I was pretty much the only person left in the office today- 3 out of 4 people are at meetings all day today and tomorrow, and my fellow clerk has a sick kid and had to go home at noon to watch him. Even the chick that works across the hall from me went home. Man, it was quiet. And dull. No people to talk to, no music playing. Data entry is easy, but after awhile (okay, two days) of doing this full-on all day, I'm kinda like "Wish I had something ELSE to alternate this with." Between that and people being gone, my attention span has gone flaky. Man, how can employers expect you to work at full bore for 8 hours, even with short breaks every few hours? Gah.

I've done some sheets, yes, (five officially done and about three more that I need to get help with but are almost done- I'm supposed to do maximum 10 a day because I'm so Speedy Typezales around here) but still, I'm feeling a little guilty for my spaciness (even if no one's here to know about it). At least it slows me down?

It should tell you something that before she left for the meeting, my coworker told me that she used to make little animals out of office supplies when she was bored, and said "give it a try." It should really tell you something that I actually did for a good forty minutes, trying to figure out what I could do with paper clips, pencils and Post-It Notes. It's not so easy to do as I first thought it would be. Damn paper clips are much harder to bend around when your fingers are already blistered up for no good reason, I must say. My "animal", which was originally an attempt at making a bunny rabbit, didn't come out so well. Damn paper clips, and the paper clip creations I kept trying kept falling apart. I finally did some kind of bunny-dachshund thing by making legs out of paper clips and putting them around a pencil. It's pretty sad looking, but I put it on her desk for when she came back anyway. She was amused- at first thought it was a preying mantis, then somehow miraculously determined it to be a skinny bunny rabbit. (How she did that, I don't know.) We then went off on this extended riff about feeding it Post-Its and how it was the Easter bunny and if so, where was all the chocolate goodies?

Some guy e-mailed me here about a story I did over a year ago, wanting a copy of it. At first I didn't know what story he was referring to, then I told him that I'd have to get it off my computer at home. He then got all snippy-sounding about "well, don't bend over backwards about it, I'll remember this next time you need help," in that "might be neutral, might be sarcastic and bitchy" way. Huh?!? Geez, what on earth is with that? There's no need to be a snothead to people like that. I presume he thought I was being a snothead to get that response. Sigh. How annoying.

I think in some respects I'm so going through Net withdrawal. I can't surf at work that much, and I get in a few hours at home and then end up on the phone for the rest of the night. I come back at the end of the weekend and am all "Gimme the computer!" and "I gotta type in all these entries ASAP!" (And they're long, since I have 5 hours over which to write them too.)

Back before this all occurred, I thought that having a long-distance relationship would be pretty easy. I get all my usual stuff (writing, weblogging, posting on boards, surfing, TV watching) done Sunday-Thursday nights and have fun for the other two days. Simple, right? Well, hah on me, because suddenly I feel like I have very little time left any more. Dave usually calls sometime between 8 and 9 at night, so I've got about three hours before then to (a) do any errands I have to do, (b) eat (c) read the acres of e-mail I got during the day, (d) respond to about three of those e-mails, (e) read my boards to see if anything interesting happened, (f) do the journal, (g) watch all my shows on tape and if I EVER get to it, (h) work on the weblog or novel. I haven't gotten to h in weeks. I have found links, but no time to write them up, and the novel's even worse. (I should really figure out some way to bring it on the bus/train or something.)

Last night I was frantically trying to do laundry and watch last week's Buffy and Angel episodes on tape (since he usually calls when I'm watching them in real time, and then I'm all distracted) and shower and do the web stuff. Yikes. Damn, I wish he had net access at his place so I could at least get some online reading done while he's at work. Everyone was amazed that I'd spent all day Sunday alone with NO people around to entertain me (I heard his mother said "She could go hang around with me." Huh? Since when did this happen?), but I was thinking "This isn't much different from what I'd be doing on a Sunday home alone in my apartment, only I'd be reading online instead of a book."

I swear, this all reminds me of back in my younger days when I thought that having a boyfriend should count as yet another extracurricular activity for your record. "I take four classes, have an internship, am an officer in two clubs and have a relationship. Put that on my transcript!" Or something like that, anyway. I'm an overachiever.

At any rate, folks, if I'm slow to get entries up around here and I'm not seen around much, you know why. I'm having a hard time typing and talking, you know.

I'm so not used to the whole monogamous thing. It's very odd dating someone who is so very into that as opposed to the ex, he of the "Hey, I wouldn't mind if you got another boyfriend" school of thought. (To which my response was "I'm already busy enough, thank you.") I don't consider myself poly and never really have, more like easygoing if anything else. Either works for me, whatever. It's up to the fella, 'cause I'm most likely going to be monogamous with him- I just won't kill him if he isn't with me and lets me know that's what he wants to do. People are different and all. And I'm just not a jealous person- if I know the guy loves me, I have no fear or envy about that sorta thing. Just you know, no bad surprises, please.

Given my attitude, it actually shocked me to have this come up in the conversation last night. I can't recall how we got onto this- I think it had to do with a story about how some random woman pinched his dad's ass and his mom grabbed her hand and ended up spraining her wrist- but he said something like if some random guy walked up to you and gave you a kiss, I'd go after him. Huh. Now if this is some random guy assaulting me that's fine by me, but what if it turned out to be some platonic-yet-oddly-affectionate friend or something? (I've known some people who would do that and it didn't mean anything. Gotta love Berkeley folks.) I said if some random girl walked up to you and did that (we're assuming this isn't big mondo Frenching going or something), I wouldn't just automatically assume Trouble, I'd find out if they knew each other first and what kind of relationship they had. (Hey, his friends go around saying "I love you" to him and I don't freak out.) Huh.

I don't much know what to think about this. Monogamy seems to be pretty big in his town, though (with the exception of S&D, but then again they don't live in Modesto). It seems like everyone but me dropped out of high school and then got engaged. I'm trying to restrain my mouth from dropping open at every 18-year-old with a diamond ring that I meet. I didn't even freaking date until I hit that age. (Yes, you knew I was a nerd, why are you surprised?)

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