Wow, Monday was a pain... I got to work at the usual time to find the move in progress. All of us reporters, the news editor, and the editor-in-chief had been in the recently-renovated downstairs area for the past couple months while the newsroom was redone. What that means is that the walls no longer have cracks and the hallway to the production room is no longer only two feet wide, unlit and stuffed full of office supplies - woo hoo! :) Unfortunately, we're still using the Soviet-era desks. Friday afternoon and Monday morning were move-back days. The construction guys took care of the desks and similar heavy lifting, but there were still piles of books and stuff to tote up. So that was more work than the usual early Monday morning.

While moving, I remember that I was supposed to go somewhere a few days ago, but I went somewhere else instead. Ummm... whoops. Yeah, I got the story filed at the end of today by talking to people who were there and I think it was passable - but still, I went through most of Monday in quiet dread that someone would casually mention to my boss or my boss's boss that they missed seeing me, made all the worse by the fact that I had the chance to fess up with no repercussions at the story meeting, but didn't. I suck.

And when I got to work I found that my computer desktop looks a little different, but more importantly, my "story ideas" file is missing. My computer has been an ongoing problem. Our tech support guy has helped it at least twice now, but after both times it quickly reverted to freezing every hour or so. He seems to be out of ideas and I've found some workarounds, but here was yet another problem.

I left the office to drive to an interview... and the road was closed for construction. Fine, I took a detour and found my way to where I was going (on the second try). And after I get back to Middlebury, I decide to get into the spirit of the beauuutiful day by wearing my sunglasses (nonprescription) and leaving my regular glasses behind.

This gives me a headache for the rest of the day.

I don't know why. Most of the time Sometimes, glasses are optional for me: one eye is pretty weak but the other is fine, so I see out of the good eye at a distance, so the glasses only give me depth perception, which actually isn't that important. I often go without glasses on nights and weekends, and my sunglasses are not prescription. But for whatever reason - the brightness of the fluorescent lights? switching back and forth between near and far sight? the computer screen? - I had to take a break every five minutes yesterday.

So, all in all, the kind of Monday, you'd expect in a "Dilbert" strip. But on the bright side, the rest of the week seems (overall, relatively, knock on wood, argh I should know better) like it will go better.