Alvin and I are still brooding over exactly how to best position our new concept for our product to be most successful. We've spent a lot of time discussing this over the past couple of weeks, as well as how to get the Chipmunk up here and beat on him until he does what we want the way we want.

Okay, that last part isn't true, but we've spent a fair amount of time bemoaning the fact that he seems to be spending about ten minutes a week on business for this company and when he is working, we never know quite what he's doing or to whom he's talking.

Drives me nuts. I'm not a control freak, don't get me wrong, but I feel like I'm floundering around drooling on myself when I realize I'm unable to follow-up on a three week-old conversation that I only heard of five minutes ago and during which I'm entirely uncertain what precisely was discussed or agreed upon, when following up on things and making them happen is what I was supposedly hired to do.

If you're confused after reading that, imagine how I feel.

Also, it looks like Tuffy the Tank overstepped the bounds in her Friday meeting with Alvin and demanded not only that our two companies merge, but that she and her current partner be given 44 percent of the equity and that she be named CEO of the new company.

Based, as I'm guiltily aware, on a lot of my own information on how Tuffy was as a boss in my previous experience with her, Alvin's not really willing to go that route with her.

Which makes me glad because while I don't doubt she has the energy to go out and make the sales to make us successful, I cannot convince myself that the emotional pain and mental exhaustion that come with working with her are worth it.

Buffy! I'm still embarrassed, but I'm completely in love with Spike (in a fannish, but non-writing way) and I rabidly disappointed on Sunday when I watched the eps I'd taped last week and realized that FX is starting their re-runs over at Season Three, which means lag time between Spike episodes because the character apparently wasn't a regular back then.

It's weird, okay? If they've finished the run of shows that they bought the rights to, why start over with Season Three instead of One? Or do they not own the rights to repeat Seasons One and Two?

It's nice to have Giles, though.

On the other hand, I know one of those amazingly gorgeous, talented, and generous fans and she says she's transferred all of her Buffy tapes to DVD, and she's offered to give her old tapes to me, hooray! I should have plenty to feed my obsession in January. Hooray for K!

I want to transfer all of my VCR tapes to DVD, too!

I'd love to be able to capture some of the shows I watch and rewatch, put them on DVD, and save the 200 feet of storage space currently occupied by VCR tapes.

For instance, they're rerunning Sentinel in January. We almost never watch it any more, but occasionally we do and it would be nice to get rid of those lousy-quality VCR tapes we have and have a short stack of tidy, clear DVDs.

However. Taking a quick look at the budget convinces me that I can't have any more high-tech toys for the next three months or so. I just don't have $1000 to invest right now.

Anyhow, I'm all torn on the subject of new toys.

I might want to bail on ATT Broadband and get a satellite dish instead. Maybe I want TIVO, too. And then if I could TIVO and transfer things to DVD instead of VCR tapes, I'd be in techno-heaven, wouldn't I?

The thing to remember is that I watch about three hours of television a week.

From whence comes this urge to spend $2000 on fancy equipment purely as toys for a three hour a week activity? I don't know, okay? I only know that when I hear people dissing Americans for conspicuous consumption, I tend to hide under the table and pretend to be a shoelace.

I want the stuff anyhow. Like I wanted the $45/month cable modem to facilitate the five minutes a day that I spend checking my e-mail. I neeeed these things! (My car needs tires and a new windshield, too, but those aren't fun.)

Of course, now that I have experienced this sudden and inexplicable burst of lust for Spike interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'll have to be watching an additional 10 hours (Good grief!) of television a week until I get caught up on the repeats FX is showing.

I'm not sure how long this will last, though, because I don't think I've ever watched 13 hours of television in a week in my entire life, outside of something like the Olympics. It's a fairly major commitment of time.