I have been a slacker on my SWAP.

This WIP picture shows an outift which I have since finished. I made a matching top for the skirt, too. I've done nothing more since then.

That means that I have completed one jacket, two of four tops, and one of four bottoms. 2/5 of the way there, with a September 1st deadline. I'd better step it up if I'm really going to do this.

I haven't been thinking about it much, as it happens. I'm back to 12 and 14 hour workdays, and when I have free time, I've been knitting and being domestic.

However, I got a catalog in the mail yesterday that showed a lot of a particular color combination: orange red and aqua.It looked ugly to me, as it happens, but it could be the up and coming new color combination, so it's causing me to re-examine the idea of bringing a nice tomato red (not orange at all) into my SWAP as an accent color. I have a length of linen in that shade, and it might jazz things up as a blouse.

When I'm going to sew a blouse I don't know. However, this is the last week of summer school and, while I'm currently enmeshed in a whole bunch of projects, I have no new ones coming up. So I'm toying with the idea of a vacation.

With no new projects on the horizon and tuition to pay, I'm not considering travel. But I might take a week and sew. I could watch everything on Netflix Instant Watch, go out to lunch with friends every day, take long walks early in the morning, stuff like that. It could be fun.

Baby tomatoes.

My desk didn't stay tidy for long.

We have baby tomatoes. Usually we have ripe tomatoes by now, but we haven't been very good gardeners this year. It's the last week of summer school -- well, the last week for the class I'm teaching, not for the class I'm taking. Then I'm thinking of taking a week off.

I'm not sure quite how I'll do that. It's too late in the year for outdoorsy vacations, I think. Hiking and camping aren't as enjoyable when it's 100 degrees out. I've thought of going to visit #2 daughter. I could stay at home and loll around and sew and stuff like that instead of working, but I'd be in competition with #1 son's video games and people would be able to find me and ask me to do things.

My husband usually gets vacation at this time of year (I usually don't), but this year he's going to Las Vegas for a pool tournament in August, so I don't think he can take a vacation with me as well.

I could go a couple of counties to the east to a tourist town we used to visit often. I probably can't afford that, with tuition to pay.

I'm going to think about this...

I got all the articles sent in and approved yesterday morning, and then did a bit of housework. Not a lot, but there's much to be said for clean counters, freshly washed bed linens, and groceries in the pantry. I put orange blossom scent into the lampe berger, rather than filling the house with the scent of cleaning products as our professional cleaner did, but I think it's okay. It was hot enough even with the air conditioning on that the scrubbing made me feel hot and sweaty, so I went ahead and did Wii Fit Free Step while watching Numb3rs, too.

My husband got home from work and watched reality TV. I hate reality TV. It was a pleasant Saturday afternoon, I have several nice books on my Kindle, and the TV was blaring out scenes of prison life, teary talent show contestants, and other people whom I'd avoid in real life. They were sharing their hopes and dreams and bad behavior, plus repeated dismal renditions of Whitney Houston songs punctuated by mean comments, right in the middle of my lovely afternoon.

I contemplated taking my knitting and heading back to my office. I have a pretty daybed in here, after all, and lots of nice music, and I could have just read back here. It seemed unfriendly, though. There we were, my husband and I, together on a Saturday afternoon, and I wanted to leave him alone with his obnoxious TV shows? Not the action of a loving wife, right?

Yet I was having to ignore repeated pepper spraying unfolding in my own living room.

I really hate reality TV. I understand that it's cheaper, and I get that people like it, but I can't grasp the appeal. I mean, what if these people were in your living room confiding nasty details about their lives and crying as they gossiped about other nasty strangers? Wouldn't you want them to leave?

My husband had to get up early to go to work, so I was up at 4:30 working on my educational website. This is one of those internet ventures that has no clear path to profitability. I think it's worth doing -- it grew out of the Dextr xanga, which still gets thousands of visits a week even though I haven't been blogging there for a year. Dextr was sponsored by a school supply store, while the new site, FreshPlans, has no sponsor and is therefore a volunteer effort.

It's doing some things for my company, providing a lab for SEO experimentation and a showcase for our growing multimedia skills, but mostly it's just a nice thing for teachers.

We are using it to learn about affiliate marketing. We signed up as Amazon affiliates. Over 500 individuals have clicked through to Amazon from the site so far this month, and we've earned a grand total of $10.65, so we can see that this is not a fast road to riches. Lostarts had shared her experience as an Amazon affiliate with me, so I wasn't expecting to get rich quick, but there do seem to be people who earn well by this method. I'll let you know if we learn how.

#1 daughter sees paid membership (like Enchanted Learning) as the way to go, and I sort of think that I could get together with my graphic artist buddy in the Philippines and make wonderful worksheet collections to sell as e-books. The Computer Guy thinks we should sell ads. However, all these things require that we wait for the traffic to increase pretty significantly. The site has been up for two months now, and we've gone from three visits on an average day to 50, so this doesn't seem impossible.

My goal is for the site to pay for its own hosting. I can see my time there as volunteer work and a learning experience, but I don't really want to be out the cost of hosting. We're almost halfway there.

I have to write several articles this morning -- I was intending to get them done yesterday, but Things Happened. I'm involved in some interesting projects and have a website about to launch (the client wants some last-minute graphic changes), and there kept being emails and phone calls and stuff to deal with. So I still have those articles to write. Once that's been done, though, I intend to do housework and sewing. Possibly knitting and lolling about as well. Groceries will have to be acquired at some point, too.

Articles first.

My work days are getting longer and longer, but I did stop last night, have a salad with grilled chicken, spinach, cucumber and oranges (yum) and watch It's Complicated. While watching, I tidied the living room, just so I wouldn't feel like a slacker.

This was necessary because I have not just assignments I haven't yet finished, but emails from clients wondering about those assignments. Of course, I'm also waiting to hear back from a number of clients on the stuff I sent them, so in some cosmic sense I may be even.

It's Complicated is a fun, sweet movie about love amongst the wrinklies. Meryl Streep spends a little too much time being goofy, but I guess she has picked that up as her new persona. Diane Keaton did the same as she got older, though I think she was more successful with it. Streep does sweet very well, though.

Apart from the usual class, a meeting, and lots of writing, yesterday was distinguished by the arrival at my house of a webcam. I'm excited about the webcam because I think it will aid immeasurably in the production of educational videos for my educational website. It thinks it would be fun to use for video calls and IMs.

Video phone (or vidphone as the SF novels used to style it) is an idea so obvious and easy that you'd think we'd have started using it all the time by now.

I plugged in the cute little webcam, positioned it on my screen, uploaded the software, and immediately learned why we don't do much video phoning. A picture of me, hunched over the keyboard in my "Don't Make Me Use My Opera Voice" T-shirt leapt onto the screen and scared me.

Once I realized that I was looking only at a poorly-groomed middle-aged woman and not at some truly frightening thing, I was able to play with the camera and enjoy it. You can choose an avatar for yourself and be a dinosaur or a stick figure instead of showing yourself to the world if you want (note to self: do not go out in public in that headband, and sit up straight).

I haven't done anything but play with it yet, but I'll keep you posted on whether it continues to be fun or not. My husband objected to it on the grounds that it requires you to wear pants while using it. It's my understanding that some people don't wear pants while using their webcams, but I didn't mention that. No need to complicate the discussion further.

For me, it was just a reminder that my brain, which always thinks I look the way I did at 25 unless I suddenly get scared by a mirror, is unreliable.

It was hard to go to choir practice last night. I was swamped with work, had grading to do and people waiting on stuff from me, not to mention trouble with my Photoshop class homework. But I closed up shop and trudged through the record-breaking heat to the church, with no dinner and not much prospect of any, to sing.

Singing always makes me feel better. Not just me, of course. There's evidence that singing, and especially singing in groups, creates biochemical changes in the body and strengthens the immune system as well as making a person feel better.

Last night, there were extras. The church keeps the air conditioning cranked up to levels my budget and level of environmental responsibility won't allow. Plus, there were half a dozen little girls playing drums. Elkhart was conducting them while the women of the choir and the choirlet sang.

The song we're doing with the girls is not inspiring. It's a children's song, with a predictable harmony and a rudimentary tune. But drums are the thing Elkhart really loves, and kids are her favorite group to work with. Watching her conduct the drumming was uplifting.

#2 son's FAFSA and financial aid info arrived yesterday. We're having to pay quite a bit more -- an extra hundred dollars a week. The government is giving him less, which makes sense since we're earning more. But the school is giving him more -- he earned an excellence scholarship or two. So it's not as bad as it might have been. With #1 son's tuition as well, though, the total for their education is more than my husband earns.

He's going to Las Vegas. His pool team (billiards, not swimming) has won at the regional level, I guess, so the next thing is the big time in the big city. His travel costs will be paid, so he just has to come up with money for food and any idiotic things he wants to do. He's excited.

Last night I did the buttonholes for my SWAP jacket. You see it here unpressed, with the inner seams not yet finished but still quite close to being a Finished Object.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work I have this week. This is good, by the way. As long as I can actually do all the work, having lots is good.

I'm taking time off in the evenings and on the weekends anyway. I think that if I don't take time off, I'll still have more work than I can finish.

I'm also having proper meals most of the time. And spending some time with my family. And exercising most days. Reading for pleasure.

It's closer to normal life than Back to School at the store was, for sure.

Today I have two websites to finish up (I hope -- it depends on my getting info from the people I'm writing for) and some articles to write, plus class and choir practice. Blogging, of course. Papers to grade. Business stuff to do, though I'm trying to push as much of that stuff as possible onto my daughters.

Better get to it.

More knitting took place chez fibermom last night. I'm making the Flying Diagonals cardigan from Lacy Little Knits. I added waist shaping to the first piece, but didn't make any notes or anything. So now I'm doing the second piece and trying to match it, hampered by the fact that the stuff is lacy enough to be fairly unstable as a fabric.

Learn from my mistake and make notes when you change your pattern, okay?

The change was probably unnecessary, anyway. This pattern in this yarn makes such a soft fabric that there's no chance it will be boxy. The change is probably more about trendiness than anything else. Peer pressure or something.

I think peer pressure mostly has good effects on me. I tend to feel pressured into doing things like cleaning my house or joining Weight Watchers (third meeting today; my friends don't attend the meeting that I do, but rehearsals of the choirlet now invariably begin with people's weight loss reports and cakes are served with Points announcements). I guess I've also let peer pressure cause me to work excessive hours, not so much a good thing, and to favor gradients, drop shadows, and rounded corners.

One of my students is writing about how peer pressure is more severe now and thus drug use is way up among teens. I'm inclined to think that peer pressure is a constant, but I have no evidence for this. It'll be interesting to see what she comes up with.

Peer pressure in the knitting blogosphere causes people to knit ponchos.

I may not have roses this year, but I do have tomatoes.  This is our very weird tomato garden. I think they'd be happier in the ground, frankly, but my husband planted them on the patio,and then decided to move them into the garden -- keeping them in the pots.

My husband is a very skillful gardener. This hasn't been a stellar year for him, though.

We had BBQ from Penguin Ed's for Father's Day. The Wii Fit informed me this morning first that I now have a gold fit credits bank, and second that I had gained weight since yesterday. A celebratory meal translates into immediate weight gain. Sigh. I had been doing so well, too.

I did a lot of photoshop yesterday, a bit of work, and none of the continuing housework I had intended to do. However, I did get some knitting done. This is the Flying Diagonals cardigan from Lacy Little Knits. I've done one of the fronts and have begun the second.

I knitted while I read Elizabeth George on the Kindle, which you can see here in its pretty Van Gogh cover, and also while I watched Leverage.

Those guys have a very nice office.

#1 son finds the whole premise of that show implausible: things work out too neatly, he says, and the people have super powers. I like it a lot, though. Enough that I actually watched it on TV while it was being broadcast. Usually I can't be bothered to figure out when things are on.

This morning I have a meeting with a local IT guy who wants to talk about what I do, exactly. I will try not to be too influenced by having watched Leverage.