Favorite co-worker (now an ex co-worker) emailed me this morning saying I had to call him immediately about a feature in MS Office 2007, so of course I did. I will never pass up an opportunity to talk about geeky stuff.

Turns out that Excel has some awfully cool new features that would have been GREAT to have on projects we used to work on together, so we reminisced about how AWESOME our reports would have been.

I snapped him out of his remorse by saying, "But the cool thing is that you have it NOW and you still get to make reports!".

See? There's always a bright side.

So, client number 2 has someone on their team very much like the Grinch. His attitude was evident from the start, but I did my best to ignore it because that's what I do with those kinds of people.

Anyhoo.... one of the messages Grinch 2 wanted me to incorporate into the course was the idea that change is good, embrace it and love it.

The course I created has lots of creative ways to keep a user engaged. For example, instead of the tired old multiple choice questions where you have a one in four chance of getting it right, my quizzes include things like wheel of fortune, fill in the blank, arrange things in sequence, etc.

Grinch 2's job was to be the content subject matter expert. Instead, he looked at my course and whined to the training director (cc'd me) that my quizzes weren't in multiple choice format. He wanted my quizzes to be multiple choice like all their other training pieces.

Dude! What about embrace change?

I nicely wrote back (cc'ing the training director), thanking him for his feedback and that I'd be more than happy to change the format if that's what the director of training wanted. And then I wrote,

While we’re circling back, I wanted to make sure that someone was looking at the actual content of the course. It was the attached Word document and needs SME review. I’m assuming [Grinch 2] is one of the SMEs.

The training director simply wrote back, "That would be correct. [Grinch 2] would be reviewing for content correctness as it related to the new policy.

Ha! Take THAT Grinch 2!

He's not going to be a regular customer of mine if I continue on with that client as a customer- so I'm not worried about running into him on a regular basis.

The course is called "Change management". Ha! Now THAT's irony.

There, I've put it out there for the whole world to see.

I turned in the project for client number 2 last night at 11:30 pm. I told them I'd have it done by Friday, but had a personal goal to have it done Wednesday. I made it!

This project, though scary to me at first, turned out really great. I sent the bill this morning and was asked if I was charging enough. Trust me, my peeps, I'm charging enough. I just happen to work fast and have a good eye for how things should be laid out when I'm designing. It’s a win-win situation. I feel good about the money I’m making and the client feels like they’re getting an excellent deal. Even better? I *love* what I’m doing!

This morning, BJ's cell phone was ringing. I told him that it was from my client, telling him what an awesome wife he has. Yeah, I really did say that!

Client number 1 has asked me if I'll do some live videocasts 20 hours a week in August and September. What? Are you kidding me? That would be a blast! In the meantime, I'll be working as many hours as I can to get 20 course hours of web-based training designed. That's a lot of stuff.

I think client number 2 will be hiring me for more projects. No, I know it. <- that there is the power of positive thinking. Thanks Dr. Peale!

I know for certain that client number 1 will be contracting with me for the foreseeable future. Will I have time for a client number 3? You bet. I'll MAKE time.

Let's go in the way back machine to last November, shall we? Specifically 11/20/08, when I wrote about the oven repair guy. My oven had been out of commission for approximately three months before he was able to "fix" it. By fixing, I mean replacing every dadgum part of the stove, proclaiming it fixed, and walking away with almost 2,000.00

Since it wasn't fixed until after Christmas, I had no real use for the oven so never turned it on until May 15th of this year. I was going to bake some fish. Turns out that I should have not listened to repair guy number 1 when he said "these ovens take a long time to heat up. Trust me, it works."

It did work, long enough for me to show BJ that night. It heated up and everything. But on 5/15/09, it didn't work.

We were so fed up with repair guy number 1, that we called in a new company. Turns out that the relay board that guy number 1 replaced was shorted out because he forgot to ground it.

Hmmmm... why am I not surprised?

$897.00 later, the relay board is replaced. Repair guy number 2 proclaims it fixed after turning on the oven and we live happily ever after.

SCREEEEEECHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..

Not so fast. The next morning I heard an alarm going off in my kitchen at about 5am. It had a code "F4". I hit cancel and went back to bed, not thinking much of it.

Yesterday, I decided to bake some spinach stuffed pork. I got the ol' "F4" code again and a dead oven.

Tell me, is it my destiny to never bake again? Seriously, we've spent almost 3k to fix a 5k oven.

And yes... I've called repair guy number 2. Their work is warrantied for 30 days. He'd better get out here toot sweet.

I have this picture on my computer's desktop. I must have seen it 100 times, but it never gets old to me. It makes me smile, pause and acknowledge all the little things that make me happy and how life is about living in the moment.

Einstein is extremely happy when he's splashing around in the stream at the park. And then? He's extremely happy to go for a walk. It doesn't matter what we do- he's just overjoyed to be doing it.