All-Nighter

John Scalzi, Becky and I all seem to be pulling all-nighters tonight.  Scalzi was working at home, Becky's sick, and me--I'm about to leave the office.  It's 3:15 AM.

My husband, John B, called about 45 minutes ago to make sure I wasn't dead in a ditch.  When I get home, I have to do dishes.  We're on a week on, week off dishes schedule ending Sunday nights.  I haven't done dishes since, uh, Tuesday I think.

But every asset and liability account is reconciled.  Tomorrow I print out stuff, do some last-minute checking on things, and take my paperwork to the CPA's office. I'll get my $300 bonus.

And tomorrow night, I'll sleep.  In theory.

Scalzi mentioned in his entry of a few minutes ago that after 3 AM or so, he doesn't think it's worth going to be, only to get up again at 7 AM.  I go the other way on this.  I'll get 4.5 hours of sleep tonight, and be glad to get that much.

One memorable, extreme example of at work all-nighters for me comes from when I started this job nearly 12 years ago.

I'd given my notice at the previous job, and since I'd never taken any bookkeeping or accounting courses, I was a bit at sea trying to clean things up before I left.  (My previous boss had a marked tendency to make things worse by entering data himself--badly.)  But I was determined to do my best for him.  I stayed all night, and closed the books on 1992 for TN at 7:30 AM. 

I was at Worldwide Travel for orientation at 9 AM that same morning.  In between I got 45 minutes of sleep.

*****

I'm home.  I'm safe.  I don't think there was even one other eastbound car on the road, all the way home.

I am, however, freaking out because my computer just said, "Who's doing the dishes?"  Becky, was that you? The last time something like that happened was when Teresa and I were up late, working on TARDIS Time Lore and waiting for the BBC toopen so we could call for Doctor Who news.  (There wasn't any.) We were in separate rooms, getting ready to use the phone and the extension,, when an unattended Mac SE sudeenly said, using a program called Talking Moose, "I know what you're doing!" Scared the heck out of whichever of us was in the room--me, I think.

One more quick story before I do, in fact, do the dishes.

In college the first time around, I edited a film until 7:30 AM for a class that was at 8:30 or 9:00 AM.  There was no point in going home at that point, so I did my best to take a nap on the classroom floor.  The janitor was a bit surprised, to say the least.

Here's the leftover footage from that film, or possibly the other student film I made.

Good night!

Karen

P.S. Today (2/28) is the day this blog is featured on http://www.theblogoftheday.com. If you found your way here from there, please drop me a comment or an email (mavarin @ aol). If not, how about checking them out?  Thanks BotD!

Dishwasher's broken. I went to bed, couldn't sleep, got up, did the dishes, went to bed, couldn't sleep, and came in here to fix one little thing. Time: 5:19 AM. If I hurry, I can still get three hours of sleep. I hope!