Ohhhhh….tired. Head hurts. Totally distracted with work.
Would you believe that ten days ago I was wondering what on earth I would do with myself when I finally finished the heavy lifting involved in rewriting five college courses and mounting them online? Yes. I stood in the house and thought, in passing, “I’m going to be mighty bored.” Also thought, “Maybe I can finally get some sleep.”
That lasted about eight minutes.
Work has just poured into the S-corp. Not that I’m complaining: it means the subcontractors will get paid and I can buy a new computer, which, it’s clear, is much needed.
The iMac is so old and so clogged with data it interferes with productivity. So much time is wasted sitting here watching the damn thing grind away, it’s no wonder I clench my teeth until they break.
Need a new printer/scanner or at least a freestanding, more efficient scanner, too. Add to the fact that my HP all-in-one is even more excruciatingly slow than the iMac, its scanner defaults to color. To upload a check to the credit union, you have to scan in b/w. Reset the scanner to black & white. If you’re not watching closely, it’ll flip back to color. When this happens, you have to go back and s…c…a…n…….t…h…e d…a…m…n…….c…h…e…c…k…….o…v…e…r…….a…g…a…i…n….endlessly.
Which was what happened this morning: turned out of the sack, figured to e-deposit the check that came in yesterday, then take the dog for a walk before it gets hot. This started at 5:30, while my bloodshot eyes were so bleary I could hardly see. Didn’t notice it had blithely defaulted back to 300×300 color, thank you very much, until I went to upload. So had go go through t…h…e…….w…h…o…l…e…….p…r…o…c…e…s…s…….o…v…e…r…….a…g…a…i…n…. UGH!
It’s now 6:30, the sun is up, and I suppose it’s too late to go out into the heat.
Poor little dog.
Oh well. She got walked at 11:00 p.m., which after all was just a few hours ago.
Sent off a set of edits to one client last night for approval and to get a few queries answered; hope to put the finishing touches on that in the next day or two.
Meanwhile two more book projects are in house, one of which I’ll probably have to farm out to a sidekick.
Met with Tina, the numero uno sidekick, yesterday. She’s still earning more waiting tables in her off-hours than the Great Desert University is paying her, despite her boss having engineered a raise through the Chinese gummint.
In a few months, her job with GDU runs out, so she gets a second screwing from them in the form of yet another layoff. Her boss, who jumped at the early retirement offer and now spends most of her time in China, is taking the publication with her and hiring Tina to manage the thing on a contract basis. That’s nice, except it means that in a few months her benefits end, meaning she has to find a way to get her self and the kid insured.
She’s planning to form an S-corporation for her editorial work, too. This would be convenient for The Copyeditor’s Desk, because it would mean I wouldn’t have to issue 1099s to her. Think she’ll find it convenient for herself, too: the S-corp is turning out to be a good way to run a minuscule business.
We were trying to figure out if there was a way I could carry her and maybe one other person as employees so we could buy an insurance plan through Copyeditor’s Desk. Maybe we could get a plan that would allow me to use it as Medigap coverage and her to get herself and the child covered. The problem is, though, our income isn’t yet steady enough to be sure the corporation can pay its share of the premiums reliably.
Well. If the new client who’s supposed to come onboard next month likes our work and turns into a steady thing, that could change. We’d only need one or maybe two such customers to build enough cash flow to allow the corporation to function more…corporately.
Had a bizarre experience yesterday while driving from the press down to meet Tina in Tempe. Scottsdale Road, the most convenient main drag from Scottsdale into the university district, has been under construction forever. They’ve got the curb lane shut down for miles, and in some places they’ve closed the middle lane, too. So I turned west onto McDowell, another six- or eight-lane main drag, to jog over to 64th, which would take me into Tempe via the scenic route through Papago Park. This would evade the lane closures and heavy equipment on Scottsdale, and besides, it’s a nice drive.
I’m cruising along in the left lane (because sooner or later I have to turn left to go south). There’s hardly any traffic to speak of.
All of a sudden this woman in a jeep-like vehicle comes roaring up beside me, opens her window in the 110-degree heat, and starts screaming at me.
I can’t hear her, of course, because my windows are closed and the air-conditioning is running, and I’m not about to open my window.
I have no idea what her problem is, but she is absolutely freaking BERSERK. She’s screaming like a harpy, not watching the road and yelling her head off.
Naturally, the signals turn red Every. Single. Time I drive up to one, and every time we stop she starts to scream again.
Why? I have no clue. I don’t believe I’ve done anything to set her (or anyone else) off. There’s no traffic. I’ve been in the left lane since I turned off Scottsdale Road. There was no one in the lane coming from the east when I entered it, because the light had just turned red in that direction. So I’m sure I didn’t cut her off. I’m not weaving back and forth. I’m driving the limit or slightly faster, and so I’m not holding up traffic in the fast lane. As far as I can tell, she’s crazy in the abstract.
Adding to the weirdness, she’s an expensively groomed, professionally dressed (as far as I could see) young woman. She doesn’t look like a nut case. But she sure is acting like one.
Now she gets out her cell phone and starts taking pictures of my car and me! She drops behind me, apparently snaps a photo of my license plate, then zooms back up beside me, takes her hands off the steering wheel at 40 or 45 mph, leans her head out the window, and shoots a picture of me through the windshield!
Holy mackerel!
Guess I’m just lucky all she had to shoot with was a camera. Most of the nut cases around here carry pistols in their cars.
Now she veers in front of my car and jams on her brakes.
Fortunately, no eastbound traffic is coming in the opposite lanes. I’m already in the left westbound lane, and I spot a car dealership on the south side of the road. Slide into the turn lane and dart into the dealership’s parking lot, figuring at least there’ll be some men hanging around in there. This maneuver gives her the slip, and she continues on down McDowell.
Hung around the parking lot for a few minutes. By the time I got back on the road, she was gone.
This place is just crazy. Just batshit crazy.
Image: Papago Buttes. Joe Flood. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Could you have something wrong with the car, like a tail light out or the gas cover open? Her reaction seems way over the top for something that minor, but I thought I’d mention it as an option.
I just dropped off my car for some service and the mechanic told me he’d noticed I had a tail light out when I drove in. Well now, I never would have known if he hadn’t noticed. It’s not as if we can see our own tail lights, right?
Probably nothing much will come out of it, but just in case you should have taken a picture of her car with the license plate showing.
@ Linda: I’d just picked the car up from the mechanic the evening before. They’re very good at what they do and would have checked everything before letting it out the door. And that’s not how she was acting: she wasn’t pointing at something. She was raving…practically foaming at the mouth.
@ Stephen: Guess that’s why I need that iPad. I can’t afford a cell phone with a camera (or with anything)…connection charges are too high. But the $25/month ATT connection for the iPad is almost affordable, if it gets paid out of pre-tax business revenues. Assuming the business revenues continue to come in, which is no foregone conclusion.
I called the Scottsdale PD after I got home. The guy I spoke with there said she might try to get an officer to issue me a citation for whatever she seems to have thought I did to her, but that he would have to talk to me before he could issue one. Problem is, I wouldn’t have any idea what to say, because I don’t know what set the poor thing off.
I know this sounds crazy but I’m almost sure she felt you were driving too slow in the left lane for her tastes. I had a man do this to me on the freeway once. He pulled in front of me and slowed down to about 35 mph. Apparently HE was going to show ME what it was like to have to be behind a car going too slowly. And suddenly the freeway around me was empty. I just tried not to react. Nothing else to be done.
Those type A personalities can be absolutely frightening when they are thwarted.