You know it’s one of "those days" when you find yourself reading some tacky chain email letter instead of getting your work done. And why not? It’s a glorious day in New England. Tourists are sucking up the perfect weather and you – the native -- are pounding away at the back-end of a web site in a dark room with the shades drawn.

You moved to the Seacoast to break free from the stresses of the big city, but the computer is an evil master. It follows you like Lassie. It calls to you like those Sirens that turned sailors into stone. Now the software you paid extra for is glitching and there’s a bucket full of gremlins gnawing at the database. Now it’s time to post new content, and your brain needs defragging more than the hard-drive. The only good news is that everybody is out having so much fun that few readers are complaining.

So when no one is looking, you go back to that tacky chain email. You edit-copy-paste the thing into a new file in the content manager. You grab some appropriate image from a clip art web site and slap the whole mess online without a thought to copyright infringement. And here it is, and kind of funny too: 

YOU KNOW YOU'RE LIVING IN 2004 WHEN:

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they don't have E-mail addresses.

6. When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.

7. When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial "9" to get an outside line.

8. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for five different companies.

10. You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news.

11. Your boss doesn't have the ability to do your job.

12. Contractors outnumber permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.

13. You read this entire list, and keep nodding and smiling.

14. As you read this list, you think about forwarding it to your friends.

15. You got this email from a friend that never talks to you anymore, except to send you jokes from the net.

16. You are too busy to notice there was no #9

17. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't#9

AND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

Go on, forward this to your friends.....you know you want to!!

Thanks to Linda Anderle and others for sending this in.