Too much ballpark food and not enough sleep. It's a bad combination, but this is when working at home can save your life. If something critical had been going on today, I couldn't have taken a quick nap in the middle of the afternoon. The restful sleep of the workday catnapper is easily rationalized. After all, I wasn't doing anyone any good sitting at the computer with my eyes falling shut like little garage doors whose automatic closers have run amok. A brief restorative hiatus keeps me from committing heinous acts of shoddy workmanship. It's the weary carpenter who hammers his thumb or saws off a finger. Then what good is he? Why, I could easily have slipped and written an extra zero on one of the checks I was supposed to write today. I could have mispelled "misspelled," or comited a typo. It's actually to the Company's advantage if I don't work when I'm too tired. I'm sleeping it off for the benefit of the Boss, and all the people whose payroll checks I write. It's totally selfless, to leave all this work piled on my desk and walk away. I deserve a raise, a promotion, and a medal. Perhaps tomorrow I shall take the entire day off and go to the park. All for the good of the team, of course.

Necessity appears to be the mother of unpacking. I wanted to boil some water tonight, and I wanted to cover the pot. I found the pot, and I found lids in three different sizes, all wrong. So I started putting things "away," if by away you can infer that I'll find them next time by looking through every drawer and cabinet, rather than dumping out every box. And I continued putting things away until I found the pot lid (oooh, pot lid) I was looking for. Then I stopped unpacking and started boiling water for pasta. While the water was boiling I unpacked just enough to find my colander.

The phone guy was here this morning. Actually, it was the third different phone guy who's been here in the last week and a half. I shepherded him past the dogs in the neighbor's yard, so that he could give me a dial tone on my fax and modem line. So I'm fully operational again, in the sense that I don't have to unplug and re-plug phone connections all day long.

The dogs, by the way, are from the "bark and run away" school of home protection. They bellowed at us when we walked into their yard, but every time we moved they beat a hasty retreat around the corner of the house. They'd peek around the corner and pretend to be in charge of their territory, but all it would take was a flinch from me and they'd be off looking for sanctuary again.

I bought a new mailbox last week, to replace the smallest one you can see in this photo. It's the pathetic piece of battered tin you can barely make out, the third one from the right. I subscribe to magazines I don't read and order scads of useless items, because I like to get mail. Lots of mail. Way too much mail to fit into this ridiculous excuse for a postal receptacle. So I got a big black sturdy mailbox, which I thought was monstrous until I got it home an read the box. "Medium." I guess I'd assumed there had to be a larger size than the one I got, but "medium"? Unless it's "medium" like a medium popcorn at the movies, it sounds less imposing than I thought it should.

I tried the box in several locations.

I guess I'll just wait until David comes by to screw it to the post out on the road for me.