The rules of blackberry picking

On an otherwise mediocre day.

Today is a hard day.

Why? Several reasons.

1. Back to work after a week of annual leave.

2. Back to work before the kids are back to school.

3. Back to work with an unexpected 9am call in the diary.

The unexpected 9am call is to warn me about an unexpected 1pm call on which I will have to give an unexpected presentation to several senior managers. About a document I haven’t looked at in several months. Excellent.

After the call, the presentation, my mom phones to ask if Joel’s headphones have batteries in them. The headphones that she has already airmailed. Do they have batteries in them? She is asking because if they do have batteries, these headphones that she has already sent, then the batteries will be ruined in airmail transit or will be removed by customs (she is unclear on the details). She found them yesterday in her house in Dublin and duly sent them express first thing this morning. Joel needs them, ideally by Friday when he will be a guest on a podcast because he is very cool …