A Day at the Office and Other Life Changing Events

I tended bar in assorted taverns and saloons for 22 years. Yes. Really. I did. And even though I had odd schedules and worked weird hours, I always managed to establish a routine. I had a proper time to awaken (1:30 AM at times), a proper time to sleep (never, at times), a proper time to eat properly (every fifth Tuesday, unless it was the first Tuesday of the month), a proper time to eat garbage (most other days), and a proper time to conduct fitness routines (after the hangover wore off).

These little routines kept my life in order. They provided structure to my day. Before that, school and the Air Force provided structure to my day. So when, in August, I retired (sort of) from the world of libations, and went about the business of starting my own business with Jenni, my fiancee, I needed to find a new routine to provide structure to my days and my life. How hard could that be?

Due to a surprisingly small bladder or an alarmingly oversized prostate, my daily routine starts at about 4:30 AM with a quick jaunt to the bathroom, which signals the start of the day for my herd of cats. I drag myself back to bed just in time to make another visit to the bathroom and another chance to wrangle the herd into sleep mode. Like that ever happens, cats actually sleeping at night.

After years of working night shifts at one saloon or another, my body became accustomed to late morning awakenings. As a businessman, however, I can't afford to sleep in late. The rest of the world has this maddening habit of wanting to conduct business during daylight hours. Some of the rest of the world even wants to conduct business in the morning. Crazy, radical nutcases. Fortunately, I have been adjusting my sleeping schedules to fit my working life for, well, my entire working life, starting with the Air Force, which expected its members (airmen, we were called) to not only be awake at five in the morning, but also to know our names and be able to dress ourselves in some predetermined manner. With shoes.

Anyway, my day now starts at the crack of 8....sometimes 9........okay, sometimes 10:30. AM! In the morning! I roll over. I stretch. I crackle. I pop. About eight minutes later, I hobble to the bathroom across the hall which is, fortunately, our bathroom. I emerge from the bathroom a minute or two later, completely refreshed, and those of you with bladders the size of a pea (har!) know exactly what I mean. I walk to the kitchen. Actually, I hippity-hop to the kitchen because I've got approximately two hundred (four, actually) cats dancing around under my feet and absolutely thrilled to see their master (hah!), the object of their affections (sure), the center of their universe, the goofy guy who feeds and waters them.

Two bowls dry food. Two bowls canned food. Two bowls of fresh, clean, cool refreshing water. Then, I feed the cats.

No, no, no. I'm not that stupid.....well, okay, there was that one time with the litter box, but we won't talk about that. I have an image to uphold. So, anyway, I water, feed, de-poop, and play with the cats. I water, feed, de-poop, and play with my....wait a minute......I eat, shave, de-poop, and shower myself, not necessarily in that order. And then it's time for me to get to the meat of my day; surfing the internet. I mean, researching, researching, and researching some more. That's right. I am always hard at work visiting the world through my computer screen, touching the world through my computer screen, enlightening the world through my computer screen, teaching the.....oh, who am I kidding? I'm checking e-mail and surfing the net.

Next, it's on to my own personal fitness routine. A busy businessman such as myself must maintain his mind and his body. He must remain sharp. He must have stamina. He must.....hey, are those donut holes? They are. And they're on sale! For more helpful tips on keeping fit when you work from home, see my earlier column on fitness, "The Quick Step Kitchen Work Out", which is full of many useless tips. I'm sure you will want to make a copy and post it to your refrigerator for easy reference.

After a busy day of cat wrangling, e-mailing, net surfing, and errand-running, I plop my weary bones into bed at four or four-thirty PM for a long and arduous night of television watching and net surfing and snacking and......well, I don't want to give away all of my trade secrets. Suffice to say, I have successfully established a new routine and brought new structure to my days. Anybody seen my shoes?