The Glamourous Life of the Work at Home Set

RantWoman is unsure whether her readers will be amused by this account of the glamourous life of the work at home set. Still, it rattling away at the keyboard sounds like more fun than some "shoulds" on RantWoman's mind. More to the point, rriting this blog post is actually going to wind up on the critical path of some things RantWoman needs to get done today. That is one reason RantWoman is even permitting her ever-wandering mind to digress in the directions it wants to digress to.

An especially soggy day in the life of RantWoman.
Wake up the first time. Use the bathroom. Wash the Queen of Spades' water dish and refill. Wash and dry her food dish and deliver her morning half scoop of cat crunchies.

Go back to bed until public radio wakes RantWoman up again. Wake up to sound of Queen of Spades retching. The Queen of Spades gets embarrassed about her digestive distress and RantWoman feels obliged to murmur reassuringly when it happens. RantWoman is also peculiarly grateful when the Queen of Spades at least pukes someplace where RantWoman can easily find and clean up the results.

Use the bathroom again and clean up after the Queen of Spades.

Do RantWoman's morning stretching and strength training routine.

Throw an old denim jumper over RantWoman's sleepwear, slipper socks and indoor sandals on RantWoman's feet. Today's commute is from kitchen to desk so sartorial standards and footwear are fine for now.

Sit down at computer. Computer monitor is ailing so RantWoman's reboot / startup rituals are a dance worthy of another post.

A container of oatmeal from the batch RantWoman cooked a couple days ago from the fridge for breakfast with tea, vitamins.

Start through two streams of email. Delete the obvious spam.

Read a couple items from other people who have experienced in vision loss. Be soothed or something that other people are distressed by the same issues vexing RantWoman. Write Thank you eamil to list for solidarity.

Have a couple rounds of hiss and swat with the Queen of Spades. The Queen of Spades is really good at patrolling from RantWoman's desk for pigeons who DARE to land on her window ledge, but today the Queen of Spades is mainly interested in sleeping next to the warm air stream from the computer fan. This would be fine but she sometimes gets territorial about RantWoman's hands and the keyboard.

Take phone call from Little Sister. Today is one of the mornings when the Rant Sisters can phone fairly freely. Little Sister is being preremptorily fluttered about holidays but for a welcome change made RantWoman laugh hard a couple times.

Go back to email.

Succumb to temptation to try to collaborate with retailer's sweepstake exercise. Find so many reasons to be frustrated that RantWoman opts to stop and blog about it.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/11/wish-this.html

Stop a couple times mid-post for more tea and a trip to the bathroom.

Notice that the Queen of Spades has also puked, more extravagantly than average in a long stream on the bedroom floor. Clean up after the Queen of Spades and mumble soothingly in her direction.

Consider the vet for two pukings in one day. Consider empty wallet. Consider emailing Cat Maniac friend for tips. Cat Maniac friend is another work from home language professional; she took up working from home years ago when severe allergies made it impossible for her to continue her college teaching. RantWoman occasionally consults Cat Maniac friend about extremely technical vocabulary, the kind one needs a PhD in chemical physics for. Cat Maniac friend consults RantWoman about matters of culture or of idiom where studying the language more than the science makes a difference. Cat Maniac friendtypes about a zillion words per minute. She can always drench RantWoman with a firehose of information flow. RantWoman is not up to being drenched at the moment so just keep an eye on the Queen of Spades.

Finish blog post about online retailer and take a break.

Look at clock and realize it's too late for one excursion that was on the maybe list anyway and for a phone call RantWoman owes someone.

Decide to eat lunch chicken rice vegetable soup taken from the freezer a couple days ago.

--Go outside to check weather and garden on balcony. Chives and parsley are raggedy but still growing after cold spell. Spy last cherry tomato still on thicket of tomato plants. RantWoman is absurdly happy that the eight or so tomatoes her plants grew from last year's seeds are eight more than some other friends got in an actual in-ground garden. The last tomato is finally ripe and VERY tasty. RantWoman appreciates the plant life and dirt therapy but is VERY glad not to have to subsist on what she grows.

Realize there are good reasons to forward rant about online retailer to eager you former staffperson at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing who just got a job at the very online retailer RantWoman was blogging about. Compose and send said email.

Digress to the new Bus Chick item in blogroll.
http://www.buschick.com/?p=4420
Busling is a toddler. The item is a picture of, RantWoman thinks, a teenager. RantWoman is missing something.

Read Bus Chick's This I believe Essay! Yeah Bus Chick!
http://thisibelieve.org/essay/13074/

Back to email. Add a networking / disability access Meet and greet on behalf of the Friendly Neighborhood Center... to RantWoman's calendar. Compose email about the think out of the box approach to the requested mentoring option that occurred to RantWoman in connection with the networking opportunity.

Realize there are some other items in the inbox that, as long as RantWoman has her paper calendar out should get added. Bounce to something else before items get looked up.

glance at From and Subject fields from email to bling programmers list. Notice name of young guy who has grown up on the list, from typical teenager programmer to someone who can almost communicate professionally.

Glance at clock. Too late for face time with a couple people at the Friendly Neighborhood Center.

Shower. Upgrade from presentable if someone comes to the door to reasonable for going out in public.

Still to compose:
--responses to outcomes survey for the Friendly Neighborhood Center...

--motherly email to frustrated college student on blind programming list: accessibility is an eco-system. Thanks to representative of major vendor. Work with the humans you have both on campus and with vendors. This is RantWoman's view from long-ago life in academic tech support.

--email to corporate rep from above email. He mentioned doing consultation with a couple international companies and RantWoman wants to see whether there might be a chance he could play a role as blind language professionals try to get the right combination of expertise into an accessibility conversation so that a key product gets and stays accessible across new versions.

--email to person who just got appointed to FCC Diversity panel. Email is about how RantWoman thinks work-at-home phone interpeters such as those RantWoman interacts with on an online discussion list have some of the same consistent telecommunications performance needs on an individual level as RantWoman absorbed from listening to Boeing CIO about corporate level at an FCC hearing awhile ago. Maybe add some other comments about Work at Home and disabled people.

Digress to email from language professionals list. A youtube item RantWoman has viewed previously. Among other topical points, an example of economics of in-person vs remote interpreting. The payment terms in teh video are for expert in-person interpreting; people who interpret over the phone or video relay are usually paid by the minute. That scenario also has specific requirements as far as telecomm infrastructure. Video nicely captioned which is a good thing since it's about a sign-language interpreter.
http://alboum.com/2011/08/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-cancelled-interpreter/

Read the first of an email chain about using iPhones or iPad for accessible voting in Kitsap County. It's a twofer: it mentions both accessibility and language access so RantWoman is going to have to look up how the language access is accomplished.

Work on deciding which of two impossible to get paid for IT research projects RantWoman wants to take on next...