It was as dark as night all day today. It rained some, too, but I don't know how much since I never set foot outside. Rather than spend the whole dreary day glued to two one-sided football games, I decided to do the cost reports the Boss asked for. He asked for them two or three weeks ago, but he's been keeping me pretty busy with other things since then.

They're not hard to produce, and they don't even take up much time, but only if I can work on them without a lot of interruptions. So while the Raiders were pounding on the Jets this afternoon, I hunkered down over the spreadsheet program and worked out the reports.

Then I had a dilemma. I knew he was in his office because I'd had a fax from him earlier. It was a minor request that took me just a few minutes to type, and much to my delight there were no revisions. This might be the first proposal he's had me type all year that he didn't immediately decide to tweak, draft after draft after draft.

When I started working for him, he would give me clear, complete first drafts to type, because then I had only a typewriter. Usually one time through would satisfy him, because a minor revision wouldn't be worth the time it would take me to do the whole page again.

Even after we got our first computer, he didn't catch on right away. It was my fault, of course, that he finally did. I was showing off one time, I think, when he was wishing he could change something. I let him see how easy it was in the word processor, and my life hasn't been the same since.

This afternoon, I had the cost reports ready for him fairly early. I knew from bitter experience that if I sent them to him right away, he'd have questions. What's this? Where's the invoice to back up this cost? Why did we pay more than the estimated amount for that material? And on and on. Enough to use up the rest of my Sunday (not that I had any plans, but still, it's Sunday).

So I held back, held onto the reports. I thought of faxing them when the game ended at five, but I wasn't ready. I wanted to hold off until seven, but I couldn't wait. So I faxed them to him at six and crossed my fingers. I kept waiting for the fax machine to roar back to life, but I must have timed it right because it never did.

So things worked out exactly the way I planned. It probably means that the questions will start coming in first thing Monday morning. I might have screwed myself out of a chance to ease into the week, but I can live with that.

With all this actual work going on, plus being tired from staying up half the night watching all the extras on the High Crimes DVD I have out from Netflix (including an excellent commentary by the director, Carl Franklin, in which he not only tells how certain scenes were created (which they all do) but also goes on several fascinating tangents about his philosophy of filmmaking), plus— where was I?

What with all that, I didn't do any more car shopping today, but I appreciate all the advice I'm getting and I think I'm going to look harder at Saturn models, based on comments from current Saturn owners. I'll do this soon, I promise. Really, I'll get around to it, so I don't spend too many more weekends not wanting to leave the house.