Dear Bunny:

I saw you.

I came out to stand there and enjoy a minute of warm weather and there you were, sitting six inches from the spot I was headed for. You loped a lazy step sideways, then stopped to watch me to see if I was going to give you a wide berth but I, tired of--to mix a petting zoo of metaphors--being buffaloed by brazen bunnies, kept on coming.

So, you scooted under the bush and sat there, smugly certain you were hidden from the Dangerously Tall Creature.

I could still see you. You got your head under the bush but your butt was still sticking out. If I'd have been a hawk, you'd have been a dead rabbit.

Just sayin'. You want to live to be an Old, Gray Bunny, you need to learn to tuck your butt under.

Dear Residual Readership:

I am still alive. Working a lot--first to get caught up before the stupid conference I got back to the office on Aug 30 and was instantly reburied under the avalanche of things that had accumulated while I was gone and the projects I heard myself insanely volunteering to take on during the trip.

Also, end of month reporting last week and NewerBoss Peter has me on a deadline now--I have until the end of the workday on the 2nd to get it all done. That's not normally going to be a problem but having been out the week before meant I didn't get the preliminary reports done, so it was a scramble last week. I was doing EOM reports with one hand and checking on accounts with the other.

Next week I'm out again, all week this time, so this week I'm playing catch-up-in-advance again. Already. (Schedule-wise, I'm losing 30 minutes today to get my hair done--it needs it--and two hours tomorrow morning for a mandatory "post-conference staff meeting" that needs my attendance as much as the pre-conference staff meetings did, which is to say, not.

Four new accounts in the last couple of weeks--three freelance for Louie Louie and two for the Corral. Added to that workload is Webstrainer, rolling out new data views that not only give me appalling insight into what's going on but that each require about 15 minutes more management time (per client, per week), meaning that I'd have been tearing my hair out, even if I weren't leaving town again.

Still. Visiting Webstrainer should be fun. (I hope it's fun, since I'm using every minute of my accumulated vacation time on the trip.) Educational and interesting, which is more than the Corral conference promised (or delivered).

From all reports, they're going to have netbooks available for us all, too. What that means is that I might be able to travel without hauling my computer along! Only those of you who travel can understand what a luxury that would be.

There was a bunch of advance info and prep stuff they wanted--none of which I got around to doing. I feel badly about that but I learned today that the 25 accounts I handle for the Corral are, in the estimate of a bunch of agency managers, the maximum they think any one person can manage with any degree of success--so if you add the half-dozen freelance accounts to those--well, I'm not just whiny, I'm busy.

I had so many things to blog--random adventures, boring thoughts, passing complaints, even occasional triumphs. Sigh.