Hi All,

Well, it's Friday night. I've had my nap after another day of 4 hour round trip commuting and thought I'd share what life on the road every day is like. I can bring it down to two words, "this sucks." My 8-hour work day has been reduced to four, the work is backing up and I'm saying, "has anyone ever heard of telecommuting?"

I spent the last two evenings trying to use a borrowed laptop computer only to learn after losing most of my fingernails getting the phone jacks out of one place into another and back again, that the term "no dial tone" doesn't mean my phone isn't working, but that the number called is being used by someone else. What hogs, do you think they could get off the line long enough for me to get some work done? Nah. But I think I got the key to the backdoor today, so maybe tomorrow I might have some better luck.

Wednesday evening was the corker. The entire van was full of women and we got onto our usual women-talk and the young male bus driver was trying to hold it together and I was sitting opposite of him watching him grin ear to ear as he was bending over the steering wheel. Finally upon reaching downtown Sonoma, he put the van into park, got out, put his hands on his hips, shook his head and then got back in. One of the women said, "I hope we haven't said anything that offended you?" and he said, "oh, no. You guys should be on some kind of show. This is the best group I've ever had in this van and if you are this funny sober, the next time I get you, I'm bringing the beer because I'd like to see what you're like after you've had something to drink. Then he said he had a lot of calls to make that night." He did too, because the next morning the other van driver asked if we were the group that were in Steve's van last night. When we answered in the affirmative, he grinned and said, "oh."

Meanwhile the demolition project to determine the source of "the smell" in the office continues. They dug up the cement floor and checked the sewer pipe. No luck, so they recemented it. Yesterday, they got into the sprinkler system. Again no luck. Today they tore out one or more of the inside walls. More tests yet to be done. From casual observation, some of the rooms have been taped off altogether and the smell that's in there now is worse than ever, however, different. Now we are down to getting permits to do some kind of haz check. One of the workers I saw this morning gave me a clue as to how hazardous this project is. He was wearing a full haz mat suit including the covered shoes and a full-fledged respirator.

I see Ted Koppel is in the Middle East and caught a news story he was delivering. That desert apparel looks really good on him.

Petra