Stormers of Slogsmab Chore Wars Party Community

So Julia has been extremely gracious and agreed to migrate over to Dreamwidth: http://slogsmab.dreamwidth.org/

Any of you guys who are interested in joining, either to read or to post, just email me and I'll give you a Dreamwidth invite code. Other than that, I intend to keep this community friended on my LJ friend list, but unless the Dreamwidth thing doesn't work out, I probably won't be posting here. This group has been seriously useful and awesome, but the loud video ads on LJ finally drove me round the bend. Thanks for making the move, Julia! I hope that anyone else who's interested in reading or logging their days doesn't find it too much of a hassle to change platforms. Catch y'all on the flip side!

Yesterday:

* Got groceries.
* Made breakfast.
* Transcribed two audio files, about 50 minutes total.

That's it! Another lovely long weekend day at home with K. We needed it.

If Julia can post to Slogsmab considering everything she's been going through, I sure as hell oughtta be able to. I've been logging all my work on ididwork.com, but I think these daily wrap-up posts are really useful for keeping me focused on what I have and haven't done, so I'm going to try to get back in the habit of making them (and not leaving them for a week and then doing seven at a stretch; that's just silly.)

Yesterday:

* Sent off the South Pacific script (which I started prepping the previous afternoon) at 3:00am, then went to bed.
* Went out and got breakfast groceries.
* Made breakfast for me and K. (boiled eggs, toast, and tater tots)
* Took the train down to 110th street, then rode my scootypuff across the park to catsit our friend's cat.
* Picked up some drugstore supplies and deposited my check on the way.
* Went down to my first ASL class at the Sign Language Center. Discovered that a client and Twitter friend of mine was in the same class! Promised that I wasn't stalking him. It looks like it's gonna be a really great class, though. The teacher is fantastic.
* Rode my scootypuff back to the West Side.
* Came home and consulted with K. about the redesign she did for my website. It looks kickass.
* Emailed the founder of the American Association of Musicians with Hearing Loss about their prospective NYC concert, offering my CART services at a discounted rate (because I really wanna see the concert).
* Emailed my student who said he'd write me a testimonial but has been so far too busy to do so, telling him to take his time on it.
* Emailed the CART provider I'm meeting on Monday to show her how I edit transcripts from my steno machine.

Week of sluggery continues.

* CARTed three classes.

* Went to the Financial District and met all the people at the ophthalmology company for the first time. That was really fun, actually. They're very sweet. They lent me one of those ancient mini-tape players with the foot pedal.

* Edited and sent off six transcripts.

* Transcribed one audio file, 39 minutes total.

* Turned down a CART job because it sounded like a nightmare and I was having a really intense day of work and test-taking the day before. Maybe that makes me stupid, because it would have been a fair amount of money, but I was dreading the very thought of doing it, so eh.

* Got the invitation to send a proposal for a different CART job, which sounds really fun. I've worked for the client twice before and always really enjoy it. So I hope I get it.

* Invoiced for Cabaret prep.

* Posted to the Broadcast Captioners Yahoo Group about editing from my steno machine.

* Won $5 from a $1 scratch-off ticket.

 Yesterday was not as productive as it should have been. Every time I checked my email, it seemed like someone was giving me more work to do. So I started feeling sort of overwhelmed and didn't get down to work as efficiently as I should have. 

* CARTed five classes.

* Did some tech support for K.'s grandma.

* Downloaded the Cabaret Broadway Revival album from Amazon, prepped the script to Cabaret, and sent it off. (I already knew the music pretty much by heart, but I'd lost my copy of the Original Cast album somewhere, so I thought this would be a good excuse to buy it again.)

* Did some work-related emailing, including to the Python tutor guy, who seems funny and awesome.

* Wrote two posts to Depoman. I think this counts as work, since it's networking within the industry, but sometimes it feels like slack. Same with Twitter, though I try hard to keep my Twitter persona boring and professional and germane to deafness/CART/captioning/steno/disability issues. I dunno. I guess if it becomes a problem I'll try to cut down, but I think it helps me establish a presence in a very small and fairly isolated community.

* Got a call from the transcription company. They want me to go pick up a mini-tape recorder, turn it into an mp3, and transcribe it. I said I would. Urgh. Dunno how much I should charge for the process. I tried to tell them how to digitize it, but they were too intimidated.

* Got cat food and other assorted groceries.

It's me, Mirabai! I'm at my new coworking space a block from the university I work at, and it's beautiful here. I've made a rule for myself that I won't open Firefox while I'm here; if I want to slack, I have to do it on my phone or I have to go to McDonald's and pay $3 for it. So while I'm here, it's Chrome-only. To prevent myself from getting distracted, I'm going to keep chevdelachar (slogsmab-only) signed in on Chrome and askeladden (all other LJ stuff) signed in on Firefox. I'm hoping to post updates about the previous day every morning when I get to work, as a sort of checklist to begin the day. So yesterday:

* CARTed five classes.

* Got an email from the disability coordinators at one of the universities I sent my resume to in the summer, saying that he might need CART for two hours on a weekend day this month. Emailed him back saying I'd be delighted. Here's hoping!

*  Prepped a play, sent it off, and invoiced for it.

* Transcribed one audio file, about 10 minutes long, and invoiced for it and the other files I've transcribed for that company in the last two weeks of September.

* Edited one transcript and sent it off.

* Read a few Academy documents but didn't finish the lesson.

* Did some assorted work-related emailing.

Good gentles!  I am back.  Back, back, back!  And much has changed.  I have moved (to a truly awesome place a block and half from my old place.)  My sister has moved in with me.  Everything is hooked up and working.  I had some stuff accepted here http://www.ravennapress.com/alba/ and here http://www.14by14.com/Issue10/inde… The company that I was writing reading comprehension passages for ran out of money so that particular writing job came to an end (not, though, before i had had the chance to write about all of your suggestions!) This brings us to today, in which I:

Wrote:
2639 words on The Great Soul Market Crash

Did:
Helped lead kickoff session for this year's catechumenate at church.  It looks like a really great group of people, from a wide variety of backgrounds - I'm really looking forward to this year.

Heard back from the job:
No.  It was kind of depressing.  I keep getting to the last round of interviews, but never get selected. So I said "Screw this" and am going to:

Start a business:
It will be awesome! It started from my and my sister's need to acquire furniture and various household items, but having no good thrift stores in the DC area.  We scoured Craigslist, and picked up things here and there, but the deficiency stuck with me.  There are a couple of high-end vintage clothing shops, and a number of antique shops, but the good thrift stores are mostly out in the suburbs. 

Then I considered my neighborhood. There are three main demographics.  There are the yuppies moving in; they have money but not so much money they can afford to live in a nicer part of town.  Yuppies love artsy stuff.  There are the middle-class families who have owned their houses for a while and take quite an amount of pride in them and in how unique they are.  There are the lower-income families, some in public housing and some not, who don't really have a source of inexpensive clothing or household furnishings unless they trek across town or out to the suburbs.  So clearly, a well-curated thrift shop is called for. I know just the location, too.  It's next to two coffee shops, a yoga studio, a liquor store, and a convenience mart.  

However, bricks-and-mortar is really expensive.  I thought about trying to start online, but I think that would be quite difficult to make money on unless I'm selling antiques and collectibles, which is not what I'm interested in learning about or doing.  I'm more interested in "cool stuff", refurbished or repurposed items. So instead I think I will start here: http://www.easternmarket.net/.&nbs… The flea market runs every saturday, and there are similar booths there, but none doing exactly what I propose for Etcetera Etcetera. (That's the name of my store-to-be.)

I won't do consignment at the market.  Instead, I will sell small furniture and household items that have particular artistic interest.  I'll sell books, clothes, kitchen gadgets, coffee tables, bar stools.  Where will I get the inventory? Consider DC.  What's the average time people stay here, three years?  There are moving sales practically every weekend, where you can pick things up for ridiculously cheap because people just want them out of their hair before they get posted to Sri Lanka or Paraguay. I will pick things up, take them home, fix them up, improve on ones that need improving on (more ideas to follow) and then resell them.  Also, Anna is working on getting a connection with her hat-weaving women in Ecuador, because their creations would certainly sell here.  That wouldn't be something for us to make money off of, but it would be a great side-line.

Anyway, tomorrow's plans: Draw up a business plan, ideally for starting the Sunday after next or possibly three Sundays from now.  If I can make enough to make rent every month, I'll be quite satisfied; if it turns out to be a success I'll try to go bricks-and-mortar.  Man, I don't know why I didn't think of this before!  Maybe an office job was like braces - I had to have them to realize I didn't need to have them in the first place. (But the savings cushion was very nice, I'll give it that.)

Friday:

* Met a woman who found me online. She goes to my steno school and has almost passed her last test. She's interested in becoming a CART provider. She bought me lunch and I talked for ages about all the stuff I like going on about, showed her my gear, and said that while I was very happy to answer any questions she might have on an ongoing basis, I wasn't really interested in training anyone, since I was a lone wolf free agent type chick. But I told her about the woman who mentored me, who I think is interested in establishing a long-term business situation with newbie CART providers, so I hope that works out.

* Took some of the minutes I wouldn't be using now that my mom's in the city for the next month or so off my phone, and signed up for tethering. Though, as I found out today, apparently my phone has some kind of problem where it won't work. I'll keep trying various solutions, but according to what I've Googled, it doesn't look all that promising.

* Got groceries, went home, edited transcripts, helped cook dinner, watched TV with K. (Yay, The Office is back!), and stayed up until way too late prepping a really play script that was due the next morning.

Saturday:

* Went to the Farmer's Market and brought my mom lots of lovely stuff for a salad, including purple basil, plus fig rugelach. Hung out with her for a little while.

* Went back to the Farmer's Market and also the Lincoln Center Gourmet Garage (which is new and has a much more sanity-friendly layout than the other two) and got us some good stuff for dinner, then went home and cooked it and had a lovely mellow evening with K.

Sunday:

* Did four loads of laundry.

* Had brunch with K. and K.'s mom at the latter's apartment. Was gonna drop by and pick up my mom so she should come with us, but she was still jetlagged.

* Came home briefly, then went out to Steeleye Span concert! Yay! Pluses: The band was great! Our tablemate was an elderly woman with a long gray ponytail who never once said anything to us or even looked at us and just bopped along to the band while knitting. Much, much better than the first table the waitress led us to, which was full of four random middle aged people in the middle of the room and completely cramped and claustrophobic. Also, I had a steak with a side salad and K. had a big salad topped with steak, and we both enjoyed our food greatly. Minuses: The reason our table was empty except for the charming old lady was because our line of sight was blocked by a big pillar, so we basically had to watch the band from the TV screens instead of seeing them directly. Also, about 20 minutes before the end of the show a big cockroach crawled out on our table and K. got pretty freaked out. I tried to get it but it scuttled away before I could. It did not make a reappearance, thankfully.

Today:

* Transcribed two audio files, about an hour all together. Had to go to McDonald's to send the first one off. Sent the second one off when I got home.

* CARTed five classes and edited/sent off the transcripts for four of them.

* Wrestled with my phone and the tethering thing. Grr.

* Called my mom and dad and K.

* Sent off the easy invoice but not the hard important one that's for lots of money and that will take forever but that I've seriously got to get to right away argh. But on the plus side, my checks seem finally to be coming in. Deposited one for $200 yesterday and got another one for $200 today. Yay!

* Filled up the cat fountain.

I have conquered the Closetpocalypse of Doom! And also cleaned up the living room, which has been hideously messy and depressing for weeks. It feels so good! I haven't been posting here because I feel like my life has gotten kind of monotonous since I went back to CARTing. I just do classes, edit transcripts, go home and sleep. Rinse, repeat. But today was good. I took down the giant bag of pillows to K.'s mom and returned with a gift of two big plastic bins (she's so sweet), which I filled with random detritus and out of season clothes. The other two giant bags that had been filling up my closet were full of clothes to give away and spare bedsheets. I crammed most of the bedsheets in our foot locker and put the rest of the bags in the corner of the living room, where we'll deal with them eventually. But now my closet has space for a small plastic bag of clean clothes, my giant sea bag full of dirty clothes, my backpack, and my newly regained sanity. It feels so good being able to open my closet and even -- gasp -- take something out of it without the entire thing collapsing and requiring a 15-minute stacking and shoving operation to get the door to close. The living room looks vastly better too, and I even cleaned off my desk. Woo!

Today was a good day.

* Woke up early to tell the firm I work with that the student canceled the class. They wrote back saying that they hadn't heard it from the Disability Office, so I should go in anyway. Had to leave right then, so didn't get a shower. Made it in time and sat on my ass for the duration, of course, because the student didn't show up. Like he'd told me he wouldn't.

* CARTed his one remaining Friday class. Difficult terminology (it's on the History of Islam, so there are a lot of Arabic words), but the professor speaks really slowly, so I did pretty well.

* Met K. for lunch and then walked through the park, took the train up to her friend's house in Spanish Harlem, fed and watered her friend's cats and plants and hung out there for a little bit, then walked in the park a bit more while K. took pictures.

* Got groceries, including delicious hard Irish cider.

* Took the garbage down.

* Helped K. make dinner (heated up spinach-mozzarella stromboli I got from the Farmer's Market yesterday, then made a big tomato, cucumber, olive, and feta salad with K.'s mindblowingly delicious salad dressing.)

* Played a game of Grave Robbers from Outer Space and got creamed. Really fun, though.

* Did a couple work emails and added a bunch of work-relevant people to my Twitter stream. Ho-hum.