An unexpected family emergency has us packing up the RAV4 and heading to Alabama tomorrow to attend a funeral. Totally lame all the way around. Lame for the guy's kids. Lame for Dana's family. Lame for my right foot that has to toe the line for the whole 10 hour haul.

Because I'm suddenly dropping work like it's Hammer time, I had to work a long -- 8 to 7 -- day today to get my house in order before leaving. The whole day I was covered with this Jedi-like focus of just banging through stuff. Payroll...done! Invoicing...done! Payables...done! Scheduling...done! Inventory ordered....done! Detailed instructions for the crew...done! Seriously, I would just be taking up space if I didn't leave. I was like the Delta Force of accounting, but with moderately less killing.

I also crammed in a 5:30 PM conference call with Kaleidescape, but I'm under NDA until DELETED AT THE REQUEST OF KALEIDESCAPE--SORRY!. Some of you will be really interested in the post. I've got it worked up, and it will appear hear right at THIS TOO. So, stay tuned... Their marketing guy, Linus, ended our 45 minute call with, "Well, I feel really good about all the information we've covered."

Because I really kind of hate myself and like to draw out the maximum amount of dread over the gruelling drive ("The suspense is killing me...I hope it lasts!" Oh, ORIGINAL Willy Wonka, you're for the ages!), I typed in Dana's parent's address into our GPS tonight and was told that the drive is 641.1 sweet-sweet miles long. I'm predicting 2 fill-ups, 5 bathroom stops, and probably 135 songs.

In preparation for the trip, I decided to resync my iPod for the most up-to-date tune selections. This is when the last bit of vindictiveness from my computer crash decided to come back for one last Evil Dead zombie strike. Turns out that when I restored everything, it reverted my iTunes to like version 3.1. In all the updating and reinstalling of my 9000 song music library, it somehow forgot that my JohnPod was paired with my computer so my option was to do nothing -- basically never being able to add any more music -- or strip the Pod's drive down to 0 and rebuild. Turns out that my  iTunes is like a cruel, hard-ass Marine drill sergeant. "Ohhh, lookie here! We got us a REAL funny guy. Thinks he'll just stroll on in here all la-ti-da and just add a few new songs. Can I get you some cream for your tea, your majesty? Listen to me, fancy man! I'm gonna make you a baby before I make you a man! I'M GONNA BREAK YOU DOWN TO NOTHING. EVEN PAPA JOBS WON'T RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I'M DONE! Now, drop down and give me 80 Gigs! NOW!!!"

To close, I thought I would share a couple of stand out scriptures from my Bible reading today, both from the book of Job. First is from Job 6:6 "Will tasteless things be eaten without salt, or is there any taste in the slimy juice of marshmallow?"

I don't exactly know what this means, but I am TOTALLY going to work this in somewhere. In fact, I would have loved to have used it on the AOL chat rep a couple of days ago. I was leaning toward "I want to shoot you with a high pressure stream from a diarrhea cannon!" but slimy marshmallow juice would have been more poetic.

Also is a verse that seems to some up my week so far. Job 14:1 "Man, born of woman , is short-lived and glutted with agitation." From a work standpoint, this week has been VERY short (just two days) lived. And agitation? Oh, yeah. Glutted. Up the glut hole. Hot, sweaty, infected and swollen with pus agitation, just the way Job would like it.