Get more done by 7 am than....

For some reason, I was awakened at 4 am this morning, and it was 4:30 before I gave up trying to fall asleep again and decided to start the day early.

I decided to try to edit the figures in today's translation on 'ellroy', my VAIO, but the effort went just as slowly there, too. I'm not sure what kind of graphic is embedded in the document, but there are layers in it, and the whole shebang is already well compacted (zipping the 840 KB file gives you an 809 KB file). So, I translated the written part and created a table key for the drawings.

The highlight of the job was coming up against an abbreviation describing some part of a company. I could not find the abbreviation anywhere, except in one place on the Internet, via the Rambler site. Clicking on the link was not much help, at first, since the page displayed was a brag page displaying all of the companies (including the one I was interested in) with whom the page's sponsor had a business relation. Then I noticed that the company name was accompanied by a phone number.

You see, we recently discovered a phone card that offers an obscenely low rate to Moscow (something like 3 cents a minute, and I'm rounding off high), and only slightly less obscenely low rate to other parts of Russia (Galina spoke to her mom in Barnaul - 12 time zones away - the other day for about 8 minutes and it cost about a dollar).

So I called the company and asked the receptionist what the abbreviation stood for. She told me. Cost: US$0.05 or so. (This vaguely reminded me of the scene near the end of Heartbreak Ridge where a Marine uses his credit card to place a long-ditance call from Grenada to Camp Lejeune, North Caronlina so as to direct an air strike against an enemy armored vehicle.) Yeah, improvise... overcome... that's the ticket.... HUU-rah!

Anyway, the job went out around 6:30.

So what does the plate look like now? On the one hand, I have two projects at hand (or is that "under foot"?). On the other, today was supposed to have been spent doing the item I sent out this morning. For sure, I must send invoices for four more jobs (and then there is that nagging travel expense reimbursement that should have been filed a long time ago).

* * *It is another fabulously beautiful day today. I just got back from the store and noticed this fact while walking back from the bank after making a few deposits. If mine was really the carefree life that some make being a small business owner out to be, I'd have chucked it all for the rest of the day and spent the hours until sunset in the woods, chasing the next hillock and treeline. But running your own business (two, actually, in my case) is not a picnic, especially when you're in the service sector. If you don't work, you don't get paid and you tick off customers.

I think I am going to take a short nap.

Cheers...