Quite a few things happened yesterday. I was actually planning to discuss the question of outcasts here, with reference to circus people in particular, because I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations about that lately and wanted to know what you guys thought. However, events took place.

First, I had a call from the competitor of the store I worked for until recently. He asked if I would be willing to work for him.

“You’re fully staffed, aren’t you?” I asked in a friendly voice. “And you don’t have a website.”

There was a pause, presumably while he assimilated the idea that I knew these things. He allowed as how you never know what might happen.

I know that he has only one fulltime employee, so I mentioned that. He hemmed and hawed.

“And she’s a single mom, isn’t she?” I persisted.

The Empress arrived at that point, and the dogs went into their Cujo imitations.

I may be maligning the man when I think that he was considering letting his current manager go and hiring me instead, even though she is the sole support of herself and her small daughter, but it did kind of sound that way.

The Empress and I had tea and job hunting chats, and then I closed up a kitchen show and went off to book club, where we had a bit of a convo about circus people and outcasts and kindness and stuff. One of the ladies asked me about doing the website for her branch of University Women, and is planning to bring it up for approval at the next meeting.

I got home, had a nice Sonoma Diet lunch, and checked on the website I am hurriedly chasing up the search engines. It had been lower than page 10 that morning (no point checking beyond that), but had gotten up to page six by lunchtime. I should mention that we specially designed the page to be easy to rank for that keyword; the other keywords were nowhere close. I don’t want you to think I have superpowers or anything. But I have been pouring a lot of time and effort into this project, since I have a tough deadline on it and no budgetary limits from the client.

I did some article posting and directory submitting and so forth, and then went to tutoring and the Wednesday afternoon marathon.

I was unable to persuade my fellow choristers to share my enthusiasm for Jane Marshall. “We didn’t give it a fair trial,” I insisted. “We were just singing random stuff.” I got the piano player to play the first page. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“It would be beautiful if he played ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ with one finger,” The Pilot pointed out. Our pianist is very talented.

When I got home, the sample site appeared at #1. I really get a kick out of that.

I also had a message at the SEO post (you know, the one where they gave me downward pointing thumbs on general principle) asking if I would do some link building for quite a big important site. The guy is going to call me today to discuss it.

I can’t call all these people “the Computer Guy.” But I guess this one might become Client #6.

The site in question has a page strength ranking of 9.5 out of 10, a Google page rank of 7, and thousands upon thousands of links already. I can’t imagine what I could do for them, but of course I will be spending some time figuring that out between now and when he calls. I confess that I feel a little out of my depth. However, if I come up with anything, then they will be an impressive addition to my portfolio.

Dinner was reheated stuff at 9:00, with no vegetables, in front of the computer. I need to get home earlier, or make myself a nice salad before I leave the house, or something.