I get the paper on Fridays (and Saturdays and Sundays, actually), and in keeping with my continuing efforts at leading a normal life, I followed my Wii Fit time this morning with a glance through the news.

There's a lot of discussion in the letters and editorials about Arizona's new immigration law. One letter was particularly striking.

The writer suggested building two fences across the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Both should be hard to climb, and they should be 100 feet apart.

That's not all. There should be machine guns affixed to the fences that will shoot anything that moves, so long as it is "larger than a jackrabbit." And, the letter continues, the dead bodies should be left on the ground as a warning.

Why yes, I've always wanted to live in a country like that. Haven't you?

I think people who want to live in the United States should do the paperwork and come in legally. But I think people who can see human corpses as a nice decoration for our nation's borders are not desirable residents, wherever they happened to be born.

Here's the completed Salt Peanuts. It's a wooly, fluffy pink thing that I may never have a chance to wear in public, but it's very nice for hanging around the house in.

I'm not hanging around the house today, because I must go out and interview a famous football coach. Possibly the most famous football coach we have in these parts. I need to come up with some interesting questions to ask him.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with a prospective client. The guy called me up, said Arkenboy had recommended me, and asked me to meet with him on Friday.

I agreed with alacrity, of course.

This means a full week of dressing properly. Between classes and meetings, every day has been a jacket day. Give up your idea of the self-employed lounging about in their pajamas.

#1 daughter headed back down to her subtropical fastness this morning.

We had fun, though we were talking a lot about work. I think I do talk a lot about work, which is probably a bad habit.

We had gone to try to find a power cord for my scanner, which has somehow lost its cord. I had gone by myself earlier in the day, tolerating the scornful behavior of the boys in the shops.

"I need a power cable for an Epson Perfection 1250 scanner," I said. It didn't strike me as that funny.

The guy at Radio Shack told me to bring it in and he was sure he could find the right cord. But when #1 daughter and I went in, carrying the scanner, he sniggered at my voltage.

Yes, it was not just my scanner that was ancient and amusing, but my voltage as well. I guess a guy who finds 15.2 volts hilarious must lead  a happy life, so I shouldn't grudge him that.

Still, I don't have a power cord, and I have a job requiring a scanner. It's a dilemma.

Having been scoffed at by the Radio Shack boy, #1 daughter and I went up to the mall so she could get some Uplighting. She didn't say "Uplighting" to the clerk. In fact, I believe we said, "There was something in the bag of samples you were giving away last month---" "Yeah, and my sister had it and I want some. It's like in a pump--"

And the helpful clerk pulled it right out.

Is this a male/female difference?

Today was a nice, normal day. #1 daughter arrived last night and we went out  to our town's equivalent of Bourbon Street and strolled around checking the places I'm writing about as the "top 10 places to grab a beer."

Not that we grabbed beers. We walked up and down the street, pausing briefly to allow a demonstration to pass--

It was "Take Back the Night" march, and I remember those from my youth. However, we always waited till dark to have them. Holding a "Take Back the Night" march in broad daylight seemed a little silly.

--and then we had Greek food and discussed #1's love life and various philosophical points.

This morning I did 30 minutes of yoga with the Wii Fit. #1 daughter got up then and we did a tiny bit of work and then headed off to another of the burger joints.

Hardly a joint. A lovely restaurant that specializes in organic, local food, including humanely raised meat.

You can see #1 son's burger above: buffalo burger with sauteed onion, pepper Jack cheese, and ancho peppers with sweet potato fries.

#1 daughter and I had pretty composed salads.

We discussed philosophy, rock festivals, float trips, and  crime.

#1 son headed off to work, #1 daughter went up to see her sister, and I came home with half of each salad in a carry-put box.

My husband ate #1 daughter's remaining salad. It had grilled chicken and long curls of carrot.

Mine, which you see here, had fruit and nuts. For dinner, I added some chicken (Pampered Chef Pecan-Crusted Chicken with Sweet Mustard Dressing, to be precise) and leftovers from breakfast (Pecan-Apple Muffin and Hashbrown Casserole, in case you wanted to know that), and it made a delicious dinner.
Along in there, we had lots of rain. I cleaned the kitchen, hung out with my husband and read a light novel, and also finished redoing the collar of Salt Peanuts. 

I just picked up stitches all around it and knitted a bit more, shaping it with short rows as you do a sock.

You can see from the picture that it worked. You can also see that the sides are not alike.

This means I have to pull it out and do it over. However, that is better than having to frog the entire sweater. I'm not very given to accuracy, or else I would have noticed when I knitted it that it was all wonky.

My daughters are going, along with an old friend of theirs, to a rock concert.

This friend was featured in a YouTube that went viral, and we therefore know him as "Bat Boy."

We are inclined toward nicknames at our house.

Partly this is because everybody we know seems to have roughly the same first names. Partly it's because we blog, so we need to use aliases.

Partly it's just habit.

So we know about Arkenboy and Scarf Boy and Extra Boy and Uganda Griddle, and there is no shame in being Bat Boy.

Bat Boy lives in the same city where #2 daughter lives. Once we were having a Pampered Chef party there (I think we made salad with grapefruit and avocado, and Faux-jitos) and it was just all these women and Bat Boy, and he handled it with aplomb. I figure a guy gets a lot of points for that.

I plan to spend the evening in some extremely normal way, too. My husband is hoping I'll fold laundry. I may end up going ahead and pulling out the collar of salt peanuts, though. Usually I have to let knitting hang around for a while before I can stand to frog it and redo it, but that would be a relaxing way to spend the evening, wouldn't it?

Very normal.

Yesterday my menfolks helped me with the research for my "Top 10" article. My husband was sent home from work early (something happened with the power), so he went to this low dive that's on many people's Top 10 burgers lists. He brought burgers back for our lunch. I wasn't all that impressed, though people had waxed poetic about the crisp lettuce and perfect pickles. I'm not the much of a burger fan.

Anyway, he liked the low dive. It was smoky and had pool tables and cold beer, so after we had discussed the burgers, he went back out there. Happy hour lasts from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at this place. It's very popular with men.

I asked the choirlet about my beer and burger lists, too. Unfortunately, practically everything we come up with is on this one street in the town where I live. Part of that may be that many of the surrounding counties are dry. Not that liquor isn't served, but it's hard to find a really good beer joint in a dry county.

Anyway, I gave #1 son my tentative lists, and he is charged with the task of confirming them this weekend.

#1 daughter is coming up today, on her way to see her sister. Maybe she'll join me for a final reconnaissance.

I went to bells last night, having been assured that I was needed. I played the bass clef, even though I was holding the bells for the treble clef. I caused other, similar kinds of trouble as well. They may be glad I'm gone.

My Northerners, on the other hand, contacted me to ask for help in using their blogging platform. I don't mind helping with that one bit, but I did charge them. And I notice that they still haven't gotten a blog post up for this week at either of their blogs.

I've hired #1 son to assist me with an article which is a set of "Top 10" lists. They include walking/hiking trails, burgers, climbs, and beers in my local area. I think that $10/hr to do this research is a good job for a student, don't you? Basically, I fronted the boy $60 for spring break, so he has to be my jack of all work until he pays me off. He ought to feel very happy that he can do this studying the question, "Where's the best place in town to grab a beer?" for a men's magazine.

If any of you local people have opinions on the subject of where to graph a beer and so forth, by the way, I'd love to hear them.

Also last night we worked on some choral music by Mark Hayes. I really like his stuff. You can hear some of his Blessed Assurance if you click on his title. This is a sheet music choir, which I think works toward anonymity and lack of individual style in order to sell the music to the widest variety of choirs, but it's a very fun song to sing.

I got home to some little issues... or maybe big issues. We worked with two designers on our last project, and we ended up paying each of them to fix the other one's code -- not that I had any problems with the code, but if there were problems, it sort of seems as though maybe they should have fixed their own problems without charging me extra. And maybe it was even just stylistic differences and didn't need changing. I don't know. We also have a designer with whom we love to work, but who raises his estimates by large increments each time. We may be losing jobs because of that. Not his problem, obviously, but there's a point at which we have to consider whether we can afford him.

Being freelance is like being single: you make decisions based on your own feelings, and you keep the money you earn. Running a company is like having a family: you have to make decisions based on the good of the larger entity and think about all the people involved.

So here are some things I've made. First, I made this sort of brochure with the PrintMaster. This is the one we've been talking about having our graphics guy do.  

As it happens, I was working on a similar, though less fun-looking, brochure for a client -- with illustrations done by our graphics guy. So this helped me get an idea of how to do his page.

His page will be better, since the graphics guy is doing it. But then I can compare it to mine and make changes so mine will look better, too.

Anyway, I was planning to go ahead and review the program, but it has more going on than I initially realized, so I'll have to play with it a bit more first.

The other thing I made is this Burda top. It's always a bother to use Burda patterns, because they come on big sheets like road maps and you have to trace off your pieces, but they always make up well.  This looks like a dark green top in a yellow bathroom, but that is a trick of the light.

It's teal chiffon in a white bathroom. It's a light, breezy tunic. The yoke is supposed to be quilted, and will be when I get around to it, but I think I could actually wear this now, under my velvet blazer, if there were some occasion like that coming up.

There's also a version of this with sleeves, and I might make that as well.

My Northerners let me go yesterday. True, I'd barely been squeezing in two hours a week for them -- sometimes not, actually, though I did their blogs on time every week. They've grown enough now that they can do it in-house, they said, so they no longer needed my services.

Then, almost immediately, I got an email from another of them -- who apparently hadn't gotten the word -- asking me to edit a website. So I'm not taking it personally.

In fact, I think it means that I can now raise my rates at oDesk. I have raised most of my prices, so it's time, but I didn't want to raise rates on the Northerners. And in fact yesterday I gave out two prices and my daughters were aghast in both cases at how little I asked for. I'm not good at pricing, it's clear.

Still, I liked the Northerners and I'm sorry to be off their team.

Happy almost Earth Day!

Let me take you along with me on a walk, in honor of the occasion.

This is one of our civilized city walks. We're working on getting the whole town connected by nice walking and biking paths like these. We started with just a few trails, and we're gradually connecting them all. It's wonderful, and handy for a town with very limited public transportation.

#2 son can easily bike to work along this path.

I took Toby the dog with me, and he had a high old time.

The town is still showing signs of the ice storm -- so many trees were broken or killed that we're not the usual cloud of blossoming trees, but we still have dogwoods and redbuds and bradford pears and honey locusts. A few magnolias.

I had class yesterday morning, followed by a meeting with a new prospective client. I think she might be our May website. I then met with Janalisa for lunch and a bit of business talk. She's doing a survey. She sent me her list of subjects last night, and I think we have a nice collection. I'm very curious to see her results, actually.

She may also bring in the May website. And #2 daughter is also doing a bit of a project, and she might be the one to bring in the May website. She's also following up with prospects (something we don't usually do), and that is probably the most likely path to the May website.

Of course, the best thing would be for us to bring in the May, June, and July websites, respectively.  

This morning I got up early to play with my new software. I get sent a lot of software to review, and frankly I don't usually think it's likely to interest you, so I don't bother telling you about it.

This time, though, I've received PrintMaster, which I think is the update for the old PrintShop.

Are you old enough to remember Print Shop? It was seriously fun, as I recall, so I was excited about this new one. And I was right to be. It is even more seriously fun, because computers can do so much more these days than they used to be able to do. It's like Photoshop (which I own and love) for people without the skills and talent to use Photoshop.

So I've been enjoying playing with it. I laid out a brochure we've been planning to make as soon as we could afford it. However, this program is a toy, not a serious thing, so you can't save your project as a pdf file or indeed as anything useful. You can save it as a jpg, which of course is useful for many things, but not for brochures. I believe that you can go to the PrintMaster web service and have your brochure printed by them, and I'll look into that, and you can print it out yourself at home, but it's probably not going to be a substitute for our graphic design people.

If you want to be able to make cool labels for your CDs, digital scrapbook pages, calendars for your friends, and stuff like that, you should certainly consider this program. It's super easy to use, contains lots of clip art, and has a nice little instruction book.

My new educational website is live. I hope you'll go visit it. In fact, I hope you'll tell all your friends to go visit it, too, because I'm excited about it.

Why should you do something because I'm excited about it? No good reason. But you probably do sometimes go look at people's new puppies or new babies or what have you just because they're excited about it, so maybe you will.

The screen with the tiger shifts to a screen with a picture of cool-looking fungus -- in the photo on the right, you see it in transition, with the tiger showing through the mushrooms. I know you're saying, "Be still, my heart! A slideshow!"

Yes, well, I'm excited. This is the slowest process ever for a website -- I've been planning it for a year and we've actually been working on it since last July.

Not sure why it took so long, frankly.

But it's now live, so I can add an extra hour or so to my work day to keep it updated.

I'm meeting today with a local businesswoman to talk about a new site for her. She's in no hurry, so she may or may not be our May site. Our April site -- a Kansas City Roofing Company -- is actually scheduled to launch in May.

We're planning on doing one each month.

I guess FreshPlans can be our April site.

I was invited to apply for this job at oDesk:
"Requirements:
- You must be from the US and a native English speaker---no exceptions no matter how good your writing is!
- You must be able to produce 10 articles daily
- NO writing teams; the work tends to be inconsistent and too many excuses come from teams of writers!
- We pay $3 an article--so the fixed price would be for 333 articles in total. If working relationship is good there will be more work.
- Work must come back edit free, on time, and ALL instructions must be followed completely
- If you are doing well we will have consistent work for you
-Do not bother to respond if you don't meet all the requirements...again no foreign writers!! "

What's funny is that I had just the day before responded to a question at the forum asking how we decided which jobs to apply for. My example of the type of job I wouldn't apply for was just like this one -- bulk articles at ridiculous rates (this job specifies Americans, so they're offering half our minimum wage, assuming we write the desired 10 articles in an 8 hour day) with scolding messages.

I wonder whether the guy saw my forum post and is showing his sense of humor here...

Apart from reading (and rejecting) that one invitation, I didn't work yesterday. I frogged the Oat Couture Bijoux Blouse, which I knitted a few years ago and never wear. Last week I frogged the nice Japanese wool yarn I was knitting up into colorwork from Poetry in Sitches. I haven't yet frogged Salt Peanuts, but it may come -- the collar still doesn't lie right, however firmly I block it.

This means I have a lot of yarn. I need to choose a suitable project.