Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Total commute time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Cause: state troopers parked on the right shoulder of Route 50 at the Loudoun County line - there was a marked car and a van with three yahoos standing on the side of the road. It took about 55 minutes to get to that point - that’s about 2.5 miles from my apartment. They had no one pulled over and didn’t look like they were doing anything productive. It’s maddening.

It’s payroll day and because of hurricane Ivan the agency that processes most of the government’s pay was closed last week. So we got this URGENT email yesterday telling us that we had to transmit our time data today. OK, I don’t quite get the urgency about it since Tuesday is always the deadline.

I woke up in the middle of the night after a nightmare about Eugene Armstrong. For a split second I regretted looking at those photos yesterday, but then I was grateful for the nightmare and the reminder that it was nothing compared to the reality for Mr. Armstrong and his family. Interestingly, this morning I caught a bit of yesterday’s Your World with Neil Cavuto when he talked with Dr. Georgia Witkin about how Mr. Armstrong’s beheading isn’t making as much news as Nick Berg’s did in May. She explained that we do get desensitized to that kind of horror as a safety mechanism so that we can go about our daily lives. It’s sad.

So the fiscal year ends on September 30, right? Right, we have to have everything done by Thursday. In two days. On the 23rd. I’m just now being told that and that’s just crazy! Sheesh. OK, so I need to stop procrastinating.