This has been the longest week in recent memory, and even now it's only Thursday morning. Time is dragging by, slower every day.

Our house, our house, our house is falling down - well, it's not falling at this point, but apparently the roof is slightly (?) bowed in, so water collects in the middle, like a nylon tent in the rain. The wood parts of the house are rotting, the wall of the TV room is leaking. We rent, so it will be interesting to see what the landlord decides to do. At least we no longer deal with Mrs. Landlord. One time when I called her to report a concern I had about the heater she said, "I'll have to pray about what to do." Maybe she joined a Christian cult or something, because now we only hear from Mr. Landlord. He keeps mentioning these neurological problems he's having and how he's on opium and might have to have surgery, retire early, etc., like I'm supposed to say, "Oh, well in that case, don't bother fixing the house, you really have your hands full there!"

For the past two weeks I've been dealing with pesky ad salespeople. We haven't been given an ad budget yet for next year, so I just have to pretend to listen to them. I could never be in sales. One of the most annoying things to have cropped up in advertising is the Internet. One trade publications charged us an extra $75 just to list our web address in their annual buyers' guide. The sales rep told me that was "value-added"; yeah, value added for them! Another guy who has been courting our advertising dollars reps an Internet-only publication that charges $1000 and more a WEEK! I took the liberty of visiting his site. You have to register to gain access to it, free of course but who knows what they do with your info. Can you see engineers having the patience to sign up for that? I know I resent having to register for crap like that, so I didn't. The next morning, I received an e-mail thanking me for registering! What did they do, read my cookies or something? This is exactly why I hate using the Microplop Internet Exploder browser. Information-stealing bastards.

To top it all off, I forgot to watch the Victoria's Secret fashion show last night! Who knows what kind of weird panties they'll create? Well, I guess I better get back to work. In closing let me remind you - beware of despoilers of small furry animals.