I’ve been like that little Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the dyke for the last couple of weeks. Yeah, yeah – so you’ve heard. I’ve done it to death. We get it, Pye. You’re busy at work. We know. I’ll bet you didn’t know that I’ve been coming up with some interesting methods of keeping organized as a result. I bet you also didn’t know that she gave me a ride on her Harley after the Indigo Girls concert.

I’ve tried Outlook tasks and meeting reminders. I’ve tried BaseCamp. I spent an hour on the phone getting a Salesforce plugin demo. I read Covey. I started getting to work earlier and staying later. I began delegating things I wouldn’t have dreamt of letting someone else do a month go. And then do you know what I did?

I went to CVS and bought a little maroon notebook. And now everything is fine.

People are wired differently, and I suppose when you’re in the eye of the storm you really learn a few things about yourself. What I’ve learned is that I benefit greatly from writing down every little thing I have to do over the course of a given week, because otherwise it may slide off the plate. And I mean everything. I’ve got potboilers like “haircut” and “cat litter” in there at the moment. We make my grandmother do that so she’ll remember to take her medication, so I’m not exactly over the moon about my new solution. Or not being able to steal my Grandmother’s medication anymore.

So if the next time you see me I’m jotting stuff down in a little notebook, and I tell it’s for impromptu Haiku, I’m lying. I’ve probably just reminded myself to flush the toilet.

I have never experienced a blog lull of this magnitude in my 2+ years of writing. I hate the “I’ve been so busy” excuse with a passion. You know the one I mean. That annoying cop out that some people feel absolves them of any and all guilt, regardless of what they happen to be apologizing for. It’s just before “Whatever” in the short list of Manchurian Candidate-esque trigger words that will one day land me in jail for murdering someone with an air conditioner.

“Say, weren’t we supposed to get married last weekend?”
“Yeah, sorry I got really busy. So, did you see Grey’s Anatomy?”

I am not going to rattle off all the hectic stuff that’s going on. That would be about as interesting as Grey’s Anatomy. So please just empathize a little bit with your old pal Dave. I’ll wander back soon.

I’d love to have a moment of silence today, as I usually do on September 11th, but I’ve already been deep in the middle of an entire week of silence, apparently. Life gets in the way but I shall return to the blogging fold, more prolfic than ever, this week.

In the mean time, please read this. And never forget it.

Actually, believe it. Skype lets you make free calls in North America with just a plugin microphone for your PC or laptop. Vonage costs $30 a month. Again, Skype is less functional but free. You can even call people’s actual phones from your computer. One of the reasons I talk on the celly so little is that I hate holding the tiny things in my big monkey paws. Skype allows me to chat away for free while I’m hacking away on the idiot box as per normal. So I am attempting to adopt the technology and I encourage you to check it out too. If you become, or already are, a user – I can be reached at the username Pyeman73. What’s the matter, you can’t call nobody?

Not that I spend a lot of time blogging on the weekends due to conciousness issues, but the head’s up is I am off to Canada until Monday night. Building headaches have been driving me squirrelly as per usual, and although it’s poor timing being September 1st and all (as everyone moves in/out on this date) I am frigging off and becoming incommunicado for the next 72 hours.

You’ll be fine without me. I’m off to drink Canadians on my folks’ new pontoon boat. And drive 20 hours – so feel the sudden burst of jealousy quickly fade away. There’s a True Value down the street if you need lightbulbs. I don’t do lightbulbs.