For all practical purposes, this was the role I played today after the conference calls and meetings were over around 2:15. Had a huge project to get done, we were told by my boss by the end of the day Monday. After speaking with the client, I found out he was going to present it Monday morning at a convention in Houston, and had to have it by tonight or Saturday morning. Crap.

I did a lot of the preliminary work and cranked out a lot of runs, did some spreadsheets and graphs with the backup data, but when it came time to take the last few steps and dump everything into flowcharts, I had to parcel it out among my assistant and some other saintly individual who actually volunteered.

He doesn't even work on our side of the business within the company; he just knows how to do this stuff in his sleep, and knew we were in a real pinch to get this stuff to our client (his former boss) tonight. He did us a really HUGE favor this evening, and I owe him a huge "thank you" at our company's next Brunch Club meeting in May.

My assistant was going to drive down to Maryland after work for the weekend, but he's the sort of person who rolls with the punches and said "there won't be any traffic that time of night!" We traded cell numbers just in case there was an emergency over the weekend, but even so, there's nothing the guy could do about it until he gets home Sunday. I owe my assistant a huge "thank you" as well, because I had to make him delay his trip for a good four hours, although if traffic was light, he probably made it there about the time I got home taking off-peak trains.

At 9:00, I told the guys to go ahead and leave. I was only going to stay long enough to .zip archive the 30 files and email them off to the client, copying my boss, and both of them, so all involved would know who pitched in on this one. Carded out of the building at 9:15, but had to wait half an hour in Hoboken for a 10:07 train, and got home at 11:15.

By then the cat had given up on me and gone off to take a snooze, so I surprised her when I came in the house through the garage. It took her about 15 seconds to realize I was home, then come dashing down the stairs to be fed. I still need to give her her insulin shot.

I'd love to go to bed, but I'm really wired tired, so I might as well go off to read some of your blogs before I head upstairs to bed myself. Hope everyone has a good weekend (and I don't hear from the client this weekend).