I tremble With the Nervous Thought of Having Been at Last Forgot

Thursday. I am not a morning person despite the fact that I get up early every morning. I have to be in the office by 7am, which means that with the hour drive I have to be on the road by 6am at the very latest. In order to be out the door before six, I have to get up at around 5am (give or take an extra snooze). I do this because I have to, not because I enjoy it. My mother gets up that early every morning even on the weekends. That's just masochistic. Of course, this clash of preference made it very difficult to explain during my teen years that sleeping until noon isn't necessarily sleeping the day away if you didn't go to bed until six in the morning. I prefer nights and for a long time I worked the night shift. I remember the first time I worked a full-time day shift and had a 6:30am start. It must have been obvious that I was totally dragging, because someone advised me that after a few weeks that I would get used to it. I worked at that job almost three years. I never got used to it.

The point of this story (there's a point?) is that when I drag my half-dead body up the stairs and slump into my desk chair after fighting off another round of bad Denver traffic, I don't want to hear my phone ring the exact minute after the network shows me logged in. I can understand if it is an emergency, but I can count on my phone ringing by 7:05am by the exact same person just about every single morning. It wouldn't be as bad if it were at least someone I enjoyed talking to, but unfortunately this is not the case and even if it were, PLEASE give me a chance to get settled and for the coffee to kick in. Some "experts" say that the best time to make business calls are first thing in the morning and late in the afternoon because that is when your contact is most likely to be there. Ok, I'm seeing the logic, however, I'm personally inclined to believe that those are actually the two WORST times to call because first thing in the morning people are settling in, planning the day, doing odd paperwork and other miscellaneous tasks that they can't get taken care of during the more busy hours of the day. Late in the afternoon people are usually trying to wrap up projects, meet deadlines, and have their head focused on going home. While it is true that your contact most likely will be there, what is the point if that is when he or she is least responsive to proposals?

Anyway, sorry for that little rant there, but I started writing this just after I got off the phone with another pleasant 7:05am phone call. It must be paternally genetic. My dad has a rule at his place of business that no one can bother him until after he finishes his first cup of coffee. I've seen this rule in action, and trust me, it is strictly observed. If I ever get to be Big Boss Johnny I am for sure going to implement a similar rule for myself. And I will be sipping that cup of joe verrrrrry slowly...

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Ok, it's the afternoon now. I spent the morning uploading the receivables website and as far as I can tell that went ok. You never really know until the next day and see it live. After that I have been trying to help a sales friend of mine out in CA fix one of her orders. This thing was completely screwed up literally from the supplier purchase to the customer billing. No wonder these things have hung out since last November. These things are supposed to be fixed by the operations department, but their involvement has only made things worse. So, I volunteered my services to try to get this all figured out and resolved. You could say I'm a team player, but I have my own selfish interests involved. I want to make these 7-month old invoices go away. Plus, I believe in business karma. Who knows when I'll be the one who needs bailed out. This way I will already have points stored up.

Since I covered all the Beulah albums earlier this week and I didn't have any new music to discuss, it was time for a repeat. I pulled out Sufjan Stevens because I haven't had a chance to listen to Come on Feel the Illinois since I first discussed it a little while back. I really liked the album at the time, but with all of the new stuff coming in I just haven't had a chance to give it another listen. Well, readers, I am still sticking by my previously favorable review. Very good stuff. I'm just going to leave it at that, though, because this post is getting pretty long and I'll just end up repeating myself from before. So until tomorrow...