Daily Report: Call It What You Want

I've got another new internet project going on, and this time I've got a partner. He has his own name for the project, but I'm calling it The Bubba Gump Project, after the scene in the movie Forrest Gump where Forrest and Lieutenant Dan get caught out at sea in a hurricane and thus miraculously miss the destruction of the entire Gulf Coast shrimping industry back on shore, which leaves them alone to catch all the shrimp and reap untold riches. No, of course you don't understand the relevance: That's the point. Other than my name for it and the fact that I'm doing it with a partner that's all I can tell you; the rest is a secret. I put in a few hours on it yesterday as we get it up and rolling. Within a month, we'll know if we've struck gold, tin, or "out".

Also, I'm getting set up with my first Virtual Assistant client. We'll be starting work together next Monday: 10 hours a week doing proofing and editing of copy written by Filipino writers. It's a bit funny: I haven't advertised the Jilw.US site anywhere, but somebody has been going around putting up links to the site which actually wound up giving it a page ranking.

Thanks. Unfortunately those links don't help my business much: I have a second Virtual Assistant site using my real name (the name that I don't go splashing around on the internet for obvious reasons; the one on my passport, et cetera) that I won't link to on this blog. That is the website that I'm advertising, linking to on the Virtual Assistant forums and other places where V.A's advertise, putting on my business card, et cetera: those Jilw.US links are only linking to the site targeted solely at my blog readers. No offense, but I need to keep some of you people separate from my "official life"... my "professional life"; something I've been doing ever since I first logged on the internet.

Yes, dear readers: "Jil Wrinkle" is merely a nom de plume. (Epril is really Epril, but the "Wrinkle" part doesn't show up on paper anywhere.) I was born with the last name Wrinkle, but legally changed that name 14 years ago to the family name my grandfather (father's father) was born with. Hence the initials: J.I.L., which was also my internet moniker for years — going back even before the official name change — all the way to the old university computer bulletin boards in 1992. I stuck the "Wrinkle" back on when "J.I.L." (the initials) turned into "Jil" (the name) while I was in Thailand and I needed a last name. (I spent a lot of time on the various Pattaya community websites as J.I.L. before moving there, chatting with residents and gathering information. When I arrived in Pattaya — the first time my "real life" and "cyber life" had ever intersected — everybody I had met online just kept calling me "Jil" and the name stuck.)

So in truth I guess I should say "Jil" started off as just a nom de plume: But now everybody calls me by that name, even my family, and that's how I introduce myself at parties. But for employment and taxes, official documents, bank accounts, the people I work with (or might work with), I use the legal, "secret" J.I.L. name.

(... and now you know the rest of the story.)

Mom has continued buying stuff for Epril and my new apartment. Yesterday she even showed up with a medicine cabinet: Aspirin and other pain relievers, allergy medicine, antacids, lotions, et cetera. Mom says her mother did this for her when she married my father and they got their first place, buying all of the hundred little things that a home needs. She has rented one of those storage rooms in which to keep all these things, and it is really filling up with pots and pans, plates and bowls, forks and knives, glasses and mugs, spatulas and ladles, oven mitts and dish towels, and many other things.

I've sent Epril off on a vacation to Bohol with her friends as a present since I got my tax return. She is going to visit the Chocolate Hills, and she said something about going to see Tyson on the island, but I think I misheard. She and her two friends (the Demon Girls) are trying to hunt down the fourth member of their Demon Girl circle of friends from high school whom they haven't heard from since, who moved to Bohol shortly after graduation.

The Cul-de-sac I live on is almost empty now: the Florida high season is finished. Soon it will be just me and Jim across the street, while the other 6 houses sit empty until next fall. Uncle Bob will still be just across the back yard though, and Aunt Alice up the road about half a mile.