So, I got more hours at the day job and a raise at the new project support freelance gig! Nice! I’m still an independent contractor at the day job though. No insurance and I have to pay an extra 7.65% of my wages to the government for almost a full year at this job? Not cool!!
Now, after what may be my shortest post here ever, I’m going to go fight more T-Rexaurs at the Training Center.
(Bonus points if you know what I’m talking about.)
We’re having a brunch at the office tomorrow for a coworker’s birthday. Casseroles involving potatoes and sausage and cheese, bagels and cream cheese from Einstein’s, yogurt and fresh fruit … mmm. This should be good.
‘Course then I have to go downtown right after work for the freelance gig, for 2-3 hours. It’s nice to do something different, and it’s good that I’ll earn a little more money. But dang it, I just don’t feel like it! I want to play on Zazzle. 
(Oh well — I’ll be looking at other languages, and that’s always a bit cool. Hopefully it’s still a European language, those I can at least figure out how to pronounce, not that that’s even necessary for the kind of checks I’ll be making.)
And I refilled my Starbucks card, which now has 5 stars on it – so I can add syrup and soy milk to a plain latte for no charge. Woot. 
Happy Memorial Day!
So, the freelance gig appears to be happening pretty much for sure, now. I’m going in tomorrow straight after work for an hour and a half of “training.” I can’t imagine there’s too much to train about – “Ok, so, you want to have these two files open, and basically check that the translator didn’t screw up the numbers or names or stuff that you can figure out, not actually being fluent in one of these languages. ‘K?”
I just edited a file as an assessment of my ‘eye for detail.’ They said to take 25 minutes on it; I was done in 15, and that was with wasting a minute or two laughing (it was one page, and not even remotely solid text), as well as starting to read the Spanish word by word towards the end. Hablo un pocito de español, so I could check the content pretty effectively for missing text in the English (which there was, a good bit – they have to, you know, to see if you’ll catch it).
So that’s that. It’s gonna be boring, I’ll bet. But they’ll pay me, so it’s got that going for it. I can also make a bigger deal at the regular job about not working when I’m not on the clock. Since I stay most afternoons and work on my computer, I’m there, and they’ll ask me to do little things – little nothings, but they distract me from my own stuff that I’m working on and waste more of my time than they should, since they’re not hardly enough to count on my time card. 
If I have a gig elsewhere, it’s “Look, sorry, but I have to leave AT ONE to get to this appointment, and NO, it can’t wait. [You're not paying me? then you don't get my work. That's how it is.]” One can wish.
It has taken awhile, but I think that my contact is finally starting to understand that when I told her my schedule and that I work well south of downtown, it wasn’t for nothing.
She had said that they could work with my schedule and do afternoons, including an afternoon training session soon. I said Thursday or Friday afternoon. She said, ‘hey, how about Wednesday from 10-1?’ (My hours at the day job are 9-1, which information I had given her two emails previously.) I wrote back and explained why that did not work. Somehow she apparently didn’t get (or see) this email. I wrote back with a copy of my previous reply, which she also somehow did not see.
I called, and her response made it sound like she seriously thought I would take a whole day off my regular job (that being 4 hours – except Wednesdays are staff meetings, which in this case made it a 6.5-hour day – yeah, fun meetings) … for three hours at lower pay at their office. I noted (again) that this is not a feasible arrangement.
They seem to want me to do this, though, because now that she has heard it with her ears, they seem willing to put down as available after 3 p.m. – which gives me enough time to get there that I don’t have to take time off. Still, at that point it’s either a measly two hours, or stay till 6 or 7. Seven p.m. is a wee bit late, considering I leave for work at 8:30 a.m. Ten and a half hour days for seven hours’ pay is not terribly enticing (minus a half hours’ pay for the more expensive commute from the Tech Center to CBD). But I may do till six.
We’ll see.
Well, I should be getting a tiny 5-hour freelance project to do over the weekend. That’s not much (which is good and not-so-good), but it’s also not all.
After I first replied about my availability, the company asked if I’m full-time at my day job, because now they have another contractor project they think I’d be good at (I would). Only catch is, this one’s in-office, so I either have to take days off to go there or leave early from Centennial (my day job’s way south of town, the office where I freelance is downtown – it’s a lot nicer when I can work from “home”). It would be going in to the office and helping the project managers to check the first editors’ changes, basically.
They have not been very clear about how often they’d ask me to come in, or even how much time they want me to spend there for training – “we can work with your schedule and do a 1-3 hour afternoon session” – but they don’t say how many of those! even though in the first email they indicated more than one day of training. Really, guys, I have a regular job and I need advance notice if you want me to take time off to come to your office. Don’t you get that?
The general idea, though, sounds like it could work; and the people at work who need to agree, agree. So, I’ll give it a try and keep pushing these folks for actual, concrete, useful details. Seriously, I hope their point person for freelancers doesn’t do any of the editing herself.
