Bored and restless. Not me. My boss. Things are humming along smoothly for the time being, and my boss is bored. So he gets restless, moving from workstation to workstation, trying to drum up a crisis. If there isn't a current crisis whose shade he can raise, he starts looking to the future.

I've tried to get him to settle down, to plan for the coming year, yes, but for the moment enjoy the lull. It will get crazy busy soon enough. He's a person of great physical and mental energy, however, and he cannot be happy unless he's dealing with an emergency, in the middle of the storm.

I wish he could learn a bit of serenity of mind and spirit. He's driving me crazy!

He takes my calmness as a sign I have nothing to do. So I've resorted to the old trick Weatherspoon and Young taught me so many years ago--I've dragged out a bunch of files to the top of my desk and arranged them somewhat askew (to look energetic) and I've told him I'm working on XXX and YYY, which is the truth, but not nearly so sexy as something that could be classified as a dire emergency.

It's all in the presentation.