I’ve been home all week. After the past six weeks or so, this doesn’t feel natural. Nice, but not natural. Today was the first day I’ve woken feeling happy in a while. Being puppet-boy for a disorganized and understaffed proserv team (yes, I am an Army of One here) has been incredibly stressful. I am catching up on the backlog of unfinished business, though, so things are looking up. My new manager tried to offer me a significant pay cut as incentive to join his team, which just pissed me off, but hopefully that is getting resolved. Either that or he’ll have an embolism and be dead within a week. Either way, I will be happy.

Don’t get me wrong: As a person, he is fine; as a manager, he has yet to impress me. I may have too high of standards though: My last manager rarely contacted me, and when he did so, it was by email. At the moment, I equate effective management with leaving me the heck alone.

Besides spending entirely too much time in exciting towns like Milpitas and Burbank during the week, I have had some exciting weekends. Jennie bought a cute little Honda Shadow 600, which for now only I ride. She also ran over her motorcycle safety training instructor, so I may be the only rider for quite some time. Oh, happy days. I haven’t strangled anyone yet; surely that must count for something. The kids are still doing kidly things (yes, I made up that word. What of it?). Highly stressful things have been happening lately, but since I won’t discuss them with myself yet, what makes you think I am going to discuss them with you?

I may be happy today, but I really do not like being away from my family for extended periods of time. I think it may be time for a new job if they’re going to keep bouncing me around like this.

(I can’t remember whether I should capitalize the first word after a colon . . . I really need to dig out my Strunk and White’s. Or just accept that my standards for writing are as low as those of everyone else out here.)