The Private Diary of Rayne Maker: "Life's a Holiday on Old Albatross Lane"

10:03 a.m., and here I sit, at my office desk. Yes, a home-office desk, but just because I resigned from Armadillo & Pounce doesn't mean that I'm going to stay in bed all day in some sort of funk. (There is a bed in the corner, but that's just because this is the spare bedroom. I'm not going to sleep in it, obviously.) Log on to the Web and browse the state of the world. Nasdaq is up 6 already, on good results from Du Rite. (Thank you, thank you …) My sense of freedom is exhilarating. No clients! No office e-mails about emptying fridges! No time sheets! No worrying about my bonus (obviously zero)! No preezo deadlines! And no angst about selling the next piece of business and whether John Bonanza is out to get me or I'm simply being paranoid.
Check out my recommendations on Amazon. Laurel and Hardy DVDs and Thunderbirds filmed in Supermarionation. Perhaps not. Wander down to the kitchen and surprise our house-cleaner, at least that's who I presume it is, having never met this woman before. She seems equally surprised. Make cup of tea and retreat upstairs. Call the phone company and set up voice-mail, so I can have a professional-sounding setup instead of my old tape machine. Good progress. Make pile of books I intend to read this year on floor: bio of Churchill, Good to Great (you just have to), Donny Drucker's weird best-seller on the new ethics, and the Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide.
Decide to take short walk around my wintry garden, since it just stopped raining and since I can. Many worms lie gasping (I suppose, if one could lie down and listen closely) on the sodden surface. Opportunistic birds swooping down for mega-feast. Shoo them away, feebly. We must have 10,000 earthworms in our garden, minding their own business, doing their job, when down comes the rain and leads to species wipeout.