I love long weekends. I hate long weekends. When I anticipate a long weekend, I find it difficult to focus on my work, because I look forward to the mini-break so much. I also have difficulty enjoying the long weekend because I know I'll have a ton of email to wade through and unfinished projects that I'll need to wrap up. Plus? Almost everyone is taking a long weekend, too, so there's not as much stuff to get through as there would have been had I taken time off at a different time.

One thing that getting me through this long weekend is the prospect of an addition to the family. I have decided that I will go for a hamster after all. There's a person on Craigs List who has advertised free hamsters, and I'm hoping that it's genuine and not just a scam. Pet ads are especially tough. You need to extract info (appearance, history, personality, etc.) from the person advertising without sounding pushy or shady. You also need to monitor the advertiser to make sure that they aren't either of the above, either. When it's all settled, you have to arrange for pick-up in a suitably public place, and hope it all goes well. I might lose patience and use Petsmart, but two out of three hamsters I've gotten from there have turned into complete psychos.