I had a meeting with Pearce Plastics on Friday, and they have hired me to redesign their website. I walked out of their offices with a signed contract, a $500 advance and about 2 gigabytes of images from their graphics computer (still running OS 9.2, which is what I was using in about 1996). It took me two hours to upload the images onto my flash drive at their offices and about 12 minutes to download them into my computer here at home. And there are still images that I don't have. The total contract is for $2100, so I'm actually making some money from the web design skills I learned this last year.
Haven't heard back from McGraw-Hill yet, except for a short reply to a thank-you e-mail I sent out on the Monday after the interview. It said they would be in touch, so that's something. I'm crossing my fingers and praying I make the final cut, since I have a feeling it would be a very nice place for me to work for some time to come, and my design (and redesign) expertise is just what they're looking for. They want someone to help "spiff up" their publications and kind of mentor their designers, and I've got lots of experience with both, so I hope I'm in the top of the running.
Next Thursday, the 29th, is my 57th birthday. I never thought I would be this old. Of course, I had a hard time conceiving of being 47 in the first year of the new millennium, and I got used to that in short order. But the new century has certainly thrown me some nifty loops, on all levels of my life. I do have to say, though, I think most of them are pretty nice improvements on where I thought I was going in the 1990s. And I'm feeling good about 2010, feeling like it will probably end on a positive note. But I'm sitting here waiting for things to come to fruition. Pendancy is driving me nuts!
First the publications job. Then the whole fumigation thing for the house. Then the planning and execution of the remodeling on the house. Then planning into the future for a lovely retirement in a small town. But if I try to take too much in all at once, it overwhelms me. So all I can do is focus on what's right in front of me, which is this new website design. Plastic bottle caps of every kind and color: a world of threaded wonder.
I think the website will turn out looking quite nice, and I think it will be very useable for Pearce's customers. It's the first real entry into my website portfolio, which will need to grow substantially if I'm to make any money at all in retirement on web design.
As for the fumigation, we've found a motel in town that will take us and the cats (and the fish) for the four days we will be homeless. The event is planned for August 19-23, and I'm hoping that I won't be starting the new job at that point as well. But one never knows. Whatever comes down, I will be ready for it.
The Employment Development Department sent me a letter on Monday saying that I was ineligible for a new unemployment insurance claim because I had not worked in the last 12 months. Seemed fair to me. Then on Friday they send me another letter, saying I was eligible for a new unemployment claim because I had income during the period from June to September last year. Turns out my severance pay from Nielsen makes me eligible for another round of claims, but I have to refile and go through the interview and orientation rigamarole all over again. Hopefully, I'll be gainfully employed in a couple weeks and it will be a moot point.
But I can't help thinking how unfair it is that I get another six-month claim because I got a cushy severance deal, while there's lots of folks out there who made minimum wage and weren't given so much as a breath mint on the day they got fired. In my mind, the rules should be far more flexible for those folks. They're the closest to being out on the street; they're the ones that society should be the most worried about. (Not that I won't take the money if I'm due it; just that it seems a bit unfair).
QVC had Christmas in July on today, and it got me thinking about the upcoming season, although it's months away. We have a ratty old artificial tree that we've been saying we're going to 86 for the last three years, but then the year-end financials never allow for such an extravagant purchase. Perhaps this will be the year. They had snowman cookie jar/candy bowl centerpieces and faux holly battery-lighted trees for the mantle and other assorted holiday drech. If I were rich, I would have purchased it all; that was the mood I was in.
August 8 is the second anniversary of our marriage. I think the traditional gift is wood (no jokes about giving or getting wood, please). So salad tongs? Some elaborate hindu box? I'll think of something. We actually have two anniversaries: January 12 is the anniversary of our domestic partnership (it will be six years this coming January) and then August 8 is the anniversary of our nuptials.
We kept the domestic partnership because the laws on gay relationships vary so much from state to state that the marriage might be in force in one state, while the domestic partnership might be in force in another state. A lot of states would just like to lynch us. It's extremely bewildering, to say the least.
Hope this finds everyone well. I have not had any e-mails on my new great-niece from my brother in a week or so, so I'm assuming that means that everything's fine and all are adjusting to having diapers in their lives once again.
I should stop whining so much: Everyone has to deal with tomorrows that are uncertain. That's why it's called the future.
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