I was all full of spit and vinegar and was going to go home and do all this work on my computer... and then what'd I do? I caved.

Well, I went home. Marilynn and I chatted for a bit, and then we decided to do laundry and order some pizza rather than cook. In our desire to get pizza, we surveyed all the options, found that it was all expensive, searched for coupons and then looked around for my wallet. In the end we ordered Domino's, ate, watched some TV, folded a bit of laundry and put it away... and went to sleep.

This morning I didn't get up until 7:30 and didn't get to work until 9:30. Now I'll be here until later in the evening because of trying to accomplish something, and I am avoiding traffic that I seem to hit regardless lately. (I hate traffic!)

It's that rut. The same old rut. The one that we can't overcome. This rut is so deep that a Caterpillar couldn't pull us out.

Part of it is that I hate to come in around 7:00 or so. If I do, I sit in traffic and it takes me between forty-five minutes to an hour to get to work. It's a waste of time, gas and my patience. If I come in at 8:45 or 9:00 it takes me about twenty minutes to get here.

The result is, though, if I get here at 9:00, I don't go home until 6:00. And at 6:00 there's a lot of traffic going back home, so I wait it out until 7:00 or 7:30. Net result, again, a waste of time.

The solution for this little bit of the dilemma is easy: come to work early, be here at 6:00 or 6:30 AM, leave at 3:00 or 3:30 PM. Miss traffic, get home early, get things done. Easy!

The problem is getting up in time to do that. My energy level is incredibly low lately. Maybe it's the diet, maybe it's health, maybe it's mood. Maybe it's a combination... I just don't know. I do know that it's a real problem now.

I've talked about the TiVo being a problem. There's always stuff to watch. Now I realize that just because it's recorded doesn't mean we have to watch it, but some things I do feel should be watched. We just signed up for two free pay per views a month to extend a year on our service with DirecTV because, well, we'd be with them anyway, why not get an freebie out of it? So once we record those, we should watch them. We record "The Amazing Race" because we like travel and it's an easy way to see what it's like around the world. That sort of thing.

I think my problem is that I compulsively add programs to the TiVo. We record so much because it can record it. Sometimes I wish I could record a whole season of something and let it languish until I am ready to watch it, but we only have seventy hours of recording time. Perhaps I should get another SD DirecTV-enabled TiVo from Weaknees with a 500 gigabyte or terabyte of storage in it so that I can do that. Additionally, it would end up placed in the living room, which means I can't go lay in the bed and watch this stuff. That'd probably be a good thing, come to think of it.

I guess I need to do something about my energy level. I know deep down that it's related to my weight problem, but I don't know what to do about that. Everything I've tried fails. If I could get past that, then a lot more would probably happen in the productivity department, but as it is now I've become a lump. I spend all my free time laying in the bed watching recorded television. I am starting to wonder if I am having bone loss the same way astronauts do when they spend extended periods in orbit. (Just kidding on that bone loss bit, but you never know!)

So this weekend I'm going to try again. That's assuming that I don't have to fix anybody else's computer or go laptop shopping with my aunt and uncle to get my cousin a laptop to get stolen... er, for class work at A&M next year.

You did wish me luck, didn't you?

restlessmind