Yesterday I sang "Born on a New Day" in the early service, one final opportunity to perform this year's favorite Christmas carol. It being the Sunday after Epiphany, the sermon still had strong overtones of "turning point," which is also the point of that song, so it seemed appropriate.

In Sunday school, we had a reading that said that we should "acquire a taste for correction." I think this might not be easy to do, really. I like advice, myself, but even so I may not have a taste for correction.

The reading said we should have godly mentors who would be honest with us when we were on the wrong path, so we tried to imagine not only how we'd respond if someone told us we were on the wrong path, but also how we might tell someone else if we felt that they were on the wrong path.

We were able to come up with some ideas, but it did seem to boil down to this: you have to have close enough relationships with people to be willing to be accountable to them, and to be able to hear their loving correction.

I sang in the second service as well, and then walked on home and did some reading and knitting and baked some nice whole wheat bread.

See how long the sleeve of the sweater is getting?

It was warmer yesterday, but still cold, so I had a welter of covers, and when I got up to get a cup of tea, the cat seized the opportunity to seize the chair. She looks happy, doesn't she?

The book that I'm reading, Your Flying Car Awaits, is about the things people in the past expected to see in the 21st century.

I find this a very interesting topic, and have -- well, since the beginning of the 21st century. I hadn't seen 2001 until 2001, and it was fascinating to me to see phone booths and rampant sexism. The phone booths had video phones, which author Paul Milo says were predicted by everyone. The technology has been around for some time, of course, but people just don't want to have to get dressed before answering the phone, so it has never caught on.

And that, in fact, is the central  message about futuristic ideas. There's nothing to prevent our having electric cars, fantastic mass transportation, baby factories, and domed cities except that we don't seem to want them. Thsi may also be true of peace, equality, individualized education, and universal health care.

Flying cars are something else, along with instant robot-produced food in our kitchens, like the Jetsons. Market forces would probably be fine with those, but there are tech issues.

The other thing futurists always seem to be wrong about is spandex. There was widespread agreement that we'd all be in unisex spandex and rank-indicative tunics by now, but apart from the brief spell in the '80s, we seem to have rejected that completely.

Possibly because aerobics and disco went out of fashion in the '90s, while fast food became enormously popular.

I've lost three pounds so far this year, and my Wii balance board is all impressed by my persistence, but I'm far from wanting to put on spandex.

A flying car sounds pretty cool, though.

Good meeting yesterday -- I think the project is a go, though of course the rule is not to start work till the deposit actually arrives.

This morning I returned the furniture to its proper places (yes, decorating for the holidays involves moving furniture at my house) and cleaned everything up nicely. In the living room, that is. The remainder of my house is a squalid mess, but still. I am toying with the idea of going out and buying healthy produce and other wholesome groceries, but I am also toying with the idea of staying in and knitting.

Coming back to report that in fact I just knitted. I've been getting reports from an excitable new client about his progress on an admittedly exciting new project all day, but otherwise I'm ignoring work as well as housework and lolling about.

I can't tell you about the project, because I have signed a non-disclosure agreement. I've signed a bunch of these by now, and of course there is a bit of irony in having your marketing person sign an NDA, but they usually have some exciting thing they're getting ready to spring on the world.

Once I did write back, courteously and in a nonjudgemental way, to enquire whether the project was in fact legal, but mostly I just shut up and sign the paper.

However, I already told this guy that it would be Monday before I got to his project, so I'm not responding. I read this morning that responding over the weekend or at night encourages the idea that you have no life outside of work.

I do however have a life, and here is the evidence: I've been reading and knitting and hanging out with the menfolks today.

My camera is still broken, but #2 daughter suggested a way to take pictures with the ancient camera that has been hanging around the house, and she was right. It works. I won't say it works well, but you can see here Salt Peanuts, the very very pink fluffy sweater I started about seven months ago. I've done the back and fronts and am now working on the sleeves.

I even baked cookies today, and am very likely to cook dinner as well.
 

I've moved on, for the arts center, from a series of lessons on tenement dwellers to a series on pioneers. The interesting thing, to me, is that the lessons on tenement dwellers had a sort of non-judgmental "here's how it was" feel to them, while the pioneers are depicted as living in horrific conditions. I kind of feel the opposite. I guess we have an urban/rural split going on.

I'm meeting today with a local company about their web site. Last night I had a communication from a local person needing a web site, and of course I happily agreed to fix her up -- and then a few minutes later she emailed back saying that is looked like I just did the writing, so would I give her the name of a designer.

The concatenation of circumstances has clarified for me that I need to settle this question. I've done eleven websites in the past year and a half, as the principle or the contractor or whatever it is. But I also work for design firms, and for people who have their own design teams or IT departments or what have you. If I actually do websites, I should say so at my website, and quit having it be something I do at the back door to oblige. If I don't actually do websites, I should probably quit offering what is essentially a competitive service from my clients' point of view.
Perhaps today's meeting will clarify it for me.

It's cold today, and I'm feeling sleep-deprived. Let's see, what else can I whine about? I guess cold and sleepy are it. I think I'm no cold enough, and after four days of getting up at 4:20 a.m. sleepy enough, to be less than totally productive. I may turn up the heat -- in fact, I just did. I also put on a wool hat. I guess I can't take a nap at 7:30 a.m., but I might at some point in the day.

Getting up way too early does mean that I have plenty of time for Wii Fit. If you do a full 30 minutes, it has one of its characters jump around in celebration for you. The fact that I didn't know that before means that, while I have been doing about half an hour's worth every day for the past 12 days without fail, I must not actually have hit the 30 minute mark before. A bit of a shock, that.

I also have time for a proper hot breakfast. All this will end when I start those 7:30 classes, of course. Not the exercise, I hope. I have a new blogging client beginning next month, a spinal rehab guy, so I'll be balancing my chocolate blogging with spinal health blogging.

When I was writing the spine guy's website, I was so persuasive that I ordered myself a proper desk chair. It's called a "posture" chair, a term which I vaguely associate with secretaries. My current chair, which I picked up by the side of the road (around here, you can out old furniture by the curb and hope someone carts it away for you) doesn't actually make contact with my back at all. And then I put my feet up on the seat while working, so you can see why I scared myself while I was writing about all the horrible things that can happen to a person's spine.

I tried out a proper office chair at one of the Suwanda's shortly thereafter and was amazed by the difference. Your back is supposed to touch the back of the chair, see. The back of my chair slumps too far back, and also sometimes lists crazily to the side.

I'll let you know whether the chair changes my life or anything.

It's cold today, and I'm feeling sleep-deprived. Let's see, what else can I whine about? I guess cold and sleepy are it. I think I'm no cold enough, and after four days of getting up at 4:20 a.m. sleepy enough, to be less than totally productive. I may turn up the heat -- in fact, I just did. I also put on a wool hat. I guess I can't take a nap at 7:30 a.m., but I might at some point in the day.

Getting up way too early does mean that I have plenty of time for Wii Fit. If you do a full 30 minutes, it has one of its characters jump around in celebration for you. The fact that I didn't know that before means that, while I have been doing about half an hour's worth every day for the past 12 days without fail, I must not actually have hit the 30 minute mark before. A bit of a shock, that.

I also have time for a proper hot breakfast. All this will end when I start those 7:30 classes, of course. Not the exercise, I hope. I have a new blogging client beginning next month, a spinal rehab guy, so I'll be balancing my chocolate blogging with spinal health blogging.

When I was writing the spine guy's website, I was so persuasive that I ordered myself a proper desk chair. It's called a "posture" chair, a term which I vaguely associate with secretaries. My current chair, which I picked up by the side of the road (around here, you can out old furniture by the curb and hope someone carts it away for you) doesn't actually make contact with my back at all. And then I put my feet up on the seat while working, so you can see why I scared myself while I was writing about all the horrible things that can happen to a person's spine.

I tried out a proper office chair at one of the Suwanda's shortly thereafter and was amazed by the difference. Your back is supposed to touch the back of the chair, see. The back of my chair slumps too far back, and also sometimes lists crazily to the side.

I'll let you know whether the chair changes my life or anything.

For the arts center, I've been writing about the immigrant experience.

I usually feel pretty knowledgeable about the immigrant experience.  I have a family full of immigrants and emigrants, I worked in refugee resettlement, I teach English, I know about history. But the particular immigrant experience I'm working on is different: the tenements of New York City.

People coming to the state where I live had just about the same amount of space indoors, but they also had a huge, beautiful outdoors. Tenement dwellers lived in darkness like deep sea creatures, getting rickets for lack of sunshine. Look at the diagram below: the white spaces were the sources of light for the people living in these hideous places.

They could go out onto the fire escapes for a bit of air, and they did, but actually going outside was dangerous.

Inside was pretty dangerous, too: pitch-black hallways with no windows at all, most rooms including the kitchen also having no windows or ventilation, no plumbing or garbage pick up. Accidents and illnesses were inevitable.

The little boy above is carrying his daily work.

The diagram shows that there was a school, but immigrant children were likely to be working, not going to school. 

I'm trying not to let my sense of horror creep into the lessons too much, and especially not my feeling that it's an urban horror. You can find plenty of rural horrors, too, after all.

History is smelly, dirty, and uncomfortable. It's remarkable that people who grew up in these circumstances went ahead and became artists and scientists and productive citizens.

We who live in comfort and luxury, with our health and safety so much more assured, should be able to do amazing things.

Also, don't listen to people who say that the world is worse than it used to be. Show them pictures like these.

Yesterday I did eight hours of billable work and two hours of unbillable -- communications with current, former, and prospective clients, my own blog, negotiations with designers. I think that's about how it is. This morning, having gotten up at 4:30 with my husband and done my spell with Wii Fit, I actually spent some time dealing with files before getting online. This is because my internet connection wasn't working, frankly, but it needed to be done.

But last night I quit working and made dinner, hung out with my husband, and did the major seams of Salt Peanuts. I now have the sleeves to do. It's a lovely fluffy pink thing, and I wish I could show you a picture, but my camera is still dead. I don't know why I think that it'll come back to life if I wait around. That seems to be what I'm doing, though.

My husband went back to work yesterday,which is good news. #1 son goes back to school on Monday and #2 son and I the following week. I need to get my internet classes set up between now and then, but I also want to do another set of lessons for the arts center this week. I also have among my new prospective clients an insurance company looking for a staff writer. Not as exciting as the arts center, of course, but ongoing.

So, yeah, life seems pretty normal. Tonight is Twelfth Night, so there ought to be some final revelry, and of course I need to remove and put away all decorations. When the kids were small, they'd help and we'd make a bit of a party out of it. This is the night to make a Galette des Rois, and drink up all the half-empty bottles of wine left around from previous festivities.

So, while songs for Epiphany tend to be about the Magi or the star of Bethlehem or something, I want to suggest for today the very weird old carol "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day." Hear Libera singing it, or sing along. This is your last chance for Christmas music till next Advent, so it's also the right day to have one last warble of "Marshmallow World" or "Santa Baby."

The song for today is "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence." This is an excellent song, very dramatic, with no shred of frolicsome festiveness to distract us if we're getting back to work today.

Actually, I got back to work yesterday, though I didn't intend to do as much work as I did. One of the lesson plans for the arts center is being challenging to me. I think it's pretty bad, and filled with inaccuracies and stuff like that. So I have to steer between the Scylla of turning in a lesson I don't think much of and the Charybdis of being hypercritical and pedantic.

It takes a lot of extra time to be diplomatic.And even that sentence shows the problem: I think of this as an issue of courtesy, because I'm assuming that I'm right and the original author of the lesson is wrong, and all I need to do is express my obviously correct views in a tactful way.

I had an opportunity last term to take part in a rehearsal under the direction of the conductor of the National Symphony -- coincidentally enough, an employee of the arts center in question. He said kindly, at one point, "Always consider the possibility that you might be wrong." It struck me as a good policy.

So that's the first thing I'm doing this morning. Then I have annual reports to do for everyone, and I've had a query from a client whose project got stuck on the back burner during the holidays. He doesn't celebrate the same holidays I do, so he may not think that's a good reason, and I might ought to just apologize frankly.

It also struck me, at about 1:00 a.m., that I'm teaching a new course two weeks from today, and I probably need to set up my online courses and plan that new class.

And it snowed last night, again. Doesn't really matter, I guess, since I don;t have to go out in the snow to work. I just thought I'd mention it.

I have been really lazy over the past few days. I have donte my Wii Fit workouts every day, but apart from that Ihave mostly been lolling around reading and knitting. I did some filing yesterday, and some cleaning in fits and spurts, but mostly I finish one trashy novel and just order up another on my kindle and continue lollling around.

My camera died over the holiday, I'm sorry to say, so I can't show you pictures of my knitting. Sigh.

I did walk out to church this morning, in the snow, so the song of the day is this morning's anthem: "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem." You can hear Patti Loveless twanging this, or The Whites. I like this song a lot, though we did it faster and unfortunately had no fiddle.