27th August, 2001.

Have adopted the following precautions to reduce the amount of time I'm exposed to the Cow-orker.

1. Environment.
Ten days ago I removed all spare chairs from the vicinity of my desk. Now when she comes to talk at me, she's no longer able to pull up a chair and make herself comfortable. Apparently in the absence of a chair (or large body of water) to support her bulk, the Cow-orker must retreat to her own area to rest. Interestingly, she only drew attention to the absence of chairs today, leading me to suspect that so far her reduced visiting time has been the result of instinct rather than reason and it genuinely has taken her this long to realise what's wrong.

2. Interaction (and avoiding it).
This is still in the testing stage, but results have been encouraging:

"Have I told you about The Spawn's latest trick?"
"Yes."
"Oh, well..."

Whether she has, in fact, told me or not is irrevelant. Because of the volume she speaks at and her uncontrollable urge to share such information with everyone she comes into contact with, the chances are very good that I do already know about the latest stage in The Spawn's development (which is a sore point in itself).

Research into further counter-measures continues.