Where to begin?  I feel like this entire week has just flown by at warp speed.  Let’s break it down....

- In less than two weeks, I’ll be in Denver to see my best friend.  This makes me squee.  Two weeks from tomorrow, I fly to Toronto for three days of rock ‘n’ roll and the metric system.  It’s going to be awesome. 
- It’s amazing to think how much business has changed in the past 20 years.  Two decades ago, no one had really heard of the Internet at all.  Today, we can’t do business without it — case in point, my office today, where our Internet connection was completely down for 10 hours and we were helpless.  After sitting at my desk and just talking with my writing partner for an hour, we both decided it was pointless for us to stay, so we turned around and worked from home for the rest of the day.  It was actually a really gratifying thing for me, because I had previously thought that I wouldn’t be able to work from home — too many distractions, having other people around me working helps keep me focused, etc.  But today, I found that given the need to accomplish things, I’m perfectly capable of staying home and working on my own.  Plus, it has all the benefits of being at home, such as being able to do a load of laundry while you’re working, so it’s like you’re doubly productive because you’re accomplishing work and life stuff at once.  Oh, and by the way?  I just got another e-mail from my boss — after being back up for a few hours, the Internet is down again in our office.  If this keeps up, I may return to the office only after I’ve been to Canada.
- While I was at the gym tonight, CNN was airing a huge special with Anderson Cooper called The Edge of Disaster.  It was all about all the many different ways things in this country could suddenly go awry — everything from terrorists to another ginormous hurricane to an earthquake to the power grid blowing out to a cyberattack… Isn’t this country freaked out enough?  Don’t we need a little respite from a reminder of all the different things that can go wrong?  And besides… isn’t it kind of stupid to start suggesting ways to disrupt our way of life on, oh, say, national television so that it doesn’t give anyone any ideas?  That’s like getting on the news and saying, “These kids were making homemade bombs to blow up their school… and let’s show you how they were going to do it so you can play along at home!”
- Speaking of the gym, don’t ask me how because I can’t really believe it myself, but I’ve lost just under 10 pounds in the last 2-3 weeks.  Like I said, I have no idea how.  But Lord knows I’m damn happy about it.  I just hope the trend continues.
- Although I think the weight loss may have something to do with the fact that… well, I started seeing someone.  I don’t want to say too much because it’s early on, but we have a whole hell of a lot in common, and so far, I have nothing to indicate that she’s not interested in me.  (If she’s not, then I might as well pack it in now and become a monk.) We’ve been out a couple of times, and we’ve talked on the phone for hours on end in between.  I’ve never been on the phone so long that my batteries almost run out and the phone starts beeping at me.  That’s a good sign, right?