Yesterday was the first time I've ever wished I had a camera on my cell phone. I was on SI, as I foretold, stepping out for some food, when there on someone's lawn were two turkeys. Not, as someone later suggested, wild turkeys, but regular, inbred Mr. and Mrs. Butterballs. The one looked at me as if to say, "yeah, where are we exactly?" A nearby utility worker told me they're from a mental hospital which is on the other side of a four-lane highway. "They're big, aren't they?" My psychologist acquaintance Dr. Baloney confirmed later, that yeah, they have turkeys on the grounds of the psych hospital.

I worked at the tax office again yesterday and today. This morning, there were about five of us there, but the manager, I'll call her Esther, had a meeting, so there was no one to open her office and the drawer where the laptops are stored. The staff don't like her much (she praises me, but the others tell me that's only in the beginning and that she'll turn on me, but she's one of these who's McGruff to the staff, but kind-hearted to the taxpayers) so they were all schadenfreuding about how she'd made a big deal of saying she was leaving her keys with someone who knows what they're doing, and it wasn't any of them. Anyway, Esther came after her meeting and we were doing taxes only about 45 minutes late. A couple of hours into the afternoon, I had to turn in a return and Esther and the receptionist, Dora, were mixing it up. "If you have something to say to me," Esther was saying, "this is the place to come out with it." "I just think we need to improve communication," Dora said. This was not an exchange that reeked of mutual respect or anything like that. At about quarter after 4, we didn't have any clients left (officially, they're taxpayers, but I've yet to have anyone not get all their tax withholding back and then some, so it would be more accurate to call them taxgetters) and Esther told me to tell Dora to call downstairs (where the throngs are kept at bay) and tell them to send up a couple more people. "I ain't calling no-one!" Dora said when I gave her the message. Communication problem solved!

Man, I miss working!