Well, here I am, in Boulder.

This morning I rolled out of bed around 7:30 or a bit later, immediately booted up both of my (personal) computers and fired up my (personal) cell phone along with the work cell phone that has the wrong number that no one is going to call.

Half a cup of coffee later, I'm wading through Monday morning emails and voicemails and thinking that this is a fairly good solution to the days I have to drive to Boulder---I'll start working an hour early and do what I can from home while I let the rush hour traffic subside, then save an easy 30-40 minutes on the commute. Bernie doesn't have to wig out because he thinks he's not getting the time he pays me for and I don't have a nervous breakdown fighting my way through 40 miles of wall-to-wall traffic.

And then I run across this little gem of an email from Bernie:

The databases seem a never ending cycle with no finish. We do need to get them finished for sure but every email I check seems to go around in circles.For example the latest exchange about YYY's. I can't even imagine what Scooby's bill is going to look like...way out of budget.
Not your fault but very frustrating to me to think we were almost done and then see how far away we were/are.

So, I give you other stuff that we are actually getting paid to do so I can continue to actually charge people for work that we complete and therefore I can continue to pay you.

I don’t even know where to start with that.

Should I start by repeating that it's not my job to bring in paying clients, it's his job?

Should I start by reminding us all that when he was trying to convince me to commute to Boulder, he said that he had new contracts signed and that, even without those, he had enough money in the bank to carry the company until June?

Should I start by repeating that he's been charging the clients for maintaining these databases for years and I am not responsible for the fact that they didn't actually exist during that time?

Should I start by saying, again, that the way these databases were created when he finally realized he was going to have them was a grotesque mockery of how any sane person would have approached the task?

Or should I just mention the purely obvious--that I'm going to tell him the next time we meet that if he doesn't feel he can afford to pay me for doing the work that needs to be done, whether it's "billable" or not, then he can stop paying me at any moment and that will be okay with me.