All Write, Already!

I'm anal-retentive. I'm so anal-retentive, in fact, that I built my schedule so that I could arrive at my office a half-hour before my scheduled start time, so that I have time to answer overnight e-mails and voice mails, chat up my coworkers, and reposition my Halo Master Chief action figure to aim his assault rifle at the desk of the person with whom I'm most annoyed from the day before. I'm not proud of this.

This morning the Norse gods visited their wrath once more upon Omaha, so I found myself in the apartment parking lot at 7:00 AM, brushing down, scraping, and generally freezing off my testicles. I started for work at 7:15 (bear in mind that my official starting time is 8:30), and as I'm coming down L street, I watched a guy driving in one of those Explorer/pickup offspring go careening off the road and narrowly miss a billboard pole.

I strolled into the office at 7:54 and tried to work. Unfortunately, my wife's illness hit me pretty hard this morning, and at 9:30, my boss told me to leave because I had the dry heaves. So my attempts at punctuality came to naught. Goddammit.