2:39 a.m. I have a whole boatload of work to do and piles and piles of serious stuff to do and what do I do? I keep going off on

tangents.

Playing around with stuff. Some new icons. Some old journal entries. Some new journals to discover. Some archives to peruse, page by page. Some new

bulletin boards

to read. And then, suddenly, even with Daylight Savings Time, the day is over.

Playing really takes its toll. I only got halfway through alphabetizing my science fiction paperbacks while waiting for my latest printouts to ... print ... out. The books are piled on the floor and certain faces are staring up at me, imploringly.

Slan by A. E. Van Vogt. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. Attack From Atlantis by Lester Del Rey. Just the names themselves bring back such good old memories. I would like to take a long, nostalgic trip and reread every book I've saved over the years.

These books gave me hope when I had few options, kept me patient when I had few doors, kept me sane when I had few windows. I credit them with the life I have today -- with all that I am today -- except for one thing: where are the jumpsuits?

But you know I kid. In fact, I've been reading in the paper that more and more companies are stretching "casual Fridays" across the entire week. Will this mean that eventually, in order to set the last day of the week apart, people will come in on Fridays in fluffy slippers and ratty robes?

We applied for a mortgage a while back and it just so happened that our papers were signed on a Friday. I was actually overdressed for the meeting because I wasn't wearing sneakers. It was very strange to see the bank officers wearing potbellied tennis shirts and pink and green plaid golf pants as we basically signed our life over to what looked like a bunch of greens keepers.

I guess I've had my own (mental) version of a casual Friday here in the ultracasual space of my own office. Maybe a day of wallowing in the backwaters of old space operas in not such a bad thing. They're refilming Fail Safe and showing it (live?) on Sunday night.

That was an important movie back when. I think it scared a lot of people straight. It had a crushing inevitability to it. Machines would one day be the undoing of us all. The red button gets pushed, not by a bully, but by an incompetent bungler who's merely following orders.

But, it was only, thank God, fiction. Science fiction. We've met the future and it is ours. It is casual.