It feels like spring.
It's my sister's birthday -- actually, she seems to have celebrated yesterday, since she's in New Zealand, but here it's her birthday today.
I've got a student complaining about his grade from last term, which has caused my entire grading system to come under scrutiny. I'm going to have to improve how I keep my gradebooks, and possibly to give quizzes and weight things and all that stuff which I dislike intensely.
I guess I'm lucky that it's never come up before.
I didn't take pictures on my trip because #1 son had the camera. Fortunately, he took a bunch of great pictures.
I have a continual need of images for blog posts. At first, I thought it strange when clients expected me to find and place pictures for them, since that's a) not writing and b) sometimes as lengthy a process as the writing.
However, I developed the skills and I always work on my collection of photos, so now it's just a matter of coming up with a metaphor that ties the picture and the post together in some way.
We also have a plan for an outdoor sports site for #1 son.
As you may know, if you have been reading my blog for years and have total recall, #1 son's career plan is to be a drifter.
At one point, I suggested to him that the correct word for someone who travels around all the time having adventures might be "journalist." He didn't see it. However, now that he's majoring in writing, he can see that writing about outdoor adventures can allow a guy to have those adventures tax deductibly.
Speaking of which, I picked up my tax documents yesterday from the CPA. We owe quite a bit of money to the IRS. This is because we made quite a bit of money, so it's nothing to complain about. Quite a bit by my standards, that is. And certainly nothing to complain about, but it does mean that we have to be careful about expenditures till we get it paid.
I'm always pretty careful about expenditures, of course, but 
this is beans and rice territory.
Fortunately, I have the skills. Also fortunately, I had already done the grocery shopping before I got the tax returns. No way would I have bought those raspberries otherwise, and I really enjoyed them.
Anyway, we figure an outdoor living site will give #1 son an excuse to travel about, another place for us to drop links, something good for the company portfolio, and perhaps even a chance to bring in a bit of extra money.
I'm looking into affiliate marketing. I haven't yet found anyone who actually finds that lucrative, except perhaps the nice man who runs Flashlight Worthy. But I'm trying to learn how to turn a profit that way, and maybe I will have learned it by the time #1 son is ready to run such a site.
Today I have lots and lots of work to do. Isn't that nice?
We had a great time this weekend, and I never touched a computer. I took no pictures, since #1 son had my camera.
#2 daughter's concert was amazing. We went to the Nelson Atkins, which I love, and several restaurants. Otherwise, we talked and laughed and had fun like a slumber party.
I have to get to class now -- spring break is over!
I can really relate to this picture.
I have a bunch of stuff to finish today, and then tomorrow I'm going on a road trip with Janalisa to #2 daughter's place. We plan to attend her concert and have fun.
I suggested that we should be scandalous old women. She thought we should be scandalous young women, but we're going to be visiting a 25 year old, so that won't work. Then she thought we could be scandalous middle aged women, but somehow that sounds bad to me.
I was up at 3:00 this morning, when I didn't actually have to get up till 4:15. I woke up with an article in my mind, and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided I might as well get up and write it.
This isn't so good, really. I'm sincerely trying to get enough sleep. I was thinking I might go back to bed, but it's gotten to be 6:00, so it's too late for that now.
Today I have to print out my online gradebook for my online class and drive it up to the next town to put it into intercampus mail for the dept secretary. This is extremely stupid. The information is all online. Printing it out is stupid. Sending it to someone is also stupid. Not being allowed to mail it, but having instead to hand-carry it is stupid. In the past, I've had to take it clear up to the Next County, so this is in its way an improvement, but still...
I also have to take my tax documents to the CPA. There's some real suspense involved in this. I'm afraid of what I might owe the government, not only from last year, but for estimated taxes for the first quarter of this year. I pay half my income for college tuition, so I shouldn't really have to worry, I guess, but still...
I also have lots of work to do, but of course this is a good thing. And actually, it might be a good thing that I have errands to do, because I literally haven't left my house for a week.
As a member of Amazon Vine, I received a case of this miracle substance, Celsius. It causes people who drink it to become madly fit and energetic, increases their endurance, and enhances their metabolism.
It tastes revolting. However, I am planning to give it a fair test. So I will report here on the progress of my Green Tea Raspberry Acai Vitamin Enriched Dietary Supplement experience. This is Day 1, and I'm drinking it, making faces like a person drinking cough syrup, while working. I had my exercise today (it says it works best with exercise and healthy food, which I daresay is true), and have been feeling pretty chipper already. No doubt once I make it through this can of Celsius I will feel just that much more energetic and fit!
My dad gave me his no longer used copy of Photoshop, and here's my first project.
Okay, there's a bit of a joke there. All that I did was to open the project I commissioned and add the words.
We thought it would be cool to send people a paper rocket to launch when we launch their website. So I asked my graphics guy to come up with a paper rocket that matched my website.
I'm going to put a picture of my website at the bottom of the post so you can see what he was working with.
If money were no object, it would be fun to have different artists do the same project, and see what different things they come up with.
With this guy, I always give him very broad assignments (like "Can you make me a paper rocket to match my website?") and feel surprised and delighted with what he comes up with. The curly bits on my website are actually a very small part of the design.
He could just as easily have used the logo or the typewriter keys -- that's what I tend to use, actually -- the header is on my business cards and stuff. 
But I really like twining curvy lines. I love the way he made them curl around the straight lines.
I need to talk to a printer about making this into a physical object, perhaps. I mean, I could just email it, but wouldn't it be fun and surprising to get it in the mail?
Yesterday I started in working on the new project for the Arts Center, but a bunch of old projects came back. That's how it works -- I send off a draft, and at some unpredictable time in the future, it returns to me with more work needed. So I have a bunch of cool and interesting projects for today.
#1 son has set off on his canoe trip for Spring Break. #2 son has returned safely to school from his. The boys will be home for Easter, but not the girls. They're probably too old for Easter baskets...
We ended up with quite a bit of snow. Church was canceled, and I had a cozy day while my menfolks headed off to work through the wintry landscape.
There was a bit of work, but I also cleaned up my office and my bedroom.
The Organized Home plan is all the way up to cleaning out the garage by now, so I missed the boat there.
But I put an Instant Watch movie on (Expelled) and did all my filing in the office. Then I hung up clothes and sorted out books in the bedroom.
While I was in there, I also decided to do something about our ancient, threadbare quilt. 
I made this quilt more than thirty years ago with wonderfully soft cottons and great big blocks. I loved its pale, washline look. But the fabric has perished in a lot of places, and the edges are all ragged. So I cut out the parts that were the strongest and made pillow shams.
There were some blocks that were still in fairly good condition after that, and I cut those out. Perhaps I'll make little cushions with them.
Sunday evening is when the people I work with all organize our work.
I'm probably overstating it. I really want to say that it's when all of us web workers organize our work, but I'm sure that would be overstating it. However, it is true that on Sunday evenings, I can expect a fusillade of emails about jobs and phone call schedules, and all my colleagues show up on their respective instant message buddy lists, so I organize my work then, too. If you go to an office, you probably do that Friday afternoon or Monday morning. 
With my week all planned out, I went and watched Life with my menfolks. It's worth watching. There's some amazing stuff going on in the animal kingdom.
My husband of course told us how to cook everything we saw. Except hippos. "I don't think people will eat those," he frowned. "They're too ugly."
He contemplated this further as we watched the hippos establishing dominance (note: they're less dramatic about it that the ninja-like bullfrogs).
"Maybe," he said doubtfully. "Maybe in their country people eat them. But not if they're in a big group like that. Then they'd think, there are so many, it must be that people don't eat them."
"I never see hippo meat in the grocery store," I said. My husband agreed that it was sad, how little variety one found in the grocery stores in America. No Komodo dragons or frogs' eggs or anything.
Sigh.
While watching, I worked on a scarf I'm making from make-make's Flavor wool. It's soft and lovely. Admittedly, I tend to make scarves and then not wear them. However, I've been wanting to use this chart from Poetry in Stitches for years, and there's probably no chance that I'll ever use it on the sweater it was designed for, so a scarf seemed like the logical use for it. I guess I could use it for a cushion, or a kangaroo pocket for an otherwise plain sweater or something. I can decide after I finish the chart.
I ended up spending much of yesterday getting my tax info in order. Not doing my taxes, mind you. Just figuring out how much I earned and how much I spent.
Since half my income goes for college tuition for my kids, I hope my taxes won't be too horrifying.
At least I have some numbers, though. I don't know what that bookkeeper was doing all last year; she spent hours doing something, but my accounting software certainly didn't have the information in it.
Having completed that entertaining job, I had leftover takeaway for lunch, spent half an hour with Wii Fit, and baked an orange marmalade cake. I'm sort of auditioning recipes for Easter. We seem to have very few people coming, so I can't just make a whole bunch of desserts as I normally would.
I did a bit 
of knitting and reading, and watched Cheri from Netflix. I ordered printer ink, noticing that it will soon be cheaper just to buy a new printer. I hired a designer for an internal project and spent a bit more time trying to figure our which online tools we should sub to.
I'll certainly have more expenses next year than I had in 2009. I think I'm making good choices and investments for the business, after having started with practically no investment at all, but that presumes that I continue earning as I have been. I guess if the things I'm spending money on don't increase the business's earnings, then I'll know they were bad choices and can do better in the future. Printer ink is probably an unavoidable expense, though.
So, having failed to do housework or grading yesterday, it will be my fate to do those two things today. Plus a bit more for the Australians, for whom I did very little yesterday.
We have snow, as you can see. It's still falling. A bit of work, a bit of housework, and then perhaps an afternoon before the fire with a book.
Recent Comments