04.17.2003 - 3:48 p.m.

Because I spent most of today booked with student tutorials whose students failed to show up, I�d decided several hours ago to dedicate my extra free bonus time to the shameless surfing of the internet. I was short of sleep, so I deserved it. At around two-thirty, during a �tutorial� with an absent or possibly invisible continuing education student, a knock on my office door makes me look up from an email I am writing about exploding toads.

But please, don't waste another moment wondering about the exploding toads. The entry below is about the knock, or more specifically, the knocker: my boss, who never, ever, EVER shows up at my office. To the point where I have wondered if he knows where it is. �I just came by to see how it was going,� the boss says with a smile. �The committee meeting let out early, so I was in the area.� This is part of his charm, this casual thoughtfulness. You are flattered for his gift of time out of his busy schedule even as you scramble to remember the things you were going to tell him at your last meeting, the one he called to cancel three minutes after it was supposed to start.

I am smiling back at him while using my peripheral vision to minimize windows and pull a more productive-seeming tab to the front of the browser. Work email, perhaps. I decide in this moment that someday, I need to break him of his scheduling habits.

�So what are you up to?� He helps himself to the other seat, seemingly oblivious to my slight case of panic.

�Oh, uh, dreamweaver stuff.� I answer as I sneakily (at least, I hope it was sneakily) pull up the relevant program on my laptop. �Putting things in the workshop templates,� I add as those site files pop up.

�Good job,� the boss tells me. There is a moment of conversational thought, during which he pulls a peanut butter cup out of my candy jar, and I look around at all the walls. Twice. �So, any news for me?� the boss wants to know.

I think of the workshop participants I haven�t gotten around to calling, of the tutor tasks I haven�t followed up on, and assorted other things that I really could have accomplished today, had I a functioning work ethic. I decide to stick with the truth:

�Nope. I only have news when I know you�re coming.�

-stonebridge

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