Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I got a call this afternoon from someone who may be sending me freelance work (editing and/or proofreading). They are looking for one or more people to do anything in the range from 20 hours/month to full-time. Their approach seems congenial: thorough editing and proofing, including checking the art, and enough time to do it in, and she assured me that they cut checks weekly.

The woman said she'd found my name in the EFA directory, and apologized for calling without warning, but said there was no email address on my resume there. That seemed odd, and I was going to check my directory entry when we were done talking, but when I gave her my email address so she could send me relevant information, she said something like "oh, I thought that was a website or something." Oddly, rysmiel and I were discussing old email providers (prompted by their having written to a friend who is still using a hotmail address). I mentioned some site (I don't remember which) whose software rejected both my non-gmail addresses as invalid, but we didn't expect a human being to look at a panix address and think "that's not an email address."

I answered the call because I generally answer unknown-number calls unless T-Mobile identifies them as "Scam Likely" or the claimed originating number shares my cell phone's area code and exchange. One advantage of having made two interstate moves while keeping the same phone number is that the scammers aren't faking calls from 617 or 787; those numbers are usually calls I actually want, like my doctor's office or the person delivering a pizza.

I had physical therapy again today; the therapist asked if I thought the PT was helping my knee, and I told her I don't know. We did most of the things we'd done last week, plus a couple of new exercises; one of the new exercises is now part of my at-home routine, and she told me to come back in two weeks, because by then we'll have a better idea of whether the exercises are working/helping significantly.

I've been getting almost no email in the last day or so. I noticed this first because we ordered a pizza online and I didn't get the promised confirming emails (by downloading to my Mac using the OS X mail program. Then I went to the Panix webmail page, and saw those and half a dozen others.

I just realized that I'd seen nothing recently in my inbox. So I went to mail.panix.com again, and this time there were no unread messages there.

I went to zoneedit, and confirmed that the mail forwarding is set up, and I have the necessary credits there to pay for it for at least another year. I then logged into gmail and sent a test message (using the redbird.org address that forwards to my panix account) and it got there in a couple of minutes.

I suppose it's possible that the couple of mailing lists I'm on are both quiescent (though the amount of traffic on one of them earlier today argues against that); that my friends are otherwise busy; and that the spammers have been eaten by a grue.

If, however, you tried to reach me today and got no answer, it's because I never saw your message. IM, gchat, and the Web seem to be working just fine.

ETA: A batch of email arrived about an hour after I posted this. I remain puzzled.

Hotmail has decided to hold my mail again. If you're writing from a hotmail account, please use vr [at] panix [dot] com.

I know that I'm missing at least some email that I should have received in the last couple of days (I know it exists, because of cc's and the like, but it hasn't reached me). I don't know what the cause of the problem is, although the forwarding from redbird.org to panix appears functional, and I just successfully downloaded a test message I sent from gmail to the redbird address.

If you've sent me something that's gone unanswered in the last few days, please try again. (I realize that posting here won't reach anyone, but it seems better than nothing.) I would suggest phoning, except we're waiting for a repair person for the landline and my mobile reception is sad. I'll try to remember to check gmail for the time being (my username there is v [dot] rosenzweig).

[I'm also going to try actually looking at this entry for comments, rather than assuming they'll be emailed to me.]