Dear Everyone: You Didn't Listen

Today was a fourteen hour day that, just as I though it was wrapping up at the seven or eight hour mark, exploded into an additional seven or eight hours of work. Surprise!

At least this time, a personal trainer didn't call me at 8 in the morning when I was elbow deep in TCP/IP packets to discuss something trivial about my gym membership. Oh, yesterday was so much fun.

Of course, when you're at work until 1:45 AM, yesterday turns out to truthfully have been two days ago.

Problem (hopefully) solved, I've already instructed my team that I'll be in late tomorrow (Very. Late.) and that I can be reached if needed but please, don't need me.

My boss concurs, and followed up my late-night "in late tomorrow" mail with a "Don't need Toby" followup. Good guy. I wish very much to not fall into the same "martyr syndrome" situation I've had in my last positions. On the way home tonight, it occurred to me that — lightbulb! — I am the one who is responsible for avoiding this fate by writing the kickass-est documentation possible. Finally, I'm in a place where there are people who will be around to read it should I ever write such a thing.

I took a cab home and ate some large, delicious cubes meat that had been carefully left for me in the fridge and chased it with a lavender Earl Grey vodka-infused White Russian. I used less than the suggested amount of tea and steeped it for a shorter period of time, but it still tastes bitter and I'm not sure why. It needs work.

One of the guys in the NOC turned me onto a game called "Pandemic" wherein you attempt to infect the world population. Too tired to sleep this morning, I finally got a chance to play it and killed everyone except for the continent of Africa, which had researched a cure and developed an immunity. There's a twist for you: Africans not dying in droves from some exotic plague.

Monk, as is often the case, was right: in times of stress I revert to old emotions, none stronger than when I come off of the rush of a late-night work project and have no one there next to me to catch me when I collapse into a heap on the bed.

If I persist on the thought, I may begin to question why I do it.

So I won't. I need to floss, brush, and immediately retire to the safety of my bedroom, where I will install Live Mesh, yawn profusely, and climb up into a vast and inviting bed that has patiently awaited me all night long.