So. Today's timesheet lies start with the entry, "Late - 1 hour."

Sigh. I know I set my alarm last night. I checked it. I have no idea what happened. I didn't go to bed unusually late and sleep through it or anything. It just...didn't go off. Or, yes, maybe I slept through it in spite of not being, as far as I know, unusually tired.

So, of course, when I got in this morning, we had a full complement of workers here. Buehler, Moe, Bernie, and DiamondGirl (in to do a special project). No one is ever here before 9:30 or 10:00, but apparently today they all showed up at 8:30.

Isn't that just the way of things? Day after day I'm here at 8:30 or before, and there's no one here to notice or care. On those rare occasions I'm late, Buehler is invariably here and today, when I'm later than I've ever been, everyone is here to notice.

I wasn't quite as tense about it before I noticed that Bernie was already in. I'm pretty much over it now, though. Considering we escaped a major meltdown on Friday purely through the grace of me refusing to take any of the bait he offered, I think he'd do well to be calm for a couple of days.

Today is the Great E-Mail Switchover, when he's learning that everything he wants to have done could have easily been done if he'd upgraded the Office suite we're using at any time in the last four years. (He gave in and ordered the upgrade. It's not worth upgrading for day-to-day functionality, but for a one-in-a-blue-moon e-mail provider change, he's willing to spend the money.

He's also back to the concept that if I reboot the network internet access router every Friday, that could magically clear up the Qwest-related DSL problems we've been having on the weekends. Today I just said, point-blank. "Rebooting doesn't do anything if there isn't a problem. It's not going to preemptively fix something that might happen an hour or twelve hours later." I dunno what he's thinking. If the 'net is working when I leave, then it's working, even without a reboot. And I'm sure as heck not offering to come in here every weekend and reboot it in case of a problem. If he wants that kind of service, he needs to have a tech person on call and he got rid of the tech staff.

I'm feeling twitchy today.

Part of it's residual guilt for being late. Part of it is because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be working on. I've been here for an hour and a half and I haven't done anything I can put on my timesheet except check my voicemail.

Also, as sometimes happens when I've had a particularly entertaining weekend, my brain is entirely uninterested in working.

I've been, I should mention, Doing Projects evenings and weekends recently. Deciding that I've squandered too many precious hours just dinking around on-line, I've made a new resolution to start doing things with my free time.

I'm making an afghan. (Has to be done by July 5, it's a gift, so I'm having to make it a priority.)

I dug out my drawing stuff and I'm spending 1-2 hours a day practicing. I've pretty much lost whatever slim amount of progress I'd made last year (use it or lose it!), so I'm essentially starting over from scratch. I know a bit more about theory than I did a year ago, but I'm fumble-fingered.

Cards! Yes, for those of you who receive such from me, it's time for that annual search for this year's Holiday Card Design. I don't know why I make my own cards. I'm not talented at "crafts" things and ideas are hard to come by. And yet, instead of spending $5 to buy twice as many as I could possibly need, I spend about $100 each year buying samples of this and that and trying them out until I settle on something I think I can actually accomplish. And then I spend about 40 hours making the cards.

'Way back when the R.C. and I first started this, the theory was that if our hand were busy with this project all fall, we wouldn't be stuffing our faces all the time in the evenings.

It was a nice theory.

Now, post-diet and having plenty of things to do with my free time, I'm really wondering if I shouldn't just spend $20 to buy really fancy holiday cards and forget the endless hours it takes me to produce something "homemade" by hand.

(P.S. I do wish Bernie wouldn't tell lies. Why would he tell me I need to learn something because the Tweenybopper used to do it, when he can be reasonably certain that DiamondGirl, who has to teach me this thing, will tell me that the Tweenybopper never did it?

Why does he tell these lies? It's so pointless and he always gets found out, even if I'm too polit and too mature to stomp into his office and say, "Gotcha!")