I understand your pain, princepawn. I am only a newbie programmer at school. I am learning Perl slowly at my own pace. I end up programming or reading about perl 2 hours a day on average. My teacher assigned me to learn perl, yet he knows nothing of it so I felt like I was on my own until I found Perl Monks. I suggest that you ask your boss to give you a project that you can work on by yourself at home. Then, you could work 5-6 hours a day, finish it before the deadline and have extra 'sunbathing time'.

I have one more suggestion. I think you should look at Flash it is such a simple program that yet is so fun! It is a big deal when it comes to making web sites and you will be able to grasp any animation method with it. (you can even put it into your resume when you find a boss that won't make you work 8 hours straight on programming and will buy you a sun tanning machine just for joining) Good Luck!

-@rocks