Monday
Take a personal day (my first ever!) to set up my new home office. Part of New Year's resolution to spend more time at home. Ordered cabinets, desks, etc., from Staples Web site, probably saving two hours driving there and back. End up spending six hours screwing it all together after it arrives, so I'm minus four. Plus a nasty blister. Phone guy comes and installs three lines for phone, fax, and net. Hook up equipment happily for an hour, but get bamboozled trying to establish on-line account. What's a POP3 server? On hold for almost an hour (minus five) listening to inane announcements about how "we love our customers" in between dreadful country music. Even then, can't access Armadillo's Knowledge Bastion because of the firewall. Retire, defeated, to play Legos with Theo, where we build our own central office switch/ice cream factory (depending on which architect you ask).
Tuesday
Everyone wants to know if I was away interviewing for a job! Guess that suggests we are still in crisis since Pat Pounce split to form his own firm. Prickly Ken and I assemble with the nervous newly minted partners to make sure they understand their responsibilities. I explain about the importance of continually reinventing our core methodologies, and the subtle ways that partners define the tone of the firm, while Ken stares moodily out of the window at the Citgo sign. Nancy Nebraska asks him what advice he'd give the group. Ken replies while walking out of the door. "Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell …" We can hear him fading away down the corridor.
Wednesday
Experiment with coming to work one hour earlier to beat the traffic. Save 15 minutes and another 45 by skipping lunch in favor of a sandwich from the cart (minus four). Save another two by initiating a one-hour meeting rule with my Du Rite case team, using a large wooden egg timer full of sand. The usual three-hour slugfest easily slims down to 60 minutes. (Minus two.) Leave work one hour earlier than usual and sit in traffic on the Mass Pike (spilled load of semiconductors, minus three). Still manage to attend bath-time, then spend the evening trying to access e-mail, finally receiving 37 urgent messages at one in the morning, including greetings from John Bonanza, newly installed in the life of monkhood. May your soul burst with cleansing joy, too, Johnny-boy. Must remember to call Heide Vertig and see how she's enjoying being an ex-wife of a wacka-wacka.
Thursday
Theo must have turned off my alarm, or else the battery died. Anyway, jerk awake at 10 and reach the office unshaven by 11 (minus five). Skip lunch altogether. Crank out two proposals (a false teeth adhesive manufacturer and a crematorium chain — is America aging or what?). Edit the Du Rite preez (Nancy's getting long-winded: Does it take 300 slides to tell them they're road-kill?). Write memo to Ken explaining why our new logo (cartoonlike armadillo waving hammer) is unprofessional, unfortunate, and an unmitigated disaster. Done by three, decide to really beat the traffic. Whizzing home, realize I did a full day's work in four hours. (Plus one!)
Friday
My turn to drop off Theo at kindergarten: tears all round. Nancy is resisting my admittedly brutal editing of her tome. Take her to lunch to explain that clients don't buy us for our hard work and research. They just want to know what we think they should do. Nancy seems thunderstruck. Apparently this is a revelation. Decide to send memo along these lines to all new partners. Finally get visit from an Armadillo long-hair IT geekomatic who tells me how to plug my home office into the network. Gibberish, but I write it all down and act like I know what SMTP and VPNs are. Just use the wizard, he says! He's probably one of those Lord of the Rings Trekkie types. Where do we find these people? Leave on time with my plus one for the week intact. Decide to spend it auditioning new loudspeakers at a hi-fi store. Marvelous Mahler! Lose track of time and miss tonight's bathtub performance, but give myself pat on back for my new productivity ethic as I kneel down in the home office to snap together my new ergonomic chair. Surprisingly many parts.
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