Oh, ack

You know what I love? I love it when, after having put in a nice long nine hour day, you come back after dinner to shut down your laptop and discover an email saying, “We need to provide the client an update on this by lunch tomorrow – will we have anything to show him? Please call me tomorrow morning to discuss…”

Bonus points if, uh, no. You don’t have anything to show him. Or the boss who sent you the email. If you’re just sitting there thinking, Uuuuuhhhh…I thought I had ALL DAY tomorrow to finish this…

Oh yeah. That right there, that’s the best.

Triple-sigh-with-rolled-eyes-and-head-held-in-hands™

It isn’t really as bad as it felt when I first read that email. When I first read that email, I had a moment of vertigo, imagining myself pounding back cup after cup of coffee and burning right through the night (and no doubt making an utter ass of myself in the client meeting the next day… “duuuuuuh, I do work good, huh?”.

But after I got done throwing clothes at random in the general direction of the laundry basket folding the clothing that was strewn all over the hall floor waiting to be folded, I realized that eh – this isn’t all that horrible.

All the data is gathered. All that really remains is to organize it, pop off a couple ‘case’ statements to put business requirements into a simple answer: If this, this, that, this and the other are true, THEN ‘A’; else if this, that, that, this, the other and your mother’s tennis shoes are true, THEN ‘B’; else, ‘C’ and thank you very much for playing!

The only thing that is annoying is that, seeing as how I’m querying against tables with an average of six million rows of data…simply running the queries is going to take ten, fifteen, thirty minutes apiece. I figure I’ve got at least six of these I’m going to want to have compiled and emailed back to said boss (who is on East Coast time right now and will be banging the keyboard at 6:00 in the morning, when EXCUSE ME!, I’m busy reading the Wall Street Journal!!!) (do NOT interrupt my morning Journal fix. Just…don’t…) before I give up for the night; as I generally am done with my Journal (don’t mess!) and on to working by 7:00…it should all be good.

I’ll still be in bed by 10. And, in the bizarre way life has of handing me sugar with lemons, it’s nice. I have guests arriving tomorrow, and all the hours I work tonight I will be shaving, guilt-free, off my afternoon tomorrow.

Not so bad after all, huh?