I'm here. Bernie's here.

Bernie's leaving.

He seems to have shorted out the USB ports on his laptop. Also the cable he uses to connect to the internet. So he's going to go work from home. I can't believe I made an 80-mile round-trip drive to work with him today because he desperately needed us both to be in the office but now he's not going to be here.

All of which is fine because I have a lot to do and I could use the time, but he also just called the computer warranty support line again about his laptop and he's telling them he just got back to town this morning and that the laptop that I got repaired for him on Friday was not repaired properly.

In other words, he broke it yesterday and he's lying to get tech support because the thing he broke it with was a third-party peripheral.

Every time I start to weaken, to think maybe I could do this drive two or three times a week if necessary, he does something insane or immoral that reminds me of why I really, really, really don't want to.

Money and madness, that's what I need to remember. He won't pay the money the job is worth and he's a lunatic.

No, wait....

He's going to go get a different laptop and come back to work. But the internet cable is out, so what good with that do? No idea. But his idea is that he can use my desk and internet connection to work. When I pointed out that I need the internet to check my mail, he said, "what do you need mail for?"

I can't just stand up and leave now because he's crazy. Tomorrow is payday. I need to hold onto that thought.

He's been a lot crazier than this. Frequently. Why, today, is the sound of him sitting in there cursing the telephone help line and the computer and the carpet and everything else getting to me so badly? (Also, why is the sound of him lying to warranty support about his "secretary" handling the repair issue wrong pissing me off so badly? Is it being referred to as his "secretary" or the statement that I messed it up?)

I know he's sick. Being sick makes me cranky, too.

He says the reason he's sick is because of the stress around the move. I said, "we really haven't had it that bad" and he said, "I did. It's been a nightmare."

And I'm thinking--for you had it bad?

You looked at three places and signed a lease for the cheapest one. You made a trip to Verizon (two weeks after you told me it was "done" and we're still waiting on phone service today). You called an internet connection company four days after we'd already moved, and then wasted a lot of energy complaining because they couldn't hook everything up that day.

Yes, you also placed a Craigslist ad to hire some freelancers to come and do the actual moving, but let's both remember, you tried very hard to get me to let you pass all of the responses to me so that I'd have to actually call everyone and do the screening and hiring.

And, yes, let's be completely fair, you hauled ten carloads of stuff to your own house to store temporarily, but that was your decision and for another $100 you could have had the mover guys do all of that the day of the move.

I spent six weeks sorting, packing, throwing out (10 times I filled that dumpster), getting services stopped, getting phone numbers released for transfer, sending move notices to clients, notifying the post office of our change of address, and organizing and labeling about 20 boxes so that we'd be able to find things before the move was complete.

Once we got in to the new office, I helped move desks and filing cabinets, hauled boxes from one place to another, and rearranged everything three times while you measured what would fit where.

Now, while you've gone to "work from home" today, it's my responsibility to check your laptop every two minutes to make sure the diagnostic it's running keeps running, to get everything back into the filing cabinets, arrange the computers for the network guy (you rescheduled him for next week and I have not yet been able to get you to understand that yes, you need a network connection to print on network printers), call the internet/fax provider to actually get us service, and figure out what to do with the five boxes full of absolute trash you packratted into the moving truck while I wasn't looking.

(Four portable printers so old you can't buy printer cartridges for them any more, even if they worked, which they don't. Fifty hanging folders full of stuff from clients the parent company worked with in the mid-90s. A heavy-duty comb-binder and approximately 500 combs of assorted sizes for the four, twenty-page reports we comb-bind in a year. Two of those blasted rack servers that he swore he'd store at his own house until his good friend and ebay expert buddy got them sold. And entire box full of flyers for a product even the parent company gave up on trying to sell ten years ago.)

I'm at a loss about precisely how this was such a "nightmare" for you. I can only assume that it's because I spoke to you rudely a couple of times. Sorry about that.

On the plus side. Power tools! Bernie has a heavy-duty battery-operated screwdriver that I got to play with yesterday. :D I love power tools.