woman at the back was incoherently fighting over the prize for bringing the largest number of guests. Many had obvious health issues and few seemed to be following what was going on very well. And we nicely-dressed ladies came in and sang to them that God would take care of them and left.

Seemed kind of heartless. Like, “God will take of you. We won’t.”

Not that I have any ideas about how to take care of them. I guess the Housing Authority does that. It just seemed unfortunate that, in the hour of the week when absolutely everyone has the option of being in a comfortable place with a good piano, these people weren’t.

Last night, having seen #2 daughter off and answered email, I went to bed with a book.

One of the Stephanie Plum books, actually. Stephanie Plum is the heroine of a series of books by Janet Evanovich. She is a likable klutz of a woman. She lives in squalor and chaos, eats mostly doughnuts and pizza, never exercises, and doesn’t appear to take care of her skin or her teeth.

She also is inclined to blow up cars and irritate dangerous criminals, so she is many ways not a good role model.

In this book, she is staying in the home of Ranger, an ongoing character in the series. Ranger is highly disciplined. His house is always tidy in a luxurious and elegant though minimalist way, he works out religiously, and he always eats right. His kitchen is stocked with unsweetened granola, water packed tuna, and fresh produce. His sheets are ironed.

Now, they are both fictional characters, not to mention being bounty hunters and stuff like that, but the juxtaposition of the two reminded me about my efforts to conduct a normal life.

It’s actually been going pretty well. #2 daughter and I have been meeting by phone on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for a nice brisk walk. The past two Mondays I’ve gotten to the gym after class.

I’m having proper meals sometimes.  Not always, admittedly. Last night, #2 daughter and I noticed that it took less than half an hour to get from noticing that we needed to make dinner, to actually having a proper healthy dinner on the table. It only takes half an hour to go for enough of a walk to get the blood moving, and just slightly longer to stop by the gym on the way home from class.

I’m lucky enough to enjoy walking, and to like vegetables and whole grains.

Last night I made a point of doing the whole getting ready for bed thing, including proper toothbrushing and flossing, my skin care regimen, and a hand treatment. That also takes less than half an hour.

Half an hour is also long enough to do GTD processing and filing, to make the bed and tidy up the living room, or to clean the kitchen thoroughly. It’s the amount of time you should spend reading every night if you want to finish a book or two a week.

So putting a couple of hours a day into it should make it possible for me to take proper care of myself and keep my house tidy enough to feel more like Ranger than like Stephanie.

I went to all my rehearsals last week, spent some time being social with people, and took some weekend time off. I did some knitting on #2 son’s sweater, read a novel, got some fresh air, and did a little light shopping. I got my hair cut and took an interest in the lives of my friends and family members.

The Stephanie Plum books don’t indicate whether Ranger leads a balanced life with sufficient contact with nature, culture, and society or not. It is unclear whether he has hobbies and interests outside of bounty hunting. On the other hand, he kills people, so I think I might need to look to some other role model for parts of my plan of leading a normal life. I think that having experiences away from the computer has to be part of a normal life, and I did manage that this week.

True, I am horribly behind. However, since I keep accepting new work, my stock/flow diagram shows that I will always be horribly behind.

So I might as well  try to have a normal life anyway.

Over our working lunch yesterday (in the Greek restaurant near the campus, where the food is good though the serving person appeared to hate us on sight, never a good thing in a waitress), #2 daughter and I cautiously concluded that if we just made decisions with our end goal clearly in mind, and did our best, we’d probably reach our business goal.

It may be that if I routinely make decisions about non-business things with a goal of reclaiming a normal healthy life in mind, I might also succeed at that.

Oh — speaking of normal life, it’s Pantry and Closet Week at the HGP. Clean and organize your pantry and closets, buy batteries, order your Thanksgiving turkey, plan for any special needs among holiday visitors (rent a crib if you have infants coming, for example — I have a local client who does that, so let me know if you need a referral), and continue with the gift buying and making, freezer cooking and baking, and adding extra nonperishables to the holiday and charity boxes. This is also the week to begin addressing Christmas cards. file them alphabetically and add notes as you think of them. Get the family picture you took copied so you can add a photo to the card if you’re going to do that.

Six weeks from today it’ll be the Feast of St. Nicholas, so don’t think that it’s too early.

We had a wine and chocolate tasting last night, presenting an opportunity for the web team to get together in the flesh and celebrate the launch of the latest site, and also getting some good pictures and footage for the chocolatier’s blog.

We were only partially successful in either of those goals, but it was a lot of fun.

We spent much of the morning trying to finish up a totally hopeless project, and then spent the afternoon shopping for wine and chocolate and decorating the house in Hallowe’en style.

Janalisa came over early to help us, and I put a Shepherd’s Pie (with sweet potato topping) in the oven and made a spinach and apple salad. The rest of the guests arrived and we ate and talked and drank a bit.

The Art Teacher and I talked shop all evening, though #2 daughter tried to stop us. It was interesting, though. And actually we did have some conversation about our families, and talked with other people some as well, so it wasn’t that bad.

Then #2 daughter went off with a young man and I finished the evening with a good book.

This morning, I made an apple and cherry fruit crisp with a granola topping, and a coffee cake. We had a bit and then went off to get our haircut, leaving the breakfast on the coffee table.

My husband had gone to work and #1 son went to Memphis for the weekend, so when we got home, the dogs had polished off a fine meal of coffee cake and fruit crisp.

We went downtown to walk and talk, and I brought back some nice tree and architecture pictures for you.

We got our business plan mostly whipped into shape.

Then we baked cookies, had a nice fish and spinach dinner, and #2 daughter returned to the Midwest, taking half the leftover wine and chocolate to make a good start on her next party.

Once again, I get to finish the evening with a good book.

This, CD says, proves that I’m an introvert. I may like to visit with other people, I may be talkative and vivacious in company, I may enjoy parties and gatherings, but then I want to be alone.

Extroverts may enjoy their own company, but after an extended spell of working alone, they feel the need to be with other people.

Whether you’re an E or an I in your Myers-Briggs inventory depends on what you turn to for refreshment, not what you think is fun.

Here’s our major competitor. Nice building, eh?

We stood on the sidewalk, #2 daughter and I, looking at it, and wondering whether we’d ever have that big a firm. Big enough, that is, to have a snazzy office over a jewelry store.

That’s as big as I’d ever want to be, personally. A small business is officially defined as a company making $1 million or less per year, and I don’t want to be bigger than that.

The girls don’t feel that it would be any problem to be bigger than that.

It can be good to have young people in your business.

The Art Teacher assured us that he’s having fun working with us, and is ready to take on more jobs. It was also clear that both he and I have been underestimating the time we need to spend on these jobs. #1 daughter bought QuickBooks and signed us up for Basecamp, and we refigured our costs for websites.

But we also played piano last night (CD did) and sang (#2 daughter and I did) and caught up on girl talk with the various ladies, and nothing done with chocolate and wine can really be considered work. The hopeless job continues to be just as hopeless as it was on Friday morning, so that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow after church, plus of course the Aussies. But I’ve had some fun so far this weekend.

#2 daughter arrived safely, though no one was home. #1 son was at work, I was on my way home from rehearsal, my husband was out someplace. She settled in to play Wii till I got there. We had pizza delivered and stayed up to chat a bit.

I have 15 doctors to write bios for, out of the thin air, for a hospital directory. The request to do this came with bio sheets for 3 doctors, so I thought I was doing it for three, and priced it accordingly. Then I saw that there was also a list of 15. Only three of the fifteen have actually filled out the sheets. The others I am supposed to research — primarily by calling their offices and hoping someone there will answer my impertinent questions about their personal lives and histories. This method is not working.

#2 daughter is an insurance analyst, so I’m going to get her to call in her bossy phone voice and see whether she has better luck.

On the other hand, the training with the Kennedy Center was pretty thrilling. The task is easy and really the sort of thing I love to do, and the level of support we have is incredible. Usually I’m working with the underlying assumption that we have to spend as little as possible as do things as simply as possible. The Kennedy Center says whatever we need, we can have. The goal is to make it as good as it possibly can be. This is a wonderful way to approach a project.

Yesterday I won Camtasia, an extremely cool software package that I’ve been wanting for about a year. It costs $299, so obviously I couldn’t buy it just because I wanted it, and it wasn’t exactly essential. But I think it’ll be terrific for education and blogging applications, and also I write scripts for people’s Camtasia videos, so it’s very good that I have it.

I was all amazed, and also don’t know how to thank the folks I won it from enough, except here’s a link to their very cool and useful site: Creative Nerds. I think they give things away on a regular basis.

I have plans for a bunch of blog posts, once I learn how to use it properly. I’ll probably put some here, too, whether I learn it properly or not.

Today I have conference call training with Artsedge, and it’s also Amazon Vine leftovers day. I am also still behind, so I plan to work feverishly. Tonight #2 daughter is coming into town. I was hoping to get the business plan finished so that she and I could meet with our SCORE counselor in the morning, but that may not happen. Tomorrow we’re having a wine and chocolate party, so if you’re in town, you should come by and join us. This means that I have to clean my house, and shop, and probably also decorate. Also there are currently just enough confirmed guests that it will be uncomfortable if there aren’t more than the currently expected number.

Yesterday included a prickly exchange with a client, numerous delays and interruptions, and getting further behind on things, so I think I am experiencing a bit of stress. However, there are lots of good things going on. With any luck, I’ll get so much done today that I’ll be all caught up.