I like broccoli. Quite a bit, actually. However, since I'm working from home today, I'm shoveling down lunch in a most unhealthy and unladylike fashion while I work and I very nearly did myself in with a lump of broccoli a minute ago.

After yesterday's commute to Boulder (not such a nightmare, as long as you keep firmly in mind that you won't be doing it often), I'm more than ever convinced that I have got to get serious about job-hunting.

Bernie did ask me if, now that I'd done the commute once (although not in rush hour traffic), I didn't feel I'd be willing to do it regularly. The question really took me by surprise since I was sure my refusal to stay was well-established by now.

And then, after blithely announcing that he wasn't going to get tense about whether or not I worked a full 8-hour day on the days I had to commute to Boulder, Bernie got all pissy with me yesterday when, with no network and no internet access at the new office, I decided to leave at 3:00, as he went into his 1-hour conference call, to come home and check my (work) email.

Was it my fault he was 30 minutes late in coming to meet me and he thus lost time he felt he was entitled to from me? Was it my fault he'd spent an hour on the phone with Dell tech support while I stared at the walls? Was it my fault he scheduled an hour-long conference call on the only day he and I would both be in the Denver office?

Was it my fault that he ran around making a lot of noise about how he was getting the new office set up and then showed up yesterday with brand-new, not-yet-activated phones (neither of which will have the number we gave out to the clients as our new phone number, BTW), to show me the temporary space we'd have to cram into for at least six days until the actual new office was available, and that the temporary space had no phones, no network, and no internet access?

He seemed to think so.

He also seemed to feel that as long as I was sitting there, he was getting his money's worth of my time, but my tolerance for doing absolutely nothing is pretty limited. Especially when being forced to share a very small office space with a grasshopper-brained employer dividing his time between cursing his laptop (dead motherboard) and bitching about a nonexistent network.

(I am still unable to convince him that a network is a thing and that nothing outside of creating some kind of actual connection between machines will enable them to converse with one another. I sweartogod I had trouble making him understand why, just because both machines were in the same room, they couldn't talk to each other without a connection and that, NO, a network was not something I could cobble together from the myriad parts and pieces and miscellaneous cables laying around.)

(Also? Our "network files" were split between two servers in the old office (don't ask) and since TechBoy took one of those home with him on Tuesday when he accidentally took the network down, I wouldn't have been able to recreate the network even if I'd known how.)

On the way home last night I heard from TechBoy and made a detour to pick up the AWOL network server, so when I go to the office again on Monday, I can take it with me. And no, I will not be making any attempt, no matter how feeble, to network the machines.

Bernie actually had the nerve to call me when I was driving home last night to say that we needed to find me some work to do from home since "you're still on company time, you know."

As I paid for a new tank of gas to replace what I'd burned driving to his new office (and hauling 300 lbs of office "stuff" that I had to unload when I got there) and sat in a Best Buy parking lot for 40 minutes, waiting for TechBoy to show up and pass the server box back to me, then got up this morning and fired up both of my personal computers and then called the most important clients on my personal cell phone to give them my personal phone number in case they need to contact us before he gets the phone situation straightened out, I stewed about that crack.

Aside from his use and abuse of my personal resources, as usual I already had a full day of work that needed to be done today and, as usually happens, he was completely oblivious to the fact. I tried to explain that to him when he called me at 6:00 last night (my personal time), but he was too full of a project he'd created for me to work on so that I wouldn't be getting away with getting paid for doing nothing to listen to me.

I'm preparing an email for him to explain that setting up shared public files, recreating contact lists, and notifying clients that I lied to them about what our phone number will all take time. Also to remind him that I had 6 hours worth of database review scheduled for today and that I have decided just not to do it since he clearly no longer feels the databases are of any importance or he'd remember them.

I can't believe it's 1:00 already. I haven't gotten through a fraction of my work yet. I've been working and working all morning but everything takes longer when you don't have everything at your desk and your fingertips. I have to use both home computers because one has internet access which I need and the other has Excel which I need and then I needed a table for the papers I'm working on the for the Dell man to work on (Bernie scheduled for him to come to my apartment today to replace the motherboard on the laptop, which I had to bring home with me) so I have the computer desk with the PC and a little table with the laptop and a folding table with all the papers on it and I'm dashing back and forth between the three of them.

Working from home shouldn't be this stressful. Okay, partly it's my own fault for not getting my (personal) wireless network back up and running so that I could more conveniently use my (personal) laptop to work on company business. And partly it's residual stress from the move, I'm sure.

And partly it's because The Time Has Come when I can no longer ignore the necessity of hitting the job sites five or six times a week.

Is it really petty of me to be smirking because everyone Bernie interviews and wants to hire is telling him they want more money for the job than he's offering?

Is it mean of me to laugh every time he tells me, very indignantly, that one of them wants the same amount I told him he'd have to give me to make me even consider staying?