Hard to believe it’s been a week or so since the last entry. Despite the best intentions, life just happens.

I learned something about working weekends. Avoid them. Let me repeat that; it’s important. The first rule of the good life club: weekends are for relaxing, not the job.

Last week a disaster prompted emergency action, this round was by choice. I had looked forward to this particular Saturday for more than three months, because it meant a hands on network upgrade — a pink elephant among system admins. I always heard about techs who swapped out the old and busted gear for the new hotness, but ’twas never me. Today it was.

On the plus side, the Team Eagle Eye edits are coming along. Some sessions go very well, I emerge from the office with 1-2 brand new pages to replace cut material. Good days. Other sessions feel more like running in place, the changes are subtle. And that realization is biggest reward so far, that no matter how long this process takes, the advances are tangible. They feel real, even if I’m one of the few that see them right now.

Not writing – or writing in a half-assed way – is harder than doing so on a schedule. I relearned this lesson when circumstances at work compelled longer days this past week. By the time I got home my mind had jellied. At best I could edit existing pieces like a chicken picks at feed, bobbing for little bits at a time, lacking real focus. Some weeks go like that, I guess.

So far, next week promises a much smoother ride.

The colder the temperature, the easier it is to think, the easier my work is. I can not communicate effectively — send me to re-re school — in hot, muggy climates. Writing in the summer, therefore, can be one rough ticket, a struggle which verges on Sisyphusean. Often when I read what I produced during a hot spell, the pages can look foreign, as if someone else wrote them. In a way, somebody else did. A madman. Or at least a not-very-happy-man.

As a preventive strike against the heat wave this weekend, I cranked the AC in my little office to maximum this morning. It is now 11:15AM and the sweater, jeans and long sleeve shirt are not cutting it. God, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

Five working days remain until graduation. Then it’s off to Cisco Bootcamp. Destination: a week of intensive network training. Learning opportunities and school go hand in hand, I think and besides the long, quiet, uninterrupted breaks — three and half months for summer, a month at Christmas — the greatest benefit of working for an educational institution.

About halfway through the revised outline and I now concur with Team Eagle Eye; I resisted initally. There is a way to amp up the middle, leave the first third and the last quarter intact, and take the story to the next level. Not only will Mike Brody look stronger, the modifications will add considerable tension.

The only downside that the end of year madness might defer the heavy lifting until June 10. Quite a distateful prospect.