Early one morning

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

**************************
Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a FAQer sing in the office below.
Oh, will it never end? I'm going round the bend!
Just one more month of cataloguing woe.

English folk song (loosely adapted).

***********************
"You're looking mighty smug, Eloise", commented Cindy. "What are you up to?"

"Oh, just a bit of cataloguing. Thought I'd get up early and get a few posts 
under my belt...you know. I was just about to leave, actually."

"But it's only 9.30 am. You can't be leaving yet! You told me you were going 
to catalogue 1000 posts by the end of the month. That's about 40 per day. 
Have you fulfilled your quota?"

"If you look at my records," replied Eloise, sniffily, "you'll see that my 
total has gone up by 100 since I came in this morning."

"Let me look at that."

Cindy seized the catalogue from Eloise's reluctant hands and flicked through 
it.

"Eloise - half of this is painted out in turquoise. Explanation?"

"Ah... Yes, well. You see, I hit this run of 49 messages where the archive 
said "no message retrieved". I couldn't believe my luck! I checked on webview 
and it turned out to be the time we got hit by that stream of gobbledygook 
from razsaga2000. Cheered my day up no end, it did!"

"I see. You know what this means, don't you?"

"What?"

"You pledged to catalogue 1000 posts and you've had to admit that your 
present allocation was already nearly 50 short......."

"I'll get me coat." *

Eloise

* for the benefit of those in the FAQ Team not familiar with _The Fast Show_ 
(most of you, I suspect) that is one of Mark Williams'  (as in Arthur 
Weasley) best known catch-phrases.
<Winks at Ali, her fellow fan>