I was this close to walking out on Friday and today I'm rather sorry I didn't.

Today's frustrations included another interminable trip to the veritable borders of Wyoming but, thankfully, did not include me locking myself out of my car.

It cannot be said, though, that the limited time I've spent actually in the office has been either productive or without stress.

How do you explain to someone that not only are you not excited about the prospect of taking over the tech duties of someone who was "downsized" because "we don't have any work for her to do" but that you cannot, even if you were willing and able, accomplish those tech tasks with "an hour here or there" that they think you have to spare in the middle of the busiest month in the company's history?

I cannot begin to tell you how much I am looking forward to the next three weeks. All the more especially since Bernie confessed today that he has "nothing to do this month" if his latest Big Project doesn't come through.

The fact that the color-coded job board is a tsunami of purple (indicating my jobs) failed to make an impact on him as he, with too much time on his hands, interrupted me four times to explain how I can take on one of DiamondGirl's most time-consuming projects in my spare time in the next three weeks.

He went so far as to interrupt me once to discuss whether or not he should call a potential vendor and ask them how long it would take me to learn to do something when I refused to promise to learn it in an hour.

My attempt to explain that I have no spare time was fruitless as he pointed triumphantly to this Friday, where all I'm doing is the invoicing and paying the bills for the entire month, and said I could work on next week's project then.

The fact that it is next week's project because we won't have it until next week seemed, to him, proof that my attitude is discouragingly negative.