Friday, April 13th

Believe or not, but we have a deadline on April 13th, Friday. Normally Fridays the 13th pass by without a fuss, although a couple of times strange things had happened. Like in the summer 2007 when my landlord died and his ghost walked around my apartment restless, the planks of the wooden floor creaking, things he used to love clanking – stuff like that. My assistant at that time, Sharlene, the practical minded girl from Hong Kong, laughed at me when I told her about it.

- Ghosts are for children to believe in, – she said. – Like Santa Claus.

She laughed till the Friday 13th came. I run errands for few hours and when I got back around 6 PM, Sharlene was pale and fidgety.

- Somebody is walking around apartment! – she said nervously. – And things are clanking. I have to get out of here.

I said sure. Since it was Friday I had to pay her. So I started adding up the hours she had worked for me. Those were irregular hours, you know, irregular like 8 hours one day, 11,5 hours the other and so on. When the number of hours was added up I multiplied it with the amount of dollars I paid for an hour. It came to $666.-

I showed Sharlene the calculator. She shivered slightly.

- I don’t want to have this number on my check on Friday the 13th! – she said firmly. – I won’t accept it. Put the number one dollar off.

So I wrote $667.- .

Numbers have the power we give them.

But, yes, we had had a deadline on April 6th, last Friday, to submit paperwork. A week later, on April 13th, also a Friday, we have to deliver a DVD with the footage of the finished parts of the film. Wendy is working overtime. Rashidah is rushing, too. I am stressed out and keep knocking things down like some ghost. Only Ivey keeps calm, but she has delicious onion rings to munch on.

Here’s how trying to reach a deadline looks:

The deadline looks at us and smiles. It it within a reach:

We are hoping to reach it, to be happy like this:

Wish us luck!

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