Ridonculous

My eyes are burning.

So far, this has been the week from hell. Monday I worked overtime because in a fit of frustration over the lack of organization among other editors, I volunteered to compile the tally box that all our papers would share. If you don't know what a tally box is, it's that extremely annoying little feature papers run the day after the election showing who got how many votes in what race. Contrary to what you may think, it's not as simple as plugging in numbers and names. I had to compile the behemoth a day ahead and work with a designer to make sure it flowed on the page without errors. Then I had to enter the total number of precincts in each race -- IF I could find them. Of course, I was also in charge of our local tally box, which involves much gnashing of teeth, hair pulling and nitpicky changes usually around midnight on election night. All put together, I was in tally box purgatory.

Yesterday I worked from 2:30p to 1a, with most of the work crammed between 9 and 12:30. In that space of time, reporters were taking their stories they had prewritten during the day and topping them off with results, quotes, some color from parties and an early direction of where the race was headed. We edited them, then I had to basically overhaul every story for our Web site...which entails recasting the lead sentences, changing everything to present tense, making sure all the "Tuesday"s said "today" or "tonight," softening some of the declarative statements that would work the next morning but not the same night, etc. Tedious. We did, however, get free pizza. Whoo-ee.

I fell asleep at 2a and woke up with Ryan's alarm at 7. Got ready for work and hauled my butt back in at 8 to re-recast all the stories for the Web site with semi-final results. Then I had to start budgeting the paper for tomorrow, sat in on a conference call, gave a few directions on a breaking story, then started to head out the door because I'm working a split shift today and hoped to go home for a nap.

But no. Just before I left, my mom called PLEADING with me to come look at her computer because my sister has homework to do and would be so mad if she came home and the comp. wasn't working. Sigh. So I then hauled out to Danville, where I determined said computer was CHOCK FULL OF VIRUSES. Excellent.

Turns out Target doesn't carry anti-virus software. Funny that. So I next ended up out in Dublin, purchasing above-mentioned software at Best Buy. But it can't be easy, no. Lest I run out of gas, I needed to stop and refuel the car, too. And despite having to wait in a long and irritating gas line at Safeway, the highlight of my day was getting to use my 10-cents off per gallon Club Card reward. Gas at $2.19 a gallon...woohoo!

Back to mom's and installed McAfee, which was still scanning when I left and had so far detected 43 "questionable" items. Forty-friggin-three. Heavy sigh. I'm so tired right now I feel like my eyes are little slits in my head. At least Mom paid for my gas. And gave me broccoli curry. :0) But dude, all that took up the 3 1/2 hours I was hoping to use for catching up on sleep.

Yeah, so I'm whiny. You would be too!

two more hours of work...i hate elections...brain dead