Today I have been absorbed in the most exacting part of my job: what my boss and I call the accounting phase. I have to review last year's allocations and align them with the reports of numbers coming in from the field and then determine what next year's numbers will most likely look like when all the dice have finished rolling.

At one point (and today was that point) I have three sets of data to be reconciled. And I'm off by two units. I've spent all day reviewing the raw numbers and I'm reasonably sure they are accurate, so the problem must be elsewhere.

Tomorrow's task will be to review the spreadsheets and ensure that the formulae are correct. If I don't find an error in the spreadsheets, I'll go off somewhere to a quiet corner and have my own little personal nervous breakdown. Then it's back to rechecking the raw data from another angle...I WILL find the discrepancy.

At least it keeps me from getting into trouble, danching up a storm or painting the town red. I'll be too tired and stressed out when I get home to do much more than cook dinner, clean up afterward and fling myself into my reading chair. Oh, yes, and say hello to the tomatoes.