Life would be so joyless if we couldn't have a little fun at others' expense. Luckily, I have a great source of amusement in the Boss.

He's been bugging me to order new business cards for him, and I've been paying no attention. Already we're talking big fun, right, seeing how far I can go ignoring him? The problem is, he's redesigned our old cards and I've been embarrassed to show the print shop what he wants. He wants to add several new phone numbers, but his design makes the card look absurdly cluttered.

The clerk rolled her eyes and asked the same question I'd been thinking about. If a card has that many phone numbers, how is a customer supposed to know which one to call? Either they'll call the first one on the list (which happens to be mine) or forget the whole thing. Who's going to know that the one marked "Engineering," the third one down the list, is the one that will reach him?

She was skeptical, but she took the order and let me pay for it. We'll have to wait and see what the cards look like, but the Boss won't be quite satisfied, no matter how close they are to what he asked for.

He got me back this afternoon, without even knowing I'd been mocking him. I try to keep creditors from talking to him, because he always promises he'll pay their bills, even if they're not due yet. After he makes these promises, he calls me and asks if we have the money. I made him squirm this time, because it was a big invoice he said we'd pay, but then I let him go with a warning. I warned him that he might have to loan the company money to pay the real bills, the ones that really are due.

So far, this is the best haircut I've had in a long time. Of course, it's only the second day, but the second day is the most important in judging the long-term merit of a haircut. I knew the last one was a disaster when I got up the next morning. By popular request (actually, more like a dare) I'm including a picture I took this afternoon. You'd think a person doing a self-portrait would come up with something a little more flattering than this, wouldn't you? So far, it's not a great haircut, but it's a good one. My face isn't really that big, though.

Imagine my naïveté, thinking I could walk into an office supply store in January and pick up the W-2 and 1099 forms that have to be filed by January 31. Imagine my dismay when the place where I always get them didn't have any. Now I have to scout around, wasting my precious errand time until I can come up with the forms.

Then I get to spend the next few days hunched over the Selectric, filling them out (or in, filling them in makes more sense), while hoping I don't run out of ribbon or correction tape, so I don't have to run down to Sampson's on the corner of College and Mendocino and hope they're still in business (and not a "copy center" now, like all the other former typewriter stores).