(no subject)

Wedding was lovely. Bride and groom both radiant and gorgeous. Excellent cake. Good company. Spent a lot of time speaking to sbp, who I had not met before. And met someone who plays the French horn but does not have a livejournal, and we did not get to exchanging numbers and so on. He lives in Cambridge though. Met various other people who were there.

Corset I made did not fall apart. People liked it. Hair stayed on head, where it was meant to. Skirt was okay but got a bit foldy and ruckled when I sat down in it; by the end of hte day it was pretty tired. There are some pictures but they are mostly pretty blurry; the camera wiggles or something, dunno. Other people took pictures too so I suppose I shall have some, sooner or later. Also Ic an't be bothered right now to put them up anywhere.

Saw leunammi's flat in Archway.

Am now stupidly sleepy, so going to sleep.

(no subject)

Another highlight of yesterday was being told that I looked familiar, that I had been sighted wearing what I was wearing then, and replying that no, I had not, because I only finished making it the night before.

I guess I need to be a little more original in my designs.

( picture behind the cut )

More pictures later if people who took them send them to me.

I have to go to work now.... the tyrrany of having to get dressed on a Sunday morning! The unfairness of it all! I'll get paid for the time, though, and it should only be an hour or two, so shoudln't complain really.

I suppose I should go and find some clean laundry, and get my butt in gear and out to work. Grah. Blah. Blonk.

(no subject)

Need advice from geekpeople out there, particularly anyone doing webby stuff in the UK.

Yakar, where I do office work and web 'design' (read: I try to design a site, my immediate superior tells me to do things with it that actually look REALLY bad, and doesn't give me a chance to implement them in a way that does not suck), is selling the building it uses. The synagogue bit will go and find some other premises to use; the classes will get farmed out to other institutions. A lot more stuff is going to go online. My immediate superior will almost definitely not be staying on.

I need to think about the possibility of continuing to do website stuff for Yakar, without my boss being around. In many ways I would like to do it just to keep my 'foot in the door', so to speak, in the community. It will also be useful to have a job that I can do pretty much completely remotely; I am going to uni in September 2004 and it would be good to have some income that is not going to be dependent on me travelling up to Hendon (teaching is going to get tougher). I certainly will NOT be doing it for the measly £6/hour that I am currently paid. I'm no longer willing to do much of anything for that little. I'm thinking somewhere in the neighbourhood of £10 would be better.

If I do this I would like to have some sort of contract where I am on a fairly fixed income. If I know how much I am earning per week it will be a bit easier for me to budget. Something where I am paid a certain amount per week up to a certain number of hours and then get paid more than that if I end up doing more, would be ideal. I'm willing to regularly spend 5 or 10 hours a week on it; more if necessary, and if more is necessary regularly then at the end of September this could happen.

In the office I do some website stuff but mostly other things - making posters, adverts, phoning people, maintaining the database, making the tea, doing the photocopying, attempting to do filing (insert rant about my boss' filing system here), e-mail... you name it, I've done some of it. When my boss goes away I fill in and do her job as well, which is essentially more of the same. I do not want to do these things in future if I keep working for Yakar; I do not particularly enjoy the organisational side of things. If I continue, I would essentially like to only get involved on the publishing side, whether that is making posters and adverts or doing web stuff I'm not particularly bothered, but I don't want ot have to organise the actual events and classes. Someone Else can do all that crap.

At the moment the website is a bit of a mess because it is ages since I was allowed to spend more than about an hour a week on it, mostly changing and updating individual pages. I don't know Mason or any of those other fancy things, I abhor frames. If the website needs to become more complex, I will need to either learn some stuff, or give in to frames. Changing 'the bit at the bottom' on several hundred pages (there is a Parsha and a Weekly Thought, every week, and they get their own page...), or indeed 'the bit at the side' individually in each file is not something I wish to do, and not something that I consider to be efficient. My skills are not what they could be but I am willing to learn if it will be worth my while. I kindof like doing webby stuffs.

Questions time:

1. How much time, on a weekly or monthly basis, should I expect to spend running a fairly small website with regular changes on it?


2. How much lead time do I need to ask for to ensure that changes are made when wanted? I can't just drop everything to update the website, it will have to go into a queue. A week? A month for really big stuff?


3. How much should I charge per hour? Should I have a fixed weekly contract after which I get overtime? Help!


4. How should I word my contract (I am not doign this without a contract document of some sort, and I'm pretty sure if I want one I have to write it) to make it clear that organising the actual events is SEP? I really don't enjoy that part of my job now and I do not wish to continue doing it.


5. How hard is it to learn Mason, or other tools for making websites easier to maintain without using evil frames? What other tools are out there? What else do I need to learn?

Bear in mind that the rest of the people who work here have even less clue than I do, and if I leave it to them to decide, I'll probably end up getting done (it's a registered charity, folks). I am willing to make some concessions to them as a charity, but I am NOT a charity, and I do not want to do this if it is going to be more hassle than it is worth. So far most of the hassle I have had in this job has been to do with working with my immediate superior, who has different priorities for my time (why should I do my work when I can do hers?), and different standards, and has been generally disinterested in the website stuff. I don't know what it will be like to work directly with the Rabbi, or whether I will have to do so (someone else may be doing the organisation bit - I don't know who).

Whatever happens, the transitional period is going to be a bit of a mess. We've got a diary of events and stuff pretty much sorted for the autumn and now we don't know whether we're going to do any of it, or where it will be done if we do it! Argh! It is likely we will not have much of a physical office at all.

Day of Faff

Much messing about today. I got some shopping done and have made some food for later in the week - I didn't make my sandwich for tomorrow yet (yuck, I am actually going to eat sandwiches... but at least they will only have ewtfood in them), but I have little fruit and yoghurt pots, and burritos, and mixed bean salad, and lots of other stuff, all ready for me to grab when I want it. Go me.

Of course, now the kitchen needs more cleaning.

I failed to get any laundry done, which is annoying because a) my room is awash in laundry at the moment and b) I need to have clean clothes to wear to work this week. I will try to put a load in this evening and then hopefully the weather will hold and I can have clean and dry clothes before Tuesday. I think I can get through tomorrow on what I have left, clothing-wise. In this warmer weather I sweat a lot and this makes my clothes get stinky and yuck faster.

Tomorrow is the day I phone a bunch of people about rooms in this house again. I haven't had any response from this week's ads, which is slightly worrying, but I suppose it is only Sunday yet. Grah.

Need to have a bonfire (landlord says it is safe to have it in a big pile on the cement by the garage, so it is just a matter of waiting for an absolutely windless day that is not too hot to stay outside in) and mow the lawn again. The parsnips seem to still be alive. The honeysuckle has had it. The rose that got moved might make it but probably not.

My computer makes funny noises. I suspect it wants rebooting, being a windoze box that has been up for 18 days now.

Don't wanna clean up. Wanna make pretty things.

Feeling a bit torn - there is a bar mitzvah next weekend that I really ought to go to, and some other stuff going on, but also I have not seen shevek since 22nd June and I MISS HIM, so I want to go to Bath. I may very well end up making my apologies and missing the bar mitzvah. After that there are fencing camps and scout camps and all sorts of things that will be keeping him quite busy, so I won't see him for a while. On the other hand, this weekend he will just be working on his thesis or sleeping. Not the best conditions for a catch-up, and I don't want him to feel pressured into spending time with me when really he needs to rest. I could feed him though.

Working on mealplans again, in my head - I want to have at least 11 or 12 weekly meal plans (3 for each season), preferably closer to 16 or 20 so I don't get bored. I also want mealplans that I can use when I go to Bath for the weekend, so I can shop on Thursday night on the way back from the station without having to go home first to check what is there and etc, and only buy what will be used over the weekend. These will probably consist of lots of basic stuff that is fairly stand-alone in terms of what can be done with it, and then if I am going to have people over for dinner or something (something I quite enjoy doing when I go to Bath and do fairly often) I can plan that separately and add those things, or buy them on Friday morning or something. I'd also like a mealplan or two to use for weekends away when I won't really have cooking facilities but do not wish to eat out, for health/financial/kashrut reasons. Oatcakes, anyone? I'm not trying to kill all creativity in my cooking, I just really need to plan my shopping on a weekly basis or I end up wasting too much money and food, or eating things that are not actually good sustenance for an ewt. Or when I want to go and stay with friends and have no idea what suitable food they will have and find it easier to take some of my own than to try to explain my requirements. My goal for now is to spend no more than £20/week on food. If I manage that well then I might try to go for £10. Should be do-able; would be easy if I lived on Pot Noodle, or rice and lentils, or pasta, but I don't want to do that. My brane does not like it.

Now I get to eat weird bean soupy stew thing I made earlier. It is yum. ksta would not like it, though.

All this wedding stuff is making me have lots of ideas for things I want to do at my own. I'm thinking goffic engagement party, Jewish wedding. Although, some of the Chasidic Jews might get along quite well with some of the goffs... they both dress in strange historical black clothing, have funky hair/wigs/hats, claim not to be goths, listen to strange music, dance a lot, keep to themselves...

(no subject)

ME I AM COOL

ME I AM THE L33T LANDLADY H4X0R

ME I HAVE FOUND SOMEONE FOR THE FRONT ROOM.

reddragdiva, this means you really really need to get your mattress moved pronto, as the next room will be the back one.