It's 6:15 Saturday morning. I got up with Ray. He had to work today and I like to have coffee with him in the morning before he leaves at 5:30 in the A.M.

I have off Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday is the July 4th holiday. I'm going to enjoy the next five days. I've been looking forward to my mini vacation, and I'm taking my mom to Charlestown on Tuesday. My sister Diane is driving to Long Island to see our cousin Nancy B.

Oh - just got a pop up that Diane is on-line so I Skyped her. What I have discovered so early this morning is that they had a big storm last night (as did we) and a tree fell down and is blocking her front stoop. She's still going to NY and is leaving in 15 minutes. I am to call mom and tell her that Diane will stop in before she leaves—which I just did. Mom is fine. Callee was scared though during the night and jumped up on mom's bed for comfort. Mom put her arm around her to let her know she was safe. Mom loves Callee and Callee loves my mom. So for this morning all is well in Mt. Airy, Maryland with the exception of the tree in front of my sister's house. My systematic and neurotic concerns about the health and well being of my loved ones having been mollified (for today), I can get down to some serious writing.

I'm trying to emerge from a ten month writer’s block brought about by the extreme demands of my job. My mind is still racing from this week. Monday and Tuesday were horrendous and I wanted to quit—but of course I cannot—or would not, because as much as I hate my job I love it. I'm terribly attached to my co-workers and there's not a one I do not like. And we’re all going through the same experience—though mine is a little more intense since I’m in operations. Operations, shall we say, is the heartbeat of the office. Let’s stop here to explore the heart:

“…the heart beats more than two and a half billion times, without ever pausing to rest. Like a pumping machine, the heart provides the power needed for life.” see http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/

The body in which our hypothetical heart is situated is the exceptional sales force that generates the flow of it’s life-giving blood, and the exceptional group of client service associates who work diligently to support and monitor this blood stream—aka clients connected to mounds of client related documents.

This blood stream flows to our hypothetical heart and is redirected through the arteries (service portal) through the capillaries (categories and sub-categories) and finally through the veins to different regions in the body for rejuvenation and then it’s back to the hypothetical heart where the process starts all over again. It’s like a merry-go-round. Most importantly our hypothetical heart must be strong, systematic and of sound judgment. Throw a conversion into the stream and you have chaos and temporary insanity.

What is conversion you ask? Oh well, let's just say it's the merging of two companies into one; the merging of two formerly separate platforms into one, whereby they pick and choose from each the best way of doing things and build a whole new world of computer enlightenment and entertainment, as well as adding a whole new set of procedures and rules to the procedures and what-to-do’s and what-not-to-do’s that already exist. I will liken this experience to being at a carnival, on a seemingly never ending roller-coaster ride, during a tornado—exhilarating! In all probability the roller-coaster ride will end and I’ll be first on line for the fun house. In the interim I will endeavor to keep my cool because at-work is a worthwhile place to be.