I am poor (I've spent all my cash and haven't had a chance/remembered to swing by the bank this week and alone (I arrived in the office at 7:40 this morning. One other person was already here but so far we're the only two. Very sad.

This week has been both aggravating and annoying.

1) The diet is good, the diet is wise, the diet is pissing me off. Needs some adjusting. I've got to start bringing more food with me to work--even as sedentary as I am, it's tough to make it through the entire work day on 500 or 600 calories. (I'm not deliberately starving myself--I didn't cook anything for lunches last weekend and have been making do with whatever was in the refrigerator all week.

2) Gidget is happy and returned to full health and driving me a teensy bit nuts. The amount of work she needs from me is starting to exceed the 8-10 hours a week I've been willing to give The Gidget Co., and, what's worse, she's starting to need things between 8-5, M-F, when I really should be focusing on the Argonut Café's problems. I don't mind the occasional occasion when a client needs a phone conference, but two fifteen-minute calls this week is, IMO, excessive. (And, yes, I know that most people live about 50% of their personal lives on company time--taking and making phone calls from/to parents, spouses, significant others, children, day care centers, hair dressers, etc.-- but I've never really done that and I've always been a bit holier-than-thou on the subject.)

3) That could be because time has been in short supply since I got back to town. Over 50% of my hours at the Café have been spent on special (i.e., non-campaign-related) projects and, at last count, during the remaining hours I've been interrupted on the average of once an hour, every hour, by NewBoss Anais who seems to have missed me and to have lots of problems she wants me to help solve or at least have input on.

4) Yesterday, when I'd finally carved out an entire three hours to spend actually thinking about and focusing on what I'm supposed to be doing, she came over and wanted to chat about the bonus plan. I don't care about the bonus plan, okay? I honestly don't. They have, without actually announcing it, clearly decided not to reinstate our lost pay. Instead, we're all going to have to "excel" so we can get "bonuses" in order to get back some small percentage of the low-level salaries we were making before the economy crashed.

5) In the meantime, both Gidget and Bernie keep coming up with new projects and Bernie urgently wants to know when I'm going to quit the full-time job so I can take on more of the clients he's got lined up. I haven't had a chance to review the BunnyHouse campaign in three weeks, I suspect that I'll wind up with the Freethinker's campaign in my hands, I brought three new campaigns up for Gidget last weekend and there are four more waiting in the wings. I have not, as I've said already this week, actually had time to do the work on her campaigns (or Bernie's) that I really should be doing.

6) There are a variety of solutions for some of these problems. For the freelance ones, the first thing I need to do is get wireless internet access on my laptop, so I can work during the evenings during the week more conveniently.

I've been dreading that--fighting the battle to get a wireless router that can be configured to bypass C-*-m-c-*s-t's determination to block my $120/month+ cable/internet service from servicing my actual internet needs, but it's starting to feel like it's time. (Also, my sketchy research indicates that they're coming around and starting to offer wireless. Must call them.)

7) Also, I could work while I'm at work. It's 7:59 - time to get started.