gurdymonkey | I cannot WAIT until tomorrow.

The following is not an April Fool's joke. Unless, of course, you consider that the joke is on me.

1. Our speshul snowflake in the Vacaville office decided to lay off half a dozen people today. The good news is that I was apprised of this when I arrived at 7 AM, a good hour before HQ Payroll even opens. Because unions require that these good people are handed checks for every dime they are owed when they leave, I processed reversals on six time cards so they wouldn't have to be found and pulled out of the batches down in Glendale. I requested numbers on the time cards for the last pay period (ends on Tuesdays), plus today. I had those numbers before 9 AM and scanned them to Vacaville so they can cut checks in-house there. It was well after 11 when Snowflake calls asking about whether John Doe's numbers included his pay increase effective Monday. I can find no record of a dispatch from the hall indicating John Doe was due a pay change. I go use the rest room. I come back to my desk to find voicemail on my desk phone, my office cell phone and an e-mail from Snowflake that no, it's Joe Pipefitter that was due an increase and was that on his figures? I check with Glendale. Nope, they hadn't put that into the system (even though I have proof it was sent to them several days ago). They send me revised figures. Snowflake sends me piecemeal scans of his checks which I have to review for correctness and email back saying it's OK. At 11:56, he calls and says, "I forgot I owe Dave Hardworker four hours overtime for last week." "I can't do a thing without a time card," I remind him, thinking I should've beat it out for the door for lunch when I heard the phone ring. I sit. And wait. 12:09 I get the time card. I call Glendale, tell them I'm forwarding it and I need the numbers right away. I bug out as soon as Nancy comes back from her lunch and ask her to watch for Hardworker's numbers and get them to Snowflake. Glendale, being in the middle of THEIR payroll crunch, doesn't get it to me until after I return from lunch at 1:12 and call asking where it is.

2. I come home, drag two loads of laundry downstairs and discover a big "Out of Order" sign on the dryer. "Aha!" I think, loading the washer anyway, "I have clothesline and I have clothespins." I run back upstairs, take line leftover from the taiko project and run it from the back fence to the handrail of the back stairs that are too dangerous to actually climb on. However, I'm out of clothespins. The Long's just off Park Street not only doesn't have any, they don't even have binder clips in their stationery section. I head across town to Pagano's, a den of vice and temptation if ever there was one. I manage to escape the hardware store with JUST clothespins and resign myself to the fact that my stuff may not be dry for hours.

3. Second load in and first load hung on the line or on coat hangers in the laundry closet rod above the useless dryer, I come upstairs and pick up the Synskin faux shoji paper to cut and glue to the kaga chochin and put a big fiberglass splinter into my knuckle. I finish the project wearing work gloves, which is a pain in the ass when doing fiddly work.