August 14

The R.C. also got hatemail from the credit card company (I hadn't realized before that we actually have cards issued by the same organization), slashing her credit by 40%! Unlike my letter, hers didn't try to pretend she was a deadbeat (you could eat off her credit report). No, what they told her was that they pulled her credit report and decided she didn't need all the credit they were extending to her. Times is tough, they told her. Not everyone is payin' their bills.You are, though. We hate you for that.

I feel badly for her. It's bad enough for me, someone who has, from time to time, had the odd late or missed payment. But for someone who's never paid a bill late in her life? What a slap in the face.

Because I do have a certain pity for her, I'm going to forego my planned blog entry, which featured large amounts of RC mockery. (Short story even shorter. She borrowed some software from her office. Tuesday evening, she spent an hour and a half with it--reading the installation manual. What kind of gomer reads installation manuals? I mean! 90 minutes! And then she never actually got the product installed!*
There was going to be mockery.)

August 17

I take my eyes off of Gidget for a few days and you know what happens? She breaks a finger (What was a woman with her current health problems doing moving rocks anyhow?), faints from the pain, falls on the rocks, and breaks two ribs. Good grief.

My weekend was uneventful. I took the entire weekend off. I hadn't had a day off in over three weeks, so I felt I was due.

Although. Now I'm feeling guilty because I didn't get the last of Bernie's project finished. I need to do that--I should have had it finished last week. After I get the last bit done, I need to do a write-up for the client explaining my changes. Then I can bill Bernie.

I turned in my expense report for the seminar I charged to it (for work) and when I get that reimbursement, that's going against the card balance. So is Bernie's money. I am so close to being debt-free--the balance on Credit Card Of Doom is under $2k--I can almost smell it.

August 18

Well, I finished Bernie's project and sent him an explanation of what I did. Because I'm a tad compulsive, I've gone back into the campaign a couple of times and made some edits, primarily to ads where the first version wasn't performing well. I figure I'll give him 48 hours to respond to my note. If I don't hear from him, I'm sending the bill.

Last weekend I went mad and spent $30 on a new pair of slacks. Now I'm wishing I'd bought them a size smaller. (I guess that's not a bad problem to have.) They're not unwearably large, but definitely baggy in the backside. I'm back on the diet and with 7 pounds still to go, I figure the problem will only get worse. Next payday, I think I'll treat myself to a new pair, in a smaller size.

I need new shoes. Really. I need these shoes, but I'll probably wind up with these shoes because they're more sensible. These appear to combine comfort with a reasonable heel height but I don't know if I'm ready to have all that ugly hanging off the ends of my ankles. On the other hand, these seem to combine the best of a loafer with the best of a medium-heel pump.

Amazon bought Zappos! That could turn out to be expensive for some of us.

August 19

This is turning into a ridiculously long serial blog entry.

In my final note for the entry, I'm feeling a tad smug. The outside "experts" that TeamChaos hired to run some test campaigns, with the idea that this agency would replace me in the hearts and minds of--well--everyone? Came hat in hand yesterday to beg the favor of my ads.

Turns out the ads written by the in-house experts were failing to perform. (I ask you--who doesn't just try something different?)

There's little that's "secret" or proprietary about what I do, but what there is, is mostly around ads. Ads are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Any dinkhead can handle the bidding and organization part of running a campaign. What separates the pros from the wanna-bes is the ability to write an ad that draws clicks. Takes nerve to ask someone to hand over their ads but more than that, it's an admission of defeat.

Huh. I'm better at this than people give me credit for.

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* Turns out? It's been so many decades long since she actually installed a piece of software that she didn't know that installation wizards are more-or-less standard any more. She was expecting to, you know, have to know things. Software doesn't require you to know anything any more.