Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

So I was paying my first visit to a new client today. After adjusting the scheduled meeting several times via email, I had managed to have it recorded in my Palm Pilot at 10:00, but the final email from my correspondent there had settled on 9:00. So, at 9:00 I’m sitting here in my jammies and pull up the email in order to get a Yahoo map so I can plan my early arrival (an unusual luxury, I’m congenitally late). I’m jarred, of course, by the revelation that I’m due there at that very moment.
I call my correspondent and, startled as I am, take a novel approach, leading with the truth. One can usually blame Seattle traffic for up to an hour’s tardiness but, like a Roger Clemens fastball, the opportunity was in the catcher’s mitt before I even got the bat off my shoulder. Nevertheless, 10:00 will be fine.
I shave, dress and head off to the client’s as I had originally planned, arriving 10 minutes early. I’m in basically uncharted territory. I grab my leather binder and head for the door.
Ten steps across the parking lot I realize that I’ve forgotten my correspondent’s name (we’ve never met, just exchanged emails). I punch the figurative buttons, trying to jumpstart my cerebral cortex, but no dice - the damn thing must be flooded again. I can’t walk in the building and ask the receptionist to ring “that woman that emails people about things”, so I turn back to my car to regroup. As a bit of subterfuge, I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and stick it to my ear as if I’d just received a call.
As I reach the car, I remember that my laptop, in the back seat, has my correspondent’s name attached to her emails. Still wedging the phone in my ear, I move my lips periodically, thinking software-support kinds of things but probably actually reciting Green Eggs and Ham. I sit in the driver’s seat and retrieve the laptop from it’s carrier in the back. I press “power”, but since I’d done a full shutdown instead of hibernate, and it’s Win2k, it’ll take a few minutes to boot, so I focus on my phone ruse, sort of a wireless lamaze.
This works so well that, when I look back at the laptop, it’s started the goddamn disk check it always insists on doing, as if I’m some cyber riffraff and it’s insisting on using a condom even though we’re (mostly) monogamous. I power it down, power up again and make sure I abort the disk check on the way up. Chug-chug-chug, loading personal preferences (as if you care!), establishing network connections (not here in the car, fool!), loading three years of startup executables that I have no idea why they’re there any more. Impatient, I punch Outlook anyway and wait for it to load while empires rise and fall, tectonic shifts rearrange continents and oceans, the Bush administration makes another request for rebuilding funds for Iraq.
Just as the Outlook logo flashes onscreen, I remember her name. I power the laptop down - no soft landing this time, pal - pocket the phone and exit the car. I whisper her name all the way across the parking lot, hoping it doesn’t skitter off to that place where phone numbers and grocery lists so often flee.
They’re delighted to see me, and instead of the sales job I was anticipating, I end up diving into a project and logging 6 solid, productive and billable hours. I’ve had lots of things start better and end up worse