My life has been a bit pressure-filled lately. Work is tough, for starters. Between staffing cuts and a new move to put a department on which I depended heavily out of business, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I've even taken a couple of days sick because of the pressures. I have to travel to Omaha soon to help take all the work in that department and move it to a new team--in the midst of all my other projects and work.

Then there's A, who is pressuring me to set up a firm date to visit her. This is tough for me, partly because of the pressures of work, and partly because of my finances. Things are a bit tight because I've been footing the bill for most of our travels and all of our entertainment. She's got a tight financial situation, too, so it's been the best way to go. My frustration is that I feel like I'm responsible for setting up and initiating just about every activity we do. Now I need to figure out the travel schedule, coordinate it with my work, work out the conflicts with my plans for a trip with my niece, find the money to visit--and try not to add stress to A, who really doesn't need more of that. And she is insisting that we adhere to a rigid schedule of visits, which she insists means I have to visit her and not the reverse. I feel like she's not doing her part, here. She constantly burns her time off from work the second it becomes available, blocking her ability to visit me--and spends every extra dime she has the second she gets it, leaving no resources to make a visit possible. I'm stuck... I need support.

CDs listened to today:

• Arnold Schoenberg: Die Glückliche Hand
• Various Artists: Digital Empire, disk 1
• Johan de Meij: T-bone Concerto