I was just about to drop off for the night when I heard a giant thump right behind my head. Which, of course is the outside wall. It sounded like the woodpile had collapsed, but I moved the woodpile out to the lawn to paint two weeks ago.So I got up, threw on my bathrobe and shoes, and grabbed my gun and my flashlight.I started out back, because the dog had let out one bark. He met me at the back door like nothing was wrong, so I thought it might be my next-door neighbor doing something. Sometimes things in his yard sound like they’re in mine. I flashed the light all over the yard and didn’t see anything.I went out front, and his porch light was on and both he and his wife were out on the porch. I asked him if he was doing something to make weird noises, and he said that he’d just seen someone go over my fence, between our houses. I didn’t understand at first which direction he’d meant, because he seemed to be looking up and down the street in front of the houses, so I looked too.

So, since I’m totally the sort of person who gets way ahead of herself, here’s the new site, bugs and all.

Many thanks to Tami and Kelly for the help and advice. I got the archives moved over, but they’re obviously not quite right yet, so please ignore the construction debris!

So. The DJ thing. Yeah, that really, really sucked. Friday night, I went up to the casino with Big Jeff’s other trainee, and got the shortest lesson ever in putting all of the equipment together. I figured that I could handle that part. I was feeling shy about doing the talking bit on command, but I knew I’d be able to do it once I got started. I’m not so big on talking for the sake of talking, see. I like to have something to say before I open my yap. I left around ten and headed down the road to Eric’s.

And I was on my own on Saturday night.

I got up there and puzzled out the rats’ nest of cables all right. I was a little concerned that there seemed to be two extra, but I figured those must be for the karaoke TV, which I wasn’t using (they were.)

I got the software rolling, and it started to hang. And then it got worse. It wouldn’t open at all, it was running late, and I was starting to sweat bullets. I had managers and waitresses all sticking their noses into it. They called up a cook, who’d sometimes filled in for Jeff. He’d never seen it do that before.

I tried repeatedly to call Jeff, who had said that he would be by his phone, but obviously wasn’t. We couldn’t get it working at all, so the cook set me up with the very basic Windows media player.

This meant that I had no playlists to work from. I had to drag and drop new ones, and Jeff doesn’t exactly have the music arranged well. It’s on the laptop hard drive and two external drives. The catch here was that the management didn’t want me to play country music—it’s not really a country sort of place.

But country’s all I know. I didn’t know how to wing it with other stuff—I didn’t know if the lyrics were suitable, or even if the songs were upbeat or slow. I ended up with a lot of classic old bar songs that I could remember, but I sure didn’t have enough for seven hours of play time.

I was really starting to stress. I was near tears, and had it been anyone else, I would have walked right off the job. I had a couple of hours of music, no more. I couldnt take requests because half the time, I couldn’t find what they wanted and the other half of the time, I didn’t know if the song was clean or not.

Finally, Jeff showed up with a replacement laptop at about 10 PM. If he’d showed up by himself, I totally would have walked, but he had his son, some girl, and her son. So he left me with the new computer. It at least had the DJ software working on it, but I couldn’t access one of the drives, so requests were still out for the most part. I was never so glad to see 1 AM approach as last night.

The hours though, they killed me too, and I’m really not fond of driving home with the drunks on that twisty mountain road. Not getting enough sleep on my only weekends that are free to do my backflow tests would ruin my business too.

I think that if I hadn’t had a catastrophic failure, I probably would have stuck with the job a little longer, but it would have been harder to find an excuse to quit. I feel bad enough for letting my friend down, but at least this way, he still has the summer to find someone else to work for him. I’ll still manage it for him, and I’ll run his water business, but this was too much, and I’m clearly not the right person for the job. So, I quit.

If there’s nothing else that I’ve learned in the past week, it’s that I’m not smart enough to do web design. Well, I might be, but with three jobs and two kids, I don’t have the time to mess with it.

So, if any of you have recommendations for web designers that can work with WordPress, please email me. I really, really need one! I’ve got a few quote requests out with people I found online, but they all seem swamped.

Thanks!

Several of my friends have made the papers lately.

I wish I’d gone on that Girls’ Night Out!

And I’d best not mention which friend this is!

•••••

Finally, the house is finished. Well, not the porch, but finished enough.

  

It looks much better, doesn’t it? I’m a little baffled by his choice to use semi gloss on most of the house, but flat white on the metal screen door, which one would sort of expect to be glossy. But I don’t care. It’s painted and I didn’t have to do it.

•••••

Happy Mother’s Day!

•••••

 

 

 

So, three jobs it is, and it starts now, not in the fall when Big Jeff gets deployed.

Why now?

Well, for one, I need time to learn this stuff. And the casino needs time to decide if they’ll like me. But mostly because Jeff double-booked himself with weddings for most of the summer and needs me to fill in behind him.

I went to the yuppie bar for redneck karaoke last night to see how it’s done. He didn’t have time to show me how to set up, but I got to see a little bit of how to operate it. The karaoke nights are the hardest; he’s not planning on making me do those, but I think I can handle the technical side of it.

That yuppie bar probably isn’t going to be in the picture for long anyway. There just aren’t that many people there; the ones interested in redneck karaoke are all down at the regular dive with the cheap beer. The fancy beer just doesn’t really appeal to our crowd.

The owner was picking our brains about it last night. He’s big on the microbrewery thing, since it is a brewpub and all, but expensive microbrews just aren’t what draws rednecks. Now, if he finishes fixing up that mechanical bull and actually does some advertising, he may start bringing them in. He seems to think that they’ll all happily convert over to his fancy beer once they try it. Dude, I’m pretty typical, and I tried it the last time I was there. I couldn’t finish it.

But the beer’s not why that’s not the bar of choice. Sure, they (grudgingly) sell what I do drink and they’ve sniped the best DJ in town, but the beer’s expensive. It’s not just that though. It’s the atmosphere. It’s a really nice place: clean and well-lit and roomy and with good food. But someone like me walks in, sees a bar full of yuppies, and just feels out of place. Maybe if we all descended at once, we’d feel like we belonged there, but the first thing I noticed the last time I went was the lack of cowboy hats. It’s more a place to take a first date for appetizers, or maybe your mom and dad for dinner than a redneck joint. I’m not exactly sure why the owner wants to remarket to rednecks anyway. He might do better just sticking with the 20-something and yuppie crowd; lord knows there are enough of them in this area.

Jeff came clean about why he wanted me to do this. He doesn’t care if I’m charismatic and outgoing; he wants someone he can count on. He told me that besides his mom, I was the only person in the world that he could rely on (and I’m guessing he probably doesn’t want his mom to DJ for him.) He said that he’ll try to find someone else too, so it’s not so hard on my schedule, but that even if I don’t like the DJ part, he’d like me to manage it. I’ll already be taking over the full water business work while he’s gone, but he’d like me to be his proxy on this too. I’ll pick up his mail and deposit his checks and things like that. Oh, and keep his dog, but that’s no big deal. Jeff’s such a busy guy that so far, it will take four of us to keep his life running while he’s gone.

So, this summer’s going to kick my ass. The hours are going to be hell, the driving will suck, especially at two in the morning, and I will have no time for a social life. He said, “Welcome to my world,” and I pointed out that he created this world himself. And I already gave my notice; as soon as he gets back, I quit.

But I will help my friend out. We single people have to stick together.

So, my self-publishing friends, if I were to switch over to maintaining my own domain, do y’all have any recommendations on hosts and publishing software? What about image hosting? It all needs to be fairly user-friendly, since I can barely struggle my way through HTML. I’d like the ability to have multiple posters too, since some girlfriends and I are contemplating starting a group blog.

What have you guys used, and what should I stay away from? What else do I need to know?

This might be my project over the next few weeks.

Thanks!