can i stay home?
A dinner break is something of a luxury for those of us who work on news desks. Some days you get one, and some days you don't. Some days you try to scarf down a dry peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwich at your desk, and some days you get to go home and make soup or toast a bagel.
And honestly, sometimes I'm not sure which is worse.
Obviously, going without a dinner break is tough: Your eyes get watery and start to sting from staring at a computer screen under fluorescent lighting all night, and you tend to get a little woozy from lack of nourishment. And you start to forget what fresh air feels like, or the rest of the world looks like, especially when you can only see one little corner of one window across the room.
But I actually got to head home for 15 minutes tonight, and it was almost harder than not going home. I got to slurp down some nice cold juice and water, and I got to feel the cool night air on my face, and I got to catch a few minutes of "30 Rock" and "The Office."
Yeah, they were reruns, but they're great shows. Great shows are even better the second (or, if you're me, third, fourth, twelfth) time around. And when faced with coming back to my huge workload -- Thursday is always the heaviest night of my week -- who wouldn't want to linger on the sofa?
I was good, though. I came back to work on time. And I finished my pages with time to spare before deadline. Of course, there's never really time to spare -- there are always other people's pages to proofread, and I always have to check my Web uploads to make sure my stories are sent to The Eagle site, and a million other little tasks.
But part of me was spoiled by my brief dinner break, and that part is still back there, on that couch, reveling in "comedy night done right."