It's one of the perks of having Office 365...

You know, that informational popup that steals just a bit more screen real estate from what it is you're running the software to do (word processing, in my case), and does so with every, every blessed document that you open, so that even with a conveniently positioned little "×" off to the side that will let me dismiss this annoyance, I estimate I've opened about three dozen files so far this morning.

If I were Microsoft, I would not use the word 'perks' in this particular marketing message.

Just sayin'...

...and oh, yeah...

I managed to hat-trick the getting-up-at-the-crack maneuver. The funny thing about it this morning is that I actually woke up on my own about 7 minutes before the alarm was set to go off (so I closed my eyes and treated the alarm as a snooze alarm).

I got to thinking about getting up early in the morning, and it brought back memories of boot camp that, in retrospect, I realize were lessons, of a sort.

You see, in recruit training "the book" prescribed, generally speaking, a bedtime of 9 pm and reveille at 5 am. Somewhere along the way, however, it sort of got into our collective heads that if we want to get a head start on the day, we'll get up earlier than that (which was easy enough to arrange in boot camp, simply by instructing the person walking the last fire watch of the night to start waking people up—come to think of it—around 4:30 am).

There will be time enough to sleep later. Today, in addition to the 1700-word translation I just sent off, I have an appointment at the house with an insurance sales person and a seemingly infinite supply of source words to translate afterward.

Somewhere in among all that joy, I must find some time to spend with Natalie and Kyle. (Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I wouldn't like to spend every waking moment doing something with them; it's just that those words will not translate themselves...).

Cheers...

Cheers...

Moving along steadily...

Probably the most important thing that got done today was having Galina sign some papers and fax them back, so that she could get enrolled in a Medicare supplement plan. Now, if I can find a plan that doesn't require me to get a completely new set of doctors—and it's bad enough that your humble correspondent has a set of doctors—things will really start looking up.

In other news, the kids did their thing on their own for most of the day while I dealt with getting the paperwork lined up and continued with translations. They rested a bit upon returning to the house, and then we all went to a local place called "Boondoggle's" (which I pass by on my way to and from taiji, but didn't realize was the place were had chosen to eat dinner until we were almost in the parking lot). The food was pretty good, and there were a lot of families in the place.

By a few minutes ago, in addition to the morning's slug of work, I worked through an additional 3,000 words.

A pretty good day's effort, if you ask me.

Cheers...