I do seem to spend a lot of time moaning about how I'm just so over it all these days, don't I? Sorry 'bout that. I certainly don't want anyone to get the idea that my life is a wasteland or that I'm drowning in a sea of dark despair* or anything.

Diet, Day Two: So far, so good. 28 hours into the program and I've only cheated twice! *sigh* I'm going to tell myself that a slice of cheddar cheese and six crackers aren't that bad.

Six-Month Frugality Plan: 16 months and going strong. Three more cc payments and I should be essentially debt-free! (Aside from a not-inconsiderable chunk of change I owe the R.C., whose savings we lived on during the Great Unemployment of '07.)

In fact, aside from the midnight patio-party-hearty group living just outside my bedroom window, I don't have any real problems at the moment. (Granted, that may change after my annual physical next Wednesday.)

As we all know, trauma and turmoil make more interesting blog material than peace and prosperity. Sadly, as today's high point so far was the moment when I ate a cracker, I'm trauma-free.

I have to keep my hands off of the 'Nut campaigns for a while. I'm not only caught up, but so up-to-date that I just realized that I've spent a significant amount of time this week trying random weird things just to see what will happen. I should back off, before I actually break something.

Although, of course, the fact that nothing is actually broken hasn't prevented a handful o'Nuts from contacting me this week in a panic over various imagined problems. One person couldn't see their ads at 4:07pm yesterday, when they were ego-surfing. That wasted 90 minutes of my morning today. Another 'Nut screamed that they hadn't had a lead in a week. When I emailed back, pointing out that they've gotten seven in the last four days, they just said, "thanks for checking." I mean, what's that about?

In other sad news, Bernie did not reject my proposal out of hand. In fact, he didn't seem to choke on the number of hours I quoted for the job at all. This worries me. He wrote today to approve the proposal and ask my hourly rate, so I provided it. We'll see if that chases him off.

If it doesn't.... Well, I guess I can tell myself that $600 is $600. And that fixing the unholy mess they've made out of this client's campaign will teach me a lot about Webstrainer.

Gidget wants me to focus on improving the stats on The Gidget Co.'s client accounts. As though that's not what everything I do it designed to do, but one location in particular is complaining. As so often happens, this client, a member of Senior Central, already has the highest-performance campaign of any of his group. Sheesh. Basically, there are no locations among either the Senior Centralites or the Woofmen who are spending as much money as they should be, so I'm going to have to try and figure out how to get around that. And how to drive leads when they're not using any measure that counts leads, so I can't tell what's working, or when.

Anyhow. What I'm saying? This weekend looks like there's going to be a lot of free-lance working and very little playing. Frugal, yes. But not all that fun.

P.S. I'm sitting here, starving of the hunger and wondering if my determination to lose some weight will keep me on the Diet Path until lunch time, when I notice that it's 1:30. Maybe I need a little dinger to keep on my desk, so I'll know when it's time to eat?

____________________

* Paraphrase from, IIRC, Helen's Babies.