I started slowly this morning – with a case of what I call “Dragon Ass”. I was seriously dragging ass, as it were. I left the house a little before 9am, bought overpriced gas and started what would be a long, grueling day with a venti vanilla latte from the new Starbucks Coffee on 53rd Street and Elmore. It helped. I see in the news today that Starbucks is laying off (up to) 12,000 employees and closing 600 stores. I guess with $4 gas, not as many people can afford a $4 cup of coffee after filling up their SUV.

It was a long day today. We had our antivirus vendor on-site, and spent the day discussing their products and later configuring the console and discussing deployment plans for later this year. We did have one nice break, for lunch we went to Sports Fans in Bettendorf, to enjoy the new Iowa smoking ban that went into effect today. Yay, Iowa!! It’s about time the health and well-being of society came before supporting a disgusting habit like smoking. This follows on the heels of the Illinois ban, but allows for more loopholes. This was only day one, we’ll have to see how it is working after a few months. At least it was a nice change of pace, before I finished meetings and spent an hour fussing with Jarrett’s bank to get an NSF charge reversed from an unexpected online charge he thought had been cancelled two months ago. GRUNT. I closed out the day by calling gyms to find out what their fees were, and picking up a frozen pizza from Target for dinner. It was a long day. Did I mention that?