sometimes, i find it amusing how much my time spent "at work" has actually become my 8 hours a day spent "managing catherine's life and all non-work-related details."

for example, my work was my marathon fundraising center for a month or two; all emails, letters, and planning were done from my desk, with my computer used to print forms, my phone used to make all sorts of calls to bars, friends and vendors, begging letters and information sent through the company mail (and i never even charged my personal account). i colored in fundraising signs in an empty office and sold raffle tickets to most of my coworkers.

when i was looking for a house over the summer, every detail of the search was conducted from the office. i spent hours browsing craigslist, washington city paper and the post classifieds; i sent countless emails to prospective landlords and filled in my work number as the place they could best reach me.

work is also my social center; of late i have planned my trip to boston in a couple of weeks, my villa trip to italy in the spring, tommy's and my four-year anniversary present to each other, and many a happy hour or weekend outing.

my next big project is doing my grad school applications, and already that's taking precedence over my "work" as well. my personal statement is saved to my work computer's desktop; i'm printing out sheets and sheets of supplemental forms from the department printer; it's like a fricking grad school command center headquarters thing.

the plus side to managing my entire life from work is that i constantly look busy and like i'm doing something important - and i am busy, and doing something important. but it's just not, um, what i should actually be doing. and it's gotten to the point where i'm *extremely* annoyed if i actually have substantial work to do. because DON'T THEY KNOW I HAVE TO RUN MY LIFE?

anyway, i've come to the conclusion that i could actually run a small business from my desk if i so choose. any ideas? stuff i've come up with: italian vacation planner; professional bush hater; blog consultant; piner-after of amazing-looking recipes; or bored editorial assistant in the pubs department.