Deborah Woehr

It felt strange walking out the door of my employer for the last time this afternoon. My employment ended on a good note, which still continues to surprise me because my boss and I had a pretty strained relationship. Actually, she has a strained relationship with everyone in that company, so I shouldn’t feel so special.

She’s down in LA right now but called to wish me well and thank me for all of my help. I feel satisfied and relieved. I won’t have to drive that highway during the rainy season, deal with prospective employees who bug me for a job and then refuse to work once they get the job, etc.

I pulled into my driveway, grateful that my car didn’t break on the way home. I’m back from a friend’s wedding, getting ready to go back out for Starbucks so I can stay up late while the contractors work on our house’s duct work. It’s going to be a late night, which I look forward to, because I need to finish Chapter 9 of Prosperity.

I sent out an email several weeks ago for an invite for a blog on the WordPress.com blog. Then I forgot about it. Yesterday (or the day before), I received the invite and now have my new blog set up. It’s called Deborah’s Blog. Original, huh?

I started poking around in there tonight and noticed that I have one invite to send to whoever wants to set up a WordPress blog. So, if you’re interested, send me your email.

Oh, one thing: you can’t upload themes or customize any but the Kubric theme. The gradient feature on the Kubric is cool.

Yesterday, my oldest son celebrated his 12th birthday. Our family came over for the traditional cake and presents. My brother and his wife were the last to arrive. After I gave her the grand tour (She had never been to my new house.), I led them outside, onto the patio.

We were talking when the subject of babies came up. I think it was when she saw my 3 year-old nephews playing inside. She started nitpicking my brother about having kids, but he doesn’t want any for reasons I won’t discuss here. I refused to take sides.

Then she asked me how old my son is.

“Twelve,” I replied.
“Wow!,” she said.
“I know. It won’t be long before he graduates high school.”

Then I looked at my youngest son and thought, He’s not too far behind.

I’m just about finished with the rough draft of Chapter 9. I’ll be working on it some more tonight and would love to hear your input.

Prosperity’s blog has a new look. After a few tweaks here and there, I got the cemetery pic to work the way I wanted it to. Now, I just need to experiment with the sidebar and background colors.

Originally, it had way too much grey. So I gave its double-background a black and midnight blue treatment. The sidebars and footer still have the original grey colors, which I may change. For now, I need to finish Chapter Nine.

Yesterday, I set up a section called “What I’m Reading” and decided to upload the cover pic of a book I’d bought on Tuesday. When I rebuilt my index page, I noticed that my blogroll had disappeared.

This isn’t the first time for the disappearing act. It disappeared after I hardcoded a link into my sidebar. Both times, my blogroll reappeared after a couple of hours. At first, I thought this was a Movable Type glitch. Then I saw a post on Melly’s blog, complaining of the same thing.

Is there a server issue with the Blogrolling.com server? I don’t know. Melly tried emailing them three times, without success. She eventually hardcoded her links into her sidebar, and I’m thinking of doing the same due to the eclectic nature of my links.

Monday started off just like any other, but with one thought on my mind: Please let my car get through the next nine days without any major mishaps.

Well . . .

I was driving along, thinking about the things I needed to do that night, when I felt the car jerk. My first thought was a flat tire. California’s freeways are atrocious, to say the least. But then my car started losing power. Fortunately, I didn’t have to fight traffic to move over.

Sitting on the side of the highway, with semis hurtling inches away is not fun. The first thing I did was call my husband to go pick up the kids. Then I got out and walked to the nearest exit, where there was supposed to be a gas station. But of course the gas station was boarded up.

To cut this scene short, I had the car towed to a friend’s garage. My original thought was that my transmission broke. I was able to turn the car on, but it wouldn’t move. When I arrived at his garage and he tried to start the car, it wouldn’t. He’s 99% sure that my fuel pump gave out. That’s a helluva lot cheaper than a new transmission.

The final cap of this glorious day was an abcessed tooth that decided to come alive. This sent me to the dentist on Tuesday. Basically, I have to have a specialist yank out both of my bottom 13-year molars. Not fun and very expensive.

The good news is that my husband just walked in the door and told me that my car is fixed. I’m blessed to have mechanics in my life. Here’s more good news . . . I won’t have to see my boss for the rest of my time at that company.

I apologized to the new secretary for having to endure this woman’s tirade. Apparently, my boss was going off about everybody, including the secretary’s innocent mistake of mailing something instead of sending it via Fed Ex. The good news is that my boss hasn’t chased the new girl off, which was exactly what I was afraid she would do.

This list is a combination of a self-assessment and To-Do list. The reason I’m compiling this list is to determine my marketability as a freelancer and to organize my thoughts. I’ll be updating this list periodically, as I master the skills on the Average and Beginner level lists.

Strongest Skills

Typing: 71 wpm
Word Processing
Data Entry, database management, and information retrieval
Customer Service
Human Resources: Resumes, recruiting, interviewing, background checks, hiring and firing
User Guides & Training Manuals
Business Correspondence
Internet Research
Email Management
Fundraising (I raised $30,000 for my kids’ school in 2000.)
Travel Arrangements
Appointment Setting
Event Planning & Execution
Blogging: Administration and customization with WordPress

Average-Level Skills

MS Word
PDF Conversions
Webmastering: FTP, program installation, webmail, statistics

Beginner-Level Skills

Desktop Publishing
Internet Marketing
Direct Mail Advertising
Search Engine Optimization
HTML
CSS
Excel
Power Point
Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
Movable Type

Tomorrow marks the ten-day countdown to when I get to leave my job. I’m still very excited about that, although my husband wants me to find another job. I’d like to find another job, one closer to home. I’ve looked on Craigslist.org and found some part-time admin jobs similar to what I’ve been doing. The problem is the hours and my kids’ school schedules.

I’ve decided to take a month off to learn some new skills and brush up on some old ones. Ideally, I’d like to find an evening job but I can’t see myself working in retail or flipping burgers. I’ve been wanting to work from home for the past three or four years but haven’t been able to find anything that a) wasn’t a scam, or b) didn’t cost a lot of money to start.

While I was surfing Craig’s List, I found some people who are virtual assistants. I looked at their profiles and realized that I could do this. With 20 years of admin experience under my belt, doing the job would not be a problem. Gaining the client base will be a challenge, as is the case with any business.

I spent most of yesterday perusing the Virtual Assistant (VA) associations (where I found some great articles on the future of admins) and individual websites to get a feel for what is required. The certification programs are expensive (ranging from $500-$2,000). The training at AssistU sounds excellent, but my husband would never approve of the expense, especially since he’s looking forward to buying a new car.

This forced me to look further. I found this book called “The 2-Minute Commute,” which was written for Virtual Assistants. One reviewer commented that freelance writers could also benefit from the information in this book. I snagged a copy immediately.

I never did find those snapshots I was looking for, but I did find a cool shot of a cemetery sitting in my stock photo program. The only problem is that it’s square instead of rectangular.

I’ll have to tweak it and hope that the image doesn’t get too distorted. If it does, then I’ll either have to search a little harder for those photographs or tweak the blog design.