The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

My desk resembles a landfill Last week I was off on my Thanksgivingtake-time-off-and-do-things-at-home week like I do each and every year. And I'm pleased to announce I got everything done that I had on my own little to-do list that I wrote to myself. So, feeling fairly good about my week's accomplishments, I arrived at the office bright and early Monday morning all set to dive back into the fray, so to speak. I have learned over the years that when you are something of a one-man department (photos) there is a tendency for others in the office to take the approach `just leave it on Ted's desk-- he'll be back next week to deal with it'. I'm not complaining here, more observing human nature. So, I returned and started the search through the piles of stuff on my desk. To be absolutely clear here, my desk ain't the tidiest place in the office to start with, and throw a week of odd papers, messages and God only knows what into the mix, it's close to a disaster. My work station is generally considered a disaster area in the office, second only to a hazardous waste dump. Some people, not familiar with the hazard, have ventured into the vicinity of my cubicle and disappeared from the face of the earth, never to be seen again. I've had science fiction movie producers call me to see if I'd let them use it as a set for one of their movies. I declined-- too risky. And the worst part about my desk is the co-worker who sits next to me. Eamonn Maher is the one person in the office who makes my desk (and ultimately, me) look worse than I actually am. His desk looks like the day he started here, almost a year ago. No garbage, no errant pieces of paper, no newspaper clippings, not a damn thing to pollute his work station. Personally, I don't think he's normal-- I think he needs counseling or something. Ted Brown I look at my desk and see what resembles a landfill site. I look at his work station and see a vacant parking lot. He actually makes me feel a tad inadequate at times. Sure, there are others in the office who are as bad (or perhaps worse than me) but we won't mention any names here, (particularly those female members of the editorial staff with first names beginning with the letters C or L.) When someone comes into the office to see me, I usually try to head them off at the pass, so they won't be passing by Eamonn's desk (mind you someone once actually asked me if that was a spare desk). So, I'm trying to take the initiative and perhaps give my desk a purge in the not-toodistant future. I think I'll take the approach that an office efficiency expert explained on a talk show I heard some time ago. His solution evolved around the four D's: Dump it, Deal with it, Delegate it, and one more D I can't remember. No matter, 'cuz I've never got past the first D anyway-- by delegating it to the dump. Whatever the case, I'm setting aside a deadline, when my workstation is somewhere close to the pristine condition of Eamonn's. I've just gotta find out how much longer we have left in our lease here.