I shouldn't be allowed to write e-mail when I'm tired. At least not to friends; I tend to go into shorthand with them, and confuse things. For instance, on Monday when I finished the big project I had been doing, I wrote to a local friend who's also a smoker and said she should join me in having a cigarette to celebrate.

I didn't write it well. I meant virtually join me; she thought it was an invitation to come by after work, and responded to tell me she was sorry, but couldn't. I caught up with her by instant message and explained that it was my being silly-happy over completing the project that had caused the confusion, and that I was actually heading into naptime. Not that she wouldn't have been welcome to come, of course, but had she done so, she might well have found me sound asleep.

I remain adamant about the rule that typos are allowed in instant messages, by the way. For one thing, both of the IM programs I use have tiny little windows for typing, and the text gets lost to view rather quickly if your font size isn't tiny.

A couple of people have made the mistake of picking on me about IM typos. I have not allowed them to get away with it.

And I'll tell you a secret I learned not too long ago: if you're planning to post something on a message board, and want to be able to mull over your thoughts before posting, write offline. Don't even try to work on it in the cgi box provided. If you've typed out the text, all you have to do is copy and paste into the box. Saves a lot of scrolling around to see what you said.

On that note, I'll end this and go write e-mail before I start getting tired.