Killing time and brain cells

Oh where to start? I've spent the better part of the day surfing blogs here at work. Not blogs from people I work with. I mean killing time at work surfing the "blogosphere". Ye Gods! I've used the word "blogosphere". Another first for this year. Anyway, work is slow. I mean slow. I was plenty busy right up to, oh, mid-November. The week before the week of Thanksgiving was spent sitting in my cube trying to stay awake. I took three days of vacation to spend the entire week of Thanksgiving with my family (parents and siblings - I have no family of my own). That was an incredible week. I made a bunch of saw dust. I finished some projects and started others. I saw relatives I haven't seen in nearly 40 years. As a matter of fact, it's been 20 years since these four people have been in the same room at the same time.

And Mom's home cooking for Thanksgiving cannot be beat.

And then it's back to "real" life. Saturday was a football game. Nothing bad about hanging with friends in the parking lot and drinking beer all day. With time out to go actually sit in my season-ticket seats and watch the game. And it was an early game, so there was time left in the evening for domestic chores and accomplishment. I watched TV instead. And surfed some porn while catching up on e-mail. No small trick on dial-up.

Sunday was video catch-up day. I figured I had 11 hours of video-taped excrement excitement from the previous week's line-ups. That and laundry. It was a perfect day for such activities with it being both cold and raining outside. But the depression did eventually set in. I live alone. My sawdust "hobby" tools are down at the folks' house. It was quiet. And I had to go back to work in the morning.

This past week at work has consisted largely of finding some reason to drive 29 miles through idiots to get here and then stay awake for some undetermined amount of time, and finally, trying to figure out why I can't leave immediately after lunch...so I stay until at least 3:30 when the people who may have need of my knowledge all go home.

I haven't always managed to stay awake the whole time at work.

I left a little early yesterday so I could catch the matinee price on the new Harry Potter movie. Worth every penny, imho.

Today, after the lengthy blog-surfing session, I spent roughly an hour and a half doing some complex banking procedures to prepare for the upcoming Christmas shopping frenzy. The banking itself was not complicated, it was navigating through the dangerous maze of idiots and roadwork between the two banks that made it complicated.

And there's still another day left in this week. And there are still three work weeks until Chrismas vacation. And nothing on the horizon for next year. I've got to make some changes in my work-life. Fortunately, there may be a ray of hope in that direction.