Hi.

"I tried!" I told Friend when she responded to yet another claim of boredom by telling me to write a blog post. "I opened a Word document and I stared at the Word document and put my fingers on the keys and nothing happened. So I closed the Word document. And told you I was still bored."

So this post reminds me of one of Chienne's habits. She'll wander to the back door, nudge her dog door open with her nose and poke her head outside, the thin plastic resting atop her head. She'll stand there, all four paws on the kitchen floor and just look around for a minute. Then she'll step back and her door will thwap closed and she'll wander back to the living room to nap on the couch. I've been reading what you're all writing lately and it's far better than anything I have to say right now. But I feel it necessary to poke my head out and wave before starting the week.

I started asking Friend for her paper last night. She finally pried the unpublished work out of her graduate adviser's hands with offers to submit it herself. And when I hear the word 'publish' I get all excited and pushy. My own papers are out at the moment - one waiting for a decision (for 3 weeks - if you don't have time to edit a journal, don't edit the journal! And my politely worded email to the office resulted in a politely worded response that I'd hear something when the editor decided. Insert huffy sigh here.), another with Boss (I will begin bothering him today - I don't look forward to this.) and the third with Steve and Carrie, both of whom are quite busy with their own work.

"I want to read it," I whined to Friend, thinking that if I asked enough annoying questions, she'd want to work on it herself.

"It's not very interesting," she said, not picking her head up off the pillow of the couch. "Go mow your lawn again. It's probably already grown."

I paused to consider that question, glaring threateningly toward the back of the house. I drug Friend with me to Lowe's after shoving the mower through patches of long, thick grass. And there are weeds that produce spikey extensions on their gross, ridged leaves! I won't have it! So I went to buy weed killer and a spreader. I attack tonight. I'll keep you updated. But I think the degree of my hatred for the spikey weeds will promise victory. Or I'll kill my entire lawn trying to get rid of them. Either way.

"The bag told me I have to wait a day before I use the weed stuff," I explained. "It also says it kills weeds 2x faster. Faster than what I don't know, but doubling the rate still seems good. So I have time to read the paper. I bet it's good. And interesting." But my arguments didn't work - Friend has developed strong skills toward tuning me out, I think. So I shrugged and refreshed bloglines and waited for anyone to send me email or initiate a chat.

Speaking of, I've always resisted chatting. I like capital letters and punctuation and properly spelled words. Once I tried it though, I fell hard for the little windows and the way my sentences zing off to their recipients whenever I hit enter. So if you've happened to send me blog email, you're in my address book. Anytime the dot by your name turns green, you may picture me perking up and saying, "Hello! How are you? Would you like to chat? I type very fast!" But then you turn gray again and I pout for a second before going to refresh bloglines or my iGoogle page. Let's face it, I soothe myself, I have very little to say that would be even moderately interesting.

Which is why the blog post ends here, I think. We'll just hope that something cool happens at work today.