A Tale of Two Golf Balls

With the arrival of spring, I'm posting a true golf story that happened to me a few years ago. After the incident, I stewed on it for several holes before I realized maybe there were two viewpoints to the story, and perhaps I wasn't necessarily right:

I should have taken it as an omen. As I walked across the putting green to the driving range, the lone man practicing his putting grumbled something unintelligible at me. I said, "I’m doing great," assuming he had given me a customary greeting when in reality he may have been complaining about my walking across his putting line or telling me a tornado had been spotted.

I spent some time on the driving range while the other man teed off ahead of me. By the time I tee off, he had gotten a good two holes ahead of me. Because of high winds and the Masters being on television, the course was virtually empty. To keep a decent spacing from the man in front of me, I played two balls. While standing on the 4^th green, I saw him put his bag down on the 6^th tee. At that point, I decided I would start playing one ball in the hopes of passing him and getting in a full round of eighteen holes.

The fifth hole was a par 3 that played 195 yards with a large green surrounded by a creek, pond and trees. Because of a steady headwind, I pulled out my 5 wood and crushed a shot starting out over the water and the trees. The wind brought it back into play. I watched as the ball sailed over the trees knowing it's on a perfect line to the hole. I never saw the ball land, but I knew it had to be up there close or perhaps over the green.

I walked to the green with my head bowed down into a fierce wind. When I looked up, I saw my ball on the left side of the green, thirty feet from the hole but a well played shot in the wind. I set my bag down next to the green and pulled out my putter. From the corner of my eye, I noticed someone coming out of the trees from the other side of the creek. It’s the guy from in front of me. He carried his bag across the bridge and set it on the side of the green. Could I have been mistaken? Did I hit into him?

"Did I hit into you?" I asked. "I didn’t see you."

"No, no. I was just messing around down there."

He pulled out his putter and walked across the green as I did the same. I couldn't figure out his intentions. I assumed he just wanted to practice the hole. When I got close to the ball, I realized it’s his ball and not mine. He chipped onto the green sometime after my drive! I casually walked over the green, looking for my ball assuming it went in the water. He pulled out the flagstick and putted!

Okay, fine, I thought. I’ll just pick up my bag and head onto the sixth hole. But before I get off the green, he had picked up his bag and went to the sixth tee as well without a word. What was he doing? Maybe he wanted to partner up for the rest of the round. I didn’t know.

I stood there and watched him tee off on six. He picked up his bag and moseyed on down the sixth hole. I glared. Grimaced. Pouted. But he ignored me. Flustered, I dropped a ball and did a few practice putts. Then I skipped the sixth hole and cut in front of him on seven.

An opposing viewpoint from Roy Bob, the guy playing in front of me:

What a great day for golf! While warming up on the practice green, some yo-yo comes cuttin’ across, bag on his back leavin’ big ol’ indentations all across the green. I mean, you may as well drive your Caddy Master across the green. You know what I’m saying?

But I just gave him, you know, the usual country club banter, "How’s it going? Great day for golf ain’t it? Say, how’s the Masters’ goin’? Who’s winnin’?"

And you know what he said? "I’m doing great."

What does that mean? I mean, was he in the Masters and he did great and hopped on a plane to get back to our club? Danged whippersnappers.

But I forgot about him and went to tee off. So I’m movin’ along and get to hole number five, par 3 into the wind. I pulled out the trusty 7 wood and nailed it like I always do. But it’s windy, remember? So the wind blowed to hog heaven on me, pushing my ball into the trees across the creek. Never seen nothin’ like it.

I wandered down by the creek lookin’ for balls and whuppin’ water moccasins like you is supposed to when golfin’ by a creek. At this point, I’m plus 3 ‘cause I lost one ball and found four new ones. All sudden, I hear a whack! That yo-yo just teed off while I’m walkin’ the creek. Funny shot too. Started out way left. Lucky for him it hit a tree and dropped straight down sixty yards short of the green.

I found a ball pretty near the creek. It’s a Dunlop. Not mine, but I played it and didn’t take the penalty stroke because I’m tryin’ not to waste time. Chipped it on up the green a good 30 feet past the hole. Not bad from where I was though.

I crossed the bridge just as the yo-yo is settin’ his bag next to the green. He looked at me like I’m some kind of ghost comin’ from the woods like that. Asked if he hit into me. I tell him no. And he doesn’t apologize! Can you believe it? I mean, despite my denyin’ he hit into me, he should still apologize. Cos he did. Sorta.

Now, get this, he pulled out his putter and got to walking toward my ball. My mind was in stitches, him a thinkin’ my ball was his. I coulda done told him that his fell sixty yards short of the green, but the boy needed to learn to watch his shot not his fantasies. Besides, if he didn’t pick it up, I could come back for it later.

When I saw him eyeing my ball, I skedaddled it on over there 'cause if he hit it, that’s a penalty stroke. I’ll be damned if I’m taking a penalty stroke on his foolhardyness when I’m a puttin’ for par. Or was it birdie?

Then he pretended like he knew it was my ball all along, standing there with his hands on his hips looking at the pond thinking his ball might wash up. I went ahead and putted out. At the same time, he’s headed back to his bag. I jam the flag stick back in the cup and rushed to my bag. I suspected he was tryin’ to cut in front of me, so I headed on over to number six and never looked back.

Well, I did look back just before my second shot on six to see if he might hit into me. But why would he do that? I mean, if he saw me whuppin’ those water moccasins, he knowed I’m not to be messed with.

Honorable Bacon

A few months ago, while setting up the wireless network in our new house, I saw a list of neighborhood wireless networks that included “BaconBuddie.” I assumed that was the wifi network for the little breakfast cafe around the corner and thought that was pretty cool.

Flash forward five months later when St. Pauli Girl came home late one afternoon and noticed the tree on the side of our house was now literally on the side of our house. As in leaning against. As in uprooted with our house as its lone crutch. It hadn't really done much damage, but it could fall completely over at any minute, not only damaging our house but our neighbors' as well, or their motor home parked nearby.

Hence, we had to meet our neighbors to ask them to move their motor home so the tree could be hauled away. They turned out to be a sweet older couple who claimed to be in their nineties. And guess what the ninety-somethings names are? Bacon (Mr.) and Buddie (Mrs.). No joke! Bacon is short, slim, and wears a baseball cap and cowboy boots, which is pretty much what I'd imagine someone named Bacon to look like.

St. Pauli Girl and I discussed whether that was his given name or just a nickname. We finally decided that it had to be his given name which must have put Bacon the child under a lot of pressure. Someone named Bacon must be honorable and salt of the earth. He/she must be firm and dress crisply. A Bacon may never be destined to be president, but he/she must be a hardworker and honest as the day is long. The expectations of the name are the equivalent of naming a child Sam Houston, or Eli Whitney or Lancelot Link or Wishbone.

Now onto a tangent: Last Saturday St. Pauli Girl and I went out to brunch at a local wine bar that also has live jazz music. That should give you a good indication of the pretentiousness and prices of the place. For my entree, I ordered a crepe stuffed with eggs, sausage, potatoes, and hollandaise sauce, which of course is just a breakfast burrito priced four times higher because of the words “crepe” and “hollandaise.” For my one side dish, I ordered bacon.

The burrito, er crepe, was okay (would have been great with Tapatio hot sauce) but for the first time in my life, I actually let them take my plate with uneaten bacon on it (as did St. Pauli Girl). This is the equivalent of the Pope canceling Sunday services on a whim. It was truly the worst bacon that I can recall since 1985.

Using my fingers, I held up a piece that drooped over my hand spilling grease down my arm. “I thought they stopped making Sizzlean in the eighties?” I asked St. Pauli Girl. “I can't decide if it's just poor quality or they tried to microwave it or both.”

If in fact it had been microwaved on a bunch of paper towels, they might as well have served up strips of the paper towels instead, because they were that limp, greasy, and tasteless. It’s not “brunch” if the bacon is not even on the same level as IHOP’s or Denny's (not that there's anything wrong with IHOP or Denny's bacon). A Grand Slam it wasn’t. More like a broken bat bloop single.

In the end, bacon the food and Bacon the name fall under the caveat of “to those who much was given, much more will be required.” Restaurant bacon must be firm, crisp, salty and smell like heaven. A person named Bacon must be humble, hardworking, crisply dressed and wear cowboy boots.

For all I know, our neighbor Bacon could be a serial killer, but I will never believe it.

Christmas in April

One of the only good things about moving is discovering things you don't remember having. Recently, I discovered a shoebox full of old letters/postcards from family, friends and countrymen. I found a rather amusing letter from my dad from 1991 discussing the upcoming holiday season and who gets whose name for the annual Christmas gift exchange. I found the humor/tone eerily familiar and decided to make it a guest post in my blog. Had I waited until Christmas, I probably would have forgotten about it, so you are stuck with Christmas in April.

I already anticipate a court summons from him for copyright infringement:

To: The Members of the Magnificent Klemperer Clan

From: The Magnificent Parents of the Klemperer Clan

Date: November 10, 1991

Since the Great Pumpkin did not appear again and the turkey will be too stuffed to do anything, someone had to do the name drawing for Christmas. After consulting with the intelligent member of the family (you did not get a call about this? I wonder what that means? Hmmmmm.) your father was unanimously elected by a vote of 1 – 1. Everyone knows 1 – 1 equals zero so there was no opposition.

Enclosed you will find the name that was drawn by the absentee hand. We have carefully recorded who drew whom and put the list in a Miracle Whip jar, sealed it with duct tape and put it who knows where. If you lose your name, you can call and for a small fee, we will tell you the name given (we mean drawn) for you. Of course we probably could not find the list in the jar as I forgot to empty it first. For those of you who are married and decide to discuss the name you have drawn, just remember, your spouse is kidding if she/he says “Dad” and your slip says “Dad.” This brings us to the thought that we (Mom and Dad) have decided to participate in the drawing. To make it easy, we will accept gift certificates in increments of a thousand (dollars).

The following guidelines are for those who will be coming over during the Christmas season. We will be celebrating an old-fashioned Christmas this year. We will use candles for light and the fireplace for heat. We suggest that you bring warm clothing and portable heaters (non-electric). Rooms will be assigned on a first come, first served basis. The warm rooms will be given to the early arrivals; the others will have to fight the polar bears.

As a new tradition this year, boxes will be placed at the front door to accept your gifts of food and spirits. The boxes will be marked with your name so Santa can find out who's naughty or nice. Fingerprints will be taken and the hidden video cameras will record everything (not that anyone would take from someone else's box and put it in theirs!).

When you register, note that only cash is accepted, in advance. Your parking tickets must be stamped daily or else the rates will automatically double.

All fax machines, computers, and electronic games become the property of the establishment if plugged in. Long distance is provided by the U.S. Postal Service for your convenience. Anyone who comes down with an illness will be immediately banished to the Franciscan Brothers Nursing Home for care. They devote their lives to caring for the sick. They will love you if you are sick.

Hopefully, you will find these few rules to be helpful, but bribery works.

As it may be crowded at our house, the following will not be allowed:

• Snowballs
• Icicles
• Cranberries
• Kidney Stew
• Necessary evils
• Extra whipped cream
• Soap operas
• Sad sacks

Please don't forget to bring the grandchildren. We will even take them on an outing for a few hours (without their parents)!

Mom and Dad

Chupacrabra, Sasquatch or ....?

We recently spent a weekend at our “vacation house” (the nice way of saying we have two mortgages right now) where we met St. Pauli Girl's brother and sister-in-law. After a bit of conversation, her brother said, “I don't mean to alarm you, but you might have a chupacabra living here.”

He then took us to the backyard where to put it simply, some animal had turned a small area of the lawn into its personal litter box. We were all puzzled as none of us could think of an animal that would do something like that in the same spot (well except for cats and litter boxes but that's only because the cats force their human pets to clean up after them.)

But I immediately got excited because I realized I now had to go to a town hall meeting of the “Finding Bigfoot” crew to report these findings. I decided I would wait and let them bag the evidence themselves. I could already imagine Matt or Bobo talking about this amazing find:

“We were skeptical of the story at first but when you have hard or maybe squishy evidence like this, you can't ignore it. I've never seen Bigfoot dung but I have no reason to believe this wasn't Bigfoot dung. So as an experiment, we had Bobo take a dump and then compared it with the Bigfoot dung. They weren't close at all. That's when I knew we had some credible Bigfoot evidence.”

My mind came back to reality as we all discussed possibilities. Since all of the droppings were beneath trees, I reasoned that it had to be a bird like a hawk or owl. Everyone seemed skeptical until I told the story of my golfing experience a few years ago when I saw a Mississippi kite getting terrorized by two smaller birds and well, those birds literally scared the crap out of that kite. And I'm glad I wasn't standing any closer as the pile would have been large enough for rave laughs in an Adam Sandler movie.

Luckily in this modern day and age, we can answer any question via the internet. I queried “owl droppings” which revealed a whole page of pictures which really didn't seem to match what we had seen. Next I searched for “hawk droppings” which brought up more pictures plus the heartwarming story of a hawk dropping a miracle puppy from the sky. At this point, I became convinced the droppings had not come from a bird. So I entered my next query, “lot of poop in a small area” which brought up a page full of results. After a quick glance, I changed the query to “lot of animal poop in a small area.” Lo and behold, I found an animal forum where someone had the exact same situation in his yard.

I quickly went through the answers, sorting out the the far fetched (“bears or otters”) from the smart ass (“I consider myself wild”) to the most likely (“Sasquatch”). I had Bobo on speed dial when I realized the consensus of the answers was racoons. Apparently this is how raccoons roll and raccoon latrines are very common as well as a serious health hazard. I just wish I had found all of this info before we left the vacation house. Instead I get to spend the next few weeks imagining a party of raccoons talking in Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider voices, “Hey, watch this!”

Meanwhile, every time I do a new internet query, I get pestered with ads like “still looking for poop?” or “click here for more poop pictures” or “history of the poop deck webpage.”

Tough Neighborhood HOA

Texas likes to brag about how friendly its people are and for the most part, it's true. I remember the first time I ever came to Texas and anytime I walked into a store, I received a warm friendly greeting. That was very weird to me, and of course I ruined it by always responding, “What's it to you?” and flipping the clerk off for good measure. (I lived in Boston at the time.)

But then on occasion you run into someone who is only friendly in the sense that well, at least he didn't shoot me:

We spent last week at our vacation house in the Hill Country, which is actually just a nice way of saying we currently have two mortgages. As luck would have it, potential buyers came to look at our house. We left for about an hour, but when we came back, they were still there, so we parked on a side road to wait.

After about twenty minutes, a white pickup passed us. The driver slowly made several u-turns up and down the road before finally coming up beside us. I rolled down my window and smiled at our friendly neighbor.

Or not. The man, whom I’ll call Vince, rolled down his window as his truck came to a stop. “May I ask what you’re doing here?” he asked, eyes narrow with suspicion.

“Oh, we're just staking out our own house over there,” I said, pointing to our house. “It’s for sale, and we’re waiting for some prospective buyers to leave.”

Vince shook his head. “Jesus, what’s so wrong with that house that it goes on the market every two years?”

“What? Oh. Well, it was on the market for a while before us, but we've lived there for four years.”

“No, you haven't,” Vince said. “One and half, maybe two years max.”

I glanced at St. Pauli Girl who was biting her lip and turning her face away. I think her shoulders started to shake up and down, just a little.

“Um, no, we bought it in March of 2009. So it's pretty much exactly four years we’ve lived here.”

“No, you haven’t. You haven't been there that long.”

St. Pauli Girl leaned over to interrupt. “We moved in March 2009. Four years ago.”

He dropped that argument and moved on to his next one. “Do you mind telling me how much you're asking?” he said.

“No, not at all. It's all over the internet. Two-hundred ten thousand.”

Vince closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and shook his head slowly as if he were getting a headache. “It’s people like you who are ruining this neighborhood.”

I misunderstood his meaning, I guess, and frowned. “We've studied the market quite a bit, and it’s comparably priced for this area.”

“No! You’re destroying our property values. You should be asking four fifty!”

“Excuse me?”

“How many square feet you got?”

“Thirty-six hundred.”

“Well, I got nineteen hundred and I'd be asking three fifty for my house if it were for sale. Don't ruin it for everyone,” Vince said slapping his left hand on the steering wheel for emphasis.

I was starting to get irritated. I said, “You know that house down the road on the corner on five acres that just sold? It sat empty for two years listed at two-sixty. They had to remodel and drop the price to sell it.”

“That house was a piece of crap. I wouldn't board my ex-wife there.”

“Your house must be very nice.”

“Flawless. But I gotta keep constant guard with those long-hairs living out back behind me. Last week the sheriff hauled one off. Sent him back to the clink because he broke his probation.”

“Yeah, there are people at the end of our street who had the sheriff pay them a visit too,” I said, talking about what we call the “meth house.”

“There's too many no-gooders around here. That's why I carry a gun.”

“Good idea,” I said. That's when I realized we hadn't seen his right hand; it was more than likely resting on a gun in the seat beside him. I flashed him a bright smile and put the car in drive. “Thanks for keeping the neighborhood safe.”

“Well, good luck with your sale,” Vince said, snorting as he drove off.

Too bad it took us four two years to meet Vince. But despite destroying the neighborhood property values, I'm glad we're no longer living between the meth house and neighborhood militia.

Bigfoot Prefers Not to Be Found

A while back I wrote about my late-night television guilty habit of watching Ghost Adventures. I have since lost interest in that show as it has become less about hunting for ghosts and more about their audio detection devices such as the “spirit box,” which can amazingly translate white noise like “grrmphhxsskshhelkuyayt” into “kill you!” I have since discovered a much more superior show, Finding Bigfoot.

The show follows the adventures of three bigfoot nerds (including a man named Bobo) and a skeptical female biologist as they travel the world trying to find hard evidence of Bigfoot. But you don't have to watch the show--I'll just summarize one, because they are all pretty much the same:

Opening stock “preview” scene: video of a roaring beast that looks suspiciously like a gorilla.

Cut to: The team is in a car headed to a town hall meeting. Upon arrival, locals relate their Bigfoot stories. The Bigfoot hunters then pick the most credible sources from the meeting, jump back into the car, and tear off to where the most impressive incident happened. There, the eye witness demonstrates what he/she was doing and what he/she saw or heard. Then the experts send Bobo to the exact spot of the Bigfoot sighting. The witness then points out, “No, no, the creature was much taller than that.” At this point, the experts then deem the witness as extremely credible, since the measurements reported by the witness concur almost exactly with other reports of the height and breadth of a sasquatch (or “squatch,” to those in the know).

One time a witness described a series of footprints where a Bigfoot had come through. The experts recreated the footprints and decided that no human could possible duplicate that gait. The female biologist, ever playing devil’s advocate, quickly ran through the footprints demonstrating just the opposite. Bobo said, “Yeah, but how far could you have kept up that pace, huh?”

At this point the experts pick a spot to stake out during the night. They separate into pairs and proceed to make bigfoot calls hoping to attract one or two. The first night usually ends in disappointment.

Next comes a commercial break including Bigfoot trivia like:

“True or False. A bigfoot can run up to 30 miles per hour.”

“True or False. A bigfoot can swim.”

Amazingly, both of those statements are true! Not sure how they figured it out, but I guess they timed Bobo in a forty yard sprint and figured an animal twice his size can run twice as fast.

Next one member of the team will spend a few days by himself/herself in the woods in a solo field investigation. This usually involves a scary encounter with a raccoon or deer via night vision goggles. Meanwhile, the others continue interviewing more witnesses.

Finally, the whole team spends another night in the woods making Bigfoot calls and hitting trees with baseball bats because bigfoots like sports (another true fact, you heard it here first). Then they will stumble into an area where tree branches have been mysteriously bent, which we learn is obviously caused by a Bigfoot traipsing through the area. Then we reach the startlingly climax where someone will suddenly say, “Stop!” or “Ssshhhh! Did you hear that?” and cut to commercial.

After the commercial, we see everyone looking around through night vision goggles which will display a small blip in the distance. “Yep, that's Bigfoot,” or more likely a raccoon, or a deer, or a jackalope. Sometimes they'll say, “I heard it! There's definitely a squatch in the area!” Amazingly, they never record the sounds.

In the end, they gather up in the dark and assess the mission and congratulate themselves: “Well, there was definitely a lot of activity in the area, and this mission was a success!”

By contrast, perhaps that's where Ghost Adventures succeeds: the ghost hunters realized after several seasons that they needed the viewer to hear the sounds of ghosts, so they came up with devices that would interpret the white noise for us, while the Bigfoot crew just says, “Yessirree, we heard a lot of ‘squatches tonight! Trust us. Would Bobo lie?”

But I always have to stay up for the ending, because I don’t want to miss when they actually capture a Bigfoot on film.

The Working Life

By now you may have heard the uproar about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer requiring employees to report to the office rather than working from home.  There are certainly many arguments for and against the policy, but the absolute worst argument is that work-at-home employees nap all day while office workers are pillars of productivity.

As a computer programmer, I’ve worked in a corporate setting for over 20 years. For the past ten years I’ve worked from home, going into the office usually only once a week, so I think I'm in a good position to provide detailed summaries of both realities. Let's take a look at a typical workday for me at home (the real “me,”) and me in the office (“me” being a composite of the many office-mates I’ve had through the years).

Working from Home

7 a.m. - 4 p.m.

7:00: I sit down at my desk in sweats and a t-shirt with a cup of coffee, activate my computer.

7:05: I scroll through my work emails to see if anything urgent happened since I logged off the night before. If not, I pull up my personal emails and respond as needed.

7:15 - 8:30: I scan my newsfeeds via twitter to see what happened in the world while I was asleep.

8:30 - 9:00: I check the weather forecast etc., warming up to the idea of thinking about maybe getting to work.

9:00 - 10:30: Procrastination over, I actually work.

10:30 - 11:00: Work continues with a conference call. Read online newspaper during meeting.

11:00 - 11:30: Too close to lunch to get any more computer work done, so . . . a little housework.

11:30- 12:30: Lunch hour! But not really. I usually do one of the following:

A. Mow the lawn

B. Empty the dishwasher

C. Ride my stationary bike

D. Laundry

12:30 - 1:00: Eat last night’s meatloaf at my desk while working (if there’s a time-sensitive project) or scanning newsfeeds.

1:00 - 2:30: Work continues.

2:30 - 3:00: Break time: I fold clothes, clean up from lunch, or take a walk if the weather is nice.

3:00 - 4:00: Wrap up whatever work I need to finish for the day, then read my newsfeeds and hope no co-workers contact me before 4:00.

4:45: Get a call from my boss. I answer it because she thinks I might be gone golfing so she's checking up on me.

Working in the Office

8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

8:00: Park, lock my car, and head towards the building. Being parked by 8:00 is considered “on time” because it's not my fault the parking lot is so far away from my office. Plus, the elevator takes forever.

8:10: Activate my computer then head to the break room to get coffee. If the coffee pot is empty, make a new pot and wait for it to finish. No one else is there yet.

8:30 - 9:30: Back at my desk I go through work emails and then personal emails. Hearing co-workers’ voices, I wander back to the break room to hang out for a while and discuss the absence of a Starbucks in the building, how much we hate our jobs, “the Man,” and non-present co-workers.

9:30 - 10:00: Check newsfeeds while being subjected to a loud conference call that Leesha two cubicles down puts on speaker phone.

10:00 - 10:30: Go downstairs, walk outside at least twenty feet from the building, and take a smoke break with the handful of employees left who smoke.

10:30 – 10:45: Work, alternating with video games on my cell phone.

10:45 - 11:20: Attend a meeting. Everyone except the person giving the presentation plays with his/her cell phone.

11:20 - 11:45: After the meeting, hang out in the conference room and argue with co-workers about where to go for lunch.

11:45 - 1:15: I win! It’s the Japanese steakhouse around the corner. Eight of us sit and watch the chef do an impressive stir-fry on the grill in front of us. We all split three slices of fried cheesecake.

1:15 - 1:20: Drop off the to-go box with leftovers at my desk.

1:20 - 1:45: Smoke break, then I take the Wall Street Journal to the restroom.

1:45 - 2:00: Back at my desk. Across the aisle Kip yawns/growls like King Kong, burps loudly, and makes other bodily noises I haven’t heard since the 5^th grade. He hollers at me that he just sent me a funny video.

2:00 - 2:15: I check out the YouTube link of “hilarious cat farting.” A few other videos catch my eye, so I return the favor via an email to Kip.

2:15 - 3:00: I wander down the corridor, alert Kip to the email I just sent, pause at Rodney’s desk, and we discuss either:

A. Our previous night's league softball game

B. Fantasy baseball or football

C. How much we hate our jobs, “The Man,” and non-present co-workers

D. How hilarious that “cat farting” video was that Kip just sent

3:00 - 3:15: The afternoon’s flying by so it’s time to multi-task: Coffee break and smoke break.

3:15 – 3:45: Get afternoon work done while wearing headphones and posting IM status as “busy” so no one will bother me before 5:00 quitting time.

3:45 – 4:45: Catch up on Facebook, twitter, and my gaming forum.

4:45: Time to leave! Woo-hoo!

4: 46: Get a call from the boss on my cell phone. I ignore it; she should have called me on my work phone before I left for the day.

So yes, there are advantages to working from home. Although, I would argue that my typical work clothes are a step up from the “casual” office-wear I’ve seen some of my co-workers show up in. But all in all, the idea that you can measure productivity by the number of hours that someone “shows up” is absurd.