:: I must be mad

It seems logical now, but I suspect that 12 hours from now I'll be regretting it. The big fly in the ointment was the phone message waiting when I got home last night. It was the builder, saying he couldn't make it on Thursday, would it be ok if he came this morning instead? Well I didn't get the message until 1:30am, so it just had to be ok. He said 8:15am but didn't actually arrive until 8:45, so hurrah, an extra half hour's sleep.

But no more than that, because my bedroom's at the back and the guy is drilling and sawing and so on. I phoned work to check the time for my flight tomorrow morning, so I could order a taxi. The flight's at 6:10am; the taxi firm says check-in's an hour before flight time in these terror-stricken times, so I ordered the taxi for 5am.

So then GW Bush decides to make his statement at 1am UK time, presumably ordering the attack on Iraq to begin. That's normally our fifth edition deadline, so they made arrangements to "slip" pages (change them during the print run) after that until 3:30am. So either my colleague or I has to stay until 3:30am. I figure if I leave work at 1am I'll get barely any sleep anyway, so I may as well be here. Then I'll go home and have a shower, ready for the flight to London.

See? That's logical, isn't it?

Bertie's off in Dunfermline already, enjoying a mini-break with Colin and Jenny. He'll stay tonight and tomorrow night, and I'll get him back on Wednesday evening, after my appointment with the radiologist and a coffee date with Faye. That's great, because it means I can have a really good sleep tomorrow night, without having to get up and walk the dog.

The shed doors are looking pretty good. The joiner is a lovely bloke, very smiley. He was very taken with Bertie because he grew up with a racing greyhound as a pet, a "blue" one (gray actually, but it's called blue). He didn't completely finish before he left because the builder left him with bathroom handles for the doors -- which of course only lock from the inside. "All right if you're living in there," he said. And of course there would be the added advantage of the "engaged" sign. He's coming back tomorrow to fit the right handles, and then I'll just have to varnish or paint them and they're finished! He's sealed all round the jamb with silicon gunk so they're good and weather-tight.