Working from Home

I've been doing a little reading lately. I'm working on Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis. I've been thinking about work too much. That's the curse of IT. When I'm there, I think of nothing else and when I'm off, the work hangs around in the background, shading everything else I do with thoughts of the office. It's both a curse and a blessing to do something for a living that used to be a hobby.
When I was a kid, I liked to type in the programs in the back of BYTE magazine in Basic on the Commodore 64. My stalwart Commodore still sits in my basement. Not the original, but an amazing replacement that I found at a garage sale in Apple Valley for $2. The lady selling it warned me that it was really old, and that I probably wouldn't be able to use it. Strangely, I also had a lady at another sale warn me that her 386 computer was probably useless. At yet another garage sale, the gal hosting told me that I shouldn't buy her Pentium 100 MHz chip to replace my 75 MHz. She said it was difficult to install. And for her, to be fair, that was probably true. The chip was in the original box from Best Buy, still wrapped in its birthday suit of shrink-wrap. After I bought that chip, I couldn't wait to get home, dig out my tiny screwdriver and open the case. That was the computer for which I traded my Camaro. But that's a story for another time.
So here I am, imprisoned at the computer by my own liking instead of by cubicle walls. The Pillowtop is one of the best computers I've ever owned. It's twice as fast as my overclocked Pentium 100 MHz processor with its giant heat sink. Perro the pup is sitting at my feet, anxiously licking his paw pads as I write instead of petting him. His entire world revolves around getting petted and getting under blankets. But he has no use for work. He never thinks about the number of defects in a piece of software or watching the clock.
For a while my life was guided by 2-week software iterations, where every other Friday I would purposely not make plans so I would have extra time to finish up at work. Perro's life is only guided by the rhythm of mine. He wakes when I do, eats when I serve dinner, and takes a walk outside when I'm ready to go to the mailbox, or even better, The Ugly Mug. All the while he is loyal and attentive. I can't say he never buts into a conversation, as he routinely tries to distract my friends while they're visiting, but for the most part he is more polite than anyone I've ever met.
So I've been using my Stephen King book to drown out work while I'm at home. Once I start in on a Stephen King book, I'm oblivious, somewhat like Perro. I'm immersed in my own thoughts and ready to crawl under a blanket whenever I get tired. It's so nice sometimes to just forget, forget your obligations during the short time that you can. Perro doesn't understand this, as he has no obligations. But I understand it well.