For one thing, I was hired by the Kennedy Center to work on Artsedge. I’m a huge fan of Artsedge, so this is pretty thrilling for me.
Another exciting thing was getting this intro for our new lesson plan videos done. We’ll just attach this to the beginnings of all of them, the way Epicurious does their videos. I figure the quality of the intro will distract from the rustic nature of our video work. If you ever need someone to do this, I’ll be happy to arrange an introduction to this guy.
This cost just under $12. I hired the artist at oDesk, but as it happens, he lives about a four-hour drive from where I live. We’d been quoted $100 outside of oDesk, and the applicants at oDesk actually ranged from $3.33 an hour (that guy expected the job to take 2 weeks) to $77.78 an hour (2 days). This guy took 40 minutes.
Now I do have to admit that when I went to upload this, I found that the other formats had been deleted from the dropbox before I got them properly saved, so I’m having to go back and ask that they be sent again, but that’s clearly user error on my part.
Otherwise, it was a normal workday.
Today will probably be a normal workday as well. I have quite a few hours at oDesk to do, and I have heaps of unbillable stuff that has piled up to the point where I really have to do it.
Nice rehearsal last night. I was bossy, though.
The choirlet is a little collective, with no director, and sometimes people let their attention stray or get wild inspirations or something — nothing wrong with that, but it can derail the rehearsal process. We were working on “Light of the Stable,” which is complex enough to be difficult for this group.
So I stood up and went through the whole piece, pencil in hand, determining with the help of the group who would sing which part and instructing everyone to write it down.
When people started suggesting that we rearrange it and change the words, I said, “Let’s learn it as written first, and then we can mess with it.” When I’d say, “Who’ll take the top note?” and no one would volunteer, I treated them as I do my classes when they don’t volunteer, and exhorted and/or volunteered them.
The Bostonian said I was scary.
After that, of course, I settled down and quit being bossy and scary. But sometimes somebody has to be a little bossy for the sake of the process, or at least for the sake of the product.
#2 son got a job as a gymnastics coach in the town where he’s going to school. This is exciting. His tuition is so high that we can’t really help him with pocket money, and he didn’t get a work study assignment, so he was pretty impoverished. Besides, he ought to work as a gymnastics coach.
Yesterday in desperation I offered #1 son a job. He fell to his knees in torment, so I guess that was a no. On the other hand, I’m finding it easy to hire tech guys at oDesk. We have at least one very good candidate for a little video work we need done (The Computer Guy said that of course he could do it, he could do anything, but it wasn’t something he did). We also have candidates sending letters like “Most excellent sir!! I will make you very happy!! Sir!!”
Allow me to suggest that you not write your cover letters like this. It’s kind of scary.
I was over at The Computer Guy’s yesterday, and he said, “Monday — was that the day we were talking about the tags?”
I recognized the expression on his face. It’s the one that comes with complete disconnect from normal time.
He started trying to run through landmarks that might help separate the days. I didn’t even try.
“I’ve been doing 14-hour days,” I said. “They all run together.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what day it is.”
I do know what day of the week it is on any given day, because it’s important that I get to class. However, by the time I got to choir last night I had reached the level of exhaustion that can be mistaken for serenity.
After choir, a group of us stayed to work on a piece Elkhart had arranged. Largely, in must be said, in her mind. There were little bits and pieces of music literally cut and pasted onto paper and copied, as though there were no such thing as a computer. It was necessary to go back and forth among the pages of bits and pieces, with comments like, “No, that’s the flute interlude!” There were many notes — not musical notes, but little handwritten notes — which, when deciphered, turned out to be things she had changed her mind on. There were 16 measures of blank staff requiring improvisation on the part of the flute and faith on the part of the singers that we would be able to identify our entrance.
I was completely calm about this. We’re singing it on Sunday morning, rather early.
I have three more prospective clients, one of whom does tech things that are completely unfamiliar to me. They have a press release — a press release, mind you — that explains, “Our Data Solutions deliver in-depth relational databases of descriptive entertainment metadata and editorial content..” It goes on like that for paragraphs. These guys clearly need me.
The Brits hired me for the long term. They were, at their midnight, sweetly enquiring whether I needed anything from them. Yes, I’m behind. In fact, I’m really behind. I don’t know how it happened so quickly, except that I took some time off this weekend. That was probably my error. The marketing team has asked me for a revision of the test piece. I figure this is a good sign. I think that if I were testing someone in this way, I’d ask for a revision just to see how they dealt with revisions, though in this case I agree with the change of approach they want. The magazine, following a lively few days of back and forth on the article and photos that have been driving us both nuts, needs me to write the editorial note, which I’m taking as a compliment, and the New Firm responded very positively to the work I’d done for them. And I’m really behind on grading for my online class, seeing that it is suddenly Thursday and I haven’t graded last week’s papers.
So I have my work cut out for me today, and I also have to take cookies to the AAUW. That feels a little bit like the Last Straw, frankly, though I’m sure it’ll actually be a nice opportunity to get out into the fresh air and away from the computer for a little bit.
I also plan to have a nap, right where the cat is in this picture. I’m going to put it on my schedule — a caffeine nap. That’s where you drink a stout cup of tea and sleep till the caffeine wakes you up. It is the most refreshing kind of nap — about fifteen minutes, and you wake up feeling awake.
I had to come back, because of two curious things in my inbox. One congratulated me for being mentioned in The Week magazine, which is news to me, and the other was #1 son’s literary analysis paper. In this paper, he does a masterful analysis of Robert Penn Warren’s “Love Recognized,” including this line: “
It is clear that the speaker is quite down with this young lady.”
