I noticed this morning, as I continued my quest to do virtually nothing each day, that such an endeavor is, in a way, its own worst enemy. The justification for this is twofold.
Fold 1:
You get so lazy that you let stuff that would really only take a minute or two of your time to fester and rot much longer than necessary. Rather than appearing that you’re still working on stuff and getting everything done, you end up looking like a lazy sack.

Fold 2:
Eventually, since so much of your “non-day” is actually spent trying to look as if you’re not having a “non-day”, that nothing—not even thinking about stuff—is accomplished, and you more or less stare at a computer monitor for 40 hours a week. This will ABSOLUTELY turn your brains into puréed bananas, and when the time comes that you have to start doing stuff again, you’re pretty much screwed.

An uninteresting example of this from my morning is when I spent no fewer than 6 minutes beating my head against the wall saying, “dammit—this process always works! Why is this breaking now!?!?” before I came to the realization, “oh wait, it won’t let me FTP an empty file, nm.”

I wonder if the best solution to this would be more work, more interesting work, a more consistent workflow, or an employer that lets you freely bring and do your own stuff at your desk. I have a stack of mail from home that I brought in I could go through. I also have a LOT of books that I want to read on my shelves (and I think when you work at a university, that’s the thing they’d have the hardest time arguing against).

Meanwhile, I had to reschedule my blood work for today, because I forgot about the “12 hours of fasting”* that needed to precede the blood draw. So, I have to go back tomorrow. I guess this will still work out OK with my scheduled visit back to the doc on Friday.

That reminds me that I should go to the dentist, too. I still have next week to beat Michelle there. Otherwise, she’s gonna kill me (please email her to find out why).

Speaking of doctors, though, Lorch has to go for surgery on Thursday to fix his finger. Ray, if you could please comment the story into this post or something, that would be awesome. The short version is, he almost lost a finger. The gross version is available in pictures on this site.

Finally, as I get myself pumped up for the holiday shopping season, I thought I would put my list out there for the interested parties. It is adequate but not exhaustive. I don’t really want anything for my birthday, so if you’re in the market for that, either consult this list or don’t worry about it.**

*Here’s a little side comment on that—I wanted to set myself a reminder so I wouldn’t forget again, and I thought “on my phone” would be the best place. My calendar thinger has the T9Word? dictionary for quick inputs, but it has no profanity in it. Which sucks. I wanted to type, “stop eating fatass,” but when I got to “fatass,” the T9-erator said “datasp”. What the shit is that?

**For whatever reason, I have tried on occasion in the last couple years to get upset that there’s not a greater distinction between Christmas and my birthday, to no avail. No matter what I do, I can’t get it to upset me. It’s the only way I’ve ever had it, so… What I *have* been able to do, though, is find some pity for you chumps whose birthday isn’t on a more notable holiday. Your birthday is some random Tuesday in July? Who gives a crap? Mine is New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year, EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Suck it.