Whew! Talk about "just in time" ... I'd had the interview part of this good-to-go by the end of last week, but hadn't finished plowing through the book until last night, and then I had to get a review written and posted and then get the blog thing done with links back to the review. I got it all done, of course, but I sort of let posting a blurb about it in here slide.The book being reviewed here is a scary one ... the author is convinced that "jobs are dead" and that we're all going to be "contracting" for scattered work assignments (but, you read the review already, right?), which sort of sounds to me like some "Mad Max"-like dystopia.
I had a bit of a sampling of this over the past couple of weeks. I'd done a project for an agency, re-writing a chunk of their website copy, and for around 8 hours of work I ended up getting paid only about 1/5 of what I would have, in a "good economy", charged (of course, writing has become so financially debased between the SEO guys who hire foreign folks with marginal grasps of English for fractions of a penny per word, and the "bid for writing gigs" sites where cut-throat competition substantially drives down prices) but was offered a flat rate that was pretty much "the going rate for that sort of thing". Contrast that with tonight, when I was off at an "opinion panel", and for 2 hours of chit-chat, I got paid more than I had for 8 hours of fairly challenging writing. The Harry Chapin lyric came to mind: "Well another man might have been angry / And another man might have been hurt / ... / I stashed the bill in my shirt." Needless to say, I hope that my interview on Thursday goes well, as I'm still in the hunt for a JOB, and this one is a very close fit for my skill sets.
With all the time I've been dedicating to the job search, I've not had much spare to read (or at least not in a way that I'm not asleep within a couple of pages), so I'm in a slight danger of not making my target of 72 books for the year. I read 73 in '06, 79 in '07, 78 in '08, but I'm just up to 70 at the moment. I'm about 1/3rd through another, though, and I'm sure that I'll get at least one more in after this, but it bums me out to be down a half a dozen titles. Of course, if I get this job, the reading thing will be fine, because I'll be having to take the commuter train to the 'burbs!
Oh, by the way ... The Wife faked me out tonight, calling me out of my office to "see something" that The Girls had done (as though they'd flooded a bathroom or something), marching me into the back ... only to point at her computer screen at their mid-term grades ... so far BOTH of them have straight "A"s for the whole year! Smart babies!!!