Compass & Quill

It’s 8:43 am on December 19th, and I’ve been awake for a whopping 40 minutes! That’s only impressive if you know me, of course, and know that I do not under any circumstances like to peek my addled brain out of bed before around 9:30 in the morning. It’s bad for your health, or something like that.

Anyway, this morning I awoke first to a phone call from a debt collection agency, looking for my phone number’s old owner, Charlotte Williams. (Charlotte, if for some really odd coincidence you happen to be one of the ten or so people who read my blog, please pay your bills!) It’s better now than it was a few months ago, when I first got the number. At first I was getting around 8 calls a day – the newspaper, the phone company, several debt collection agencies, all looking for Charlotte to pay up. Now it’s just two debt collection agencies. One is an automated message that won’t let me speak to a real person without entering an account number (which of course I don’t know). The other is a real person, but every time I explain that I’m not, in fact, Charlotte Williams from Tampa, Florida, they laugh politely, agree to take me off of the call list, then call back the next day. It would be much more helpful if I were a guy so it would be obvious that there’s no way I’m Charlotte.

Meh, but anyway, that call came in around 7am, and though I struggled mightily to pass back out, at 8am I got a call from a local number that turned out to be a prospective client. That was a very funny phone call – she was cheerful and awake, and very commanding on the phone, whereas I was mostly just confused and a little sad that it was now definite that I had to get out of bed. At least I might have gotten some new business – we’ll see!

Speaking of new business, I’m in the process of starting up a new personal site on Tumblr, just for business purposes. I prefer WordPress, and might end up coming back over here, but for now I’m testing out the waters. It’s easier to use WordPress, but Tumblr’s designs are so much more attractive. I’m not a web designer, so for now I need to just go with what I can get out of the box, then get someone to redesign my page for me once I’ve built up a little savings. Hoping that I’ll have the site up and ready to go by the end of the month, but we’ll see. I’ll let you know more when I do 🙂

OK, time to get back to baking cookies. I’m making these amazing triple chocolate chip cookies for part of my Secret Santa gift. The other part of the gift will remain nameless until later – but I’ll post pics, I promise! Let’s just say it’s wacky, but really cute, and it even lights up! I made it out of a cardboard box, and spent about $10 total on it (though that doesn’t count getting the box for free, using an old can of spray paint, and having my boss graciously allow me to use the work printer to print out huge pictures on really nice cardstock.

Let’s pretend I’m giving you a triple chocolate chip cookie, shall we? Happy Holidays! Here, take this delicious cookie! Have a hug, too! Maybe I should wake up earlier in the morning – I’m much nicer, lol!