I'm home at 5:20 p.m. or thereabouts. Wasn't it just a few minutes ago that it was 5:30 a.m. and I was leaving the house on my way to work?

It was one of those days that goes by in a flash, the hours consumed by knotty, complex, utterly absorbing problems. Not problem problems but a flow of situations having multiple strands needing to be untangled, then woven into a coherent whole.

It was a very productive day, though I'm glad it's winding down, because that kind of mental work is hard work. The older I get, the more taxing it seems. Maybe that's because I'm slowing down a tad--not less smart, but more wanting to stop and enjoy things along the way, not race through to the end heedless of the fun and interesting things along the way.

I'm also a lot less tolerant of sheer grunt work. Because of the clerical cutbacks, I'm having to do more copying and mailing and stuff like that. Reminds me, Batty, of my/our early days in this position, using the Lexitron (an early word processor) and typing out letters on a typewriter and keeping records by hand in 3-ring binders. Pencilled in, so they could be erased and changed. It was exciting to be asked to analyze something instead of just sorting papers, filing greenbars. Still is. I like the challenge.

Nice and quiet now. I can hear the children playing in the after-school program across the street, a background of happy voices to my own thoughts.

Time for dinner, I guess. Tomorrow is another day.