As usual, I had to beg and plead for time cards so that I could get the payroll done today, and it’s made me cranky. I’m cranky enough on my own without outside help. And of course as usual there was a good excuse. This time? Tim’s truck broke down in Southern California and one of the guys on his crew had to drive down and get him, and he didn’t get back until late last night, and then he had an important meeting this morning. It’s not that that’s not a good enough excuse. It’s just that I hear good excuses every week.

But I didn’t come here to complain, not on a day when I got so much done. Not only did I actually get through all the payroll, eventually, but I got a lot of other work done, too, and on top of that I got to the post office, the bank, the gas station and the supermarket, all within about an hour this morning. Not bad, eh?

And then tonight, I watched not one but two movies from Netflix. Neither one was especially good or especially bad, but I’d have to say Frozen River was the better movie, although it was so very bleak, both visually and thematically, that I was glad I don’t keep razor blades in the house. It was saved by the performances not only of Melissa Leo in her Oscar-nominated role, but also her incredible costar Misty Upham, who was riveting as a Mohawk woman who smuggles people across the Canadian border. I couldn’t take my eyes off her in any scene she was in.

The other movie was Nights in Rodanthe, which was pretty much a cookie-cutter romantic weeper where you could see every major plot point blowing at you like a hurricane. But it did have Richard Gere and Diane Lane and North Carolina, and an ending.