The holiday that almost wasn't

After a lovely day off yesterday to celebrate New Year's Day, and after the second straight night of fireworks-disrupted sleep, I dragged myself out of bed early this morning to go back to work. It was difficult to do, but I accepted the necessity of it and knew I'd feel more awake and alert as the day went on.

I pulled up in front of our building right at eight-thirty, our usual starting time, and mine was the only car in the parking lot. That made me feel worse. All of the other offices were apparently enjoying a two-day holiday, just as most of the government offices were.

I turned on the lights, cranked up the heat, turned on my computer, checked for voice mail messages, and wondered where my boss was. He's usually there before I am.

As I sat there at my desk, I began to wonder. "Hmmm," I thought. "We discussed what days we'd take off for Christmas, but we never actually talked about the New Year's holidays." Since there are only two of us in the office, the boss and I, and we've worked together for eight years, sometimes we assume we know what each other is thinking. Sometimes we're wrong.

I decided I'd wait until nine o'clock to call his house. At eight-fifty, the phone rang. It was one of his buddies. "Is he there?" he asked. "He's supposed to meet me at my house at nine to go hunting, and I couldn't reach him on his cell phone. I'll call him at home."

My day was starting to get better. "I haven't heard from him this morning," I replied, "but if you catch him at home, would you please ask him to give me a call? If today is a holiday, I'd sure like to know about it."

In less than five minutes the phone rang again. "I'm so sorry," the boss said, "I thought we talked about this last week."

"Oh, no," I said, "please don't be sorry; I'm thrilled to death."

It took less than two minutes to shut things down, then my holiday resumed. Of all the days I've had off in the past couple of weeks, this one is the most delicious.