Seventeen minutes
There are only seventeen minutes left in today. Oh, sure, I could cheat and
the Holidailies portal would be none the wiser, with the time zone difference,
but that wouldn't be fair.
Also, I'm tired and want to go to bed.
So this is going to be a very short entry, probably the shortest I've ever written, because it usually takes me a lot longer than 17 minutes to update (not that you can tell most days, but it does). It's not just the writing, there's doing the next and previous links, and the archives index and the main index page, then uploading everything to the proper directory. There's changing the stylesheet if I bother and if it seems appropriate (yes, I'm one of those freaks who tries to fit the style to the entry).
Thirteen minutes left. Just getting to this point has taken four minutes. See what I mean?
I had the best of intentions for today's entry. I was going to write something fun or pithy, maybe tell you about dinner on Saturday with our German friend Michael and his wife, who are always great company. Or continue the story of my trip to Miami, which by now is becoming something of a running joke. For a while today, there was another rather introspective entry writing itself in my head, but I can't even remember what it was about anymore.
Eleven minutes.
Instead, I ended up getting caught up in a little writing project, which turned out to be a waste of time because I'm not going to send it in. It also completely killed my mood, and I had an embarrassingly emotional reaction to a very mild and rational disagreement. I think I'll blame hormones, because otherwise I may just be going batty. Er.
Nine minutes. How much time should I leave for all the cleanup work and uploading? I'm thinking probably five minutes. Maybe four.
So, by the time I actually had the opportunity to sit here and write an entry, I was no longer in the right mood.
Seven minutes. It did not actually take me two whole minutes to write that sentence; I had written more stuff and then deleted it. I can't stop myself from editing, at least a little. Which may sound surprising, because I pretty much need an editor to follow me around and clean up after me. (Come to think of it, I also need a life editor as well as the writing kind. I basically require a whole editorial staff.)
Six minutes. I think I'd better sign off now, since I'd forgotten about the extra time for posting to the portal and sending out a notify message. So you're actually getting an eleven-minute entry with a misleading title. Inflation is inescapable these days, isn't it?