As usual, I've been back from vacation for three days and I'm having trouble remembering now how nice and relaxed I was a scant 72 hours ago. Bernie isn't wigging out, fortunately. He's even developed a mild sense of humor while I had my back turned. Just a lot of work waiting for me.

I'm largely caught up today. All that's left are the bits and pieces - things that got pushed aside because they were small (that's what I've been working on this morning) and one larger project I keep avoiding because I don't understand what's going on. (I really should spend some time on that.)

I can see it's going to be another one of those days when I can't figure out how to fill out my time. I've been here for 2-1/2 hours and I've been working but I can't account for all the time. (No, the three minutes I spent typing these three paragraphs do not count.)

Time passes....

Now it's 2:00 in the afternoon and I've lost an entire hour.

I know I did some other work than what I made notes on today, but I sure can't remember what it was. Just, you know, stuff.

I wonder what Bernie would do if I put down an hour or two under "don't know - probably dinking around" some day? Or even just, "general messing around"? Sigh. Considering that he "works from home" two days a week, of which (if the phone/IM/e-mail trail is to be trusted) he works about 4 hours, I find it annoying that he thinks I can account for every minute of my day.

(Also, since he has a bad habit of underbidding jobs based on how long he thinks it should take things to get done, instead of how long he's been told, over and over, it actually takes, I'm sometimes tempted to find some other way to code actual productive time. But that's not today's problem, since I have no billable work to work on.)

I know other people have to do this in their jobs, but I find it hard to code the time spent washing dishes or cleaning out the refrigerator or sweeping the shipping room floor or looking for e-mails from before I worked here to try and figure out how to do some project, or just sitting and thinking about e-mails I get from clients.

And sometimes I forget to watch the clock so I don't know what time it was when I stopped one project and started another. I've been here for five months and I still haven't learned to do that all the time. (I have never been a clock-watcher and I hate it that this job is trying to turn me into one. I come in, I work until I get tired, then I check the clock and usually find out I should have gone home half an hour ago, so I pack up and go home. The next day I repeat the process. The only thing this "timecard" situation is doing is making sure I leave at 5:00 on the dot every day.) (Yes, it's been five months and I'm still grouchy about having to do this.)