so, what's Alfred up to these days?

The short answer: he's buying houses.

The longer answer: I think I mentioned here that he took a class and passed his exam to be a real estate sales person in FL. I don't know the technical name, I just know he's not technically a realtor because you have to join their little realtor club to be able to call yourself a realtor. So he's basically a realtor but can't call himself that. Anyway, he's become slightly obsessed with finding cheap bank-owned properties to buy. He has a friend he used to work with (when he was with a home building company) whose construction company is going to do the work needed on these houses, then they're going to sell them for a reasonable, but still relatively cheap, price. And then everyone makes money. Sounds good, no?

He found a house that he has apparently fallen in love with. He wants us to live there. I haven't seen it yet, which sort of puts a slight kink in that plan so far, but he wants to go look at it this weekend so I can see how I like it. So we'll see. It's pretty far from the museum, but it's so cheap I could just quit and raise some babies. Anyway, Alfred spends all his free time these days scouring the internet for good, cheap houses to look at. That's what he's probably doing right now. He couldn't sleep last night because he was thinking about a house. He leaped out of bed at 7:00 last Saturday morning to check for new houses. He's a crazy person.

Also, he's talking about shaving off his beard. If he does, hopefully he'll shave it into funny designs first and let me take pictures. That would be some good blogging material.

busy, busy

We've got a nice full social calendar for the next few weekends. This weekend we have Ilya's birthday, and possibly plans with Lucy and Phil; the following weekend Katherine and Katie are coming to visit us (I looked through lots of pictures, none of just the three of us, so we get to see 5 lovely ladies instead); the weekend after that, Mike is coming to visit (he's bringing wine, the three of us are going to have a romantic Valentine's Day dinner.) Oh, and last weekend I went to Lucy's baby shower. It's been all sorts of awesome.

I've realized over the past couple of days that I'm not so lonely this year. Last year I was really trying to think of ways to make friends. I started going to a book club (which has more or less stopped), I tried a dance class (which didn't last beyond the first class). I think a lot of it was my job. At my old job, I was related to most of my co workers, plus Alfred has to be my friend whether he works with me or not. It's part of his job description. Now that I'm back at the museum, I have lots more co workers, who I (mostly) like, plus lots more people that I come into contact with either in person or on the phone. I've known a lot of these people for years, so while they might not be the type of friend I'm going to hang out with outside of work (although there are some of those, luckily) I at least have enough social interaction on a regular basis that I don't feel isolated. It's nice. I do still wish I had more close friends down here, but this is better than nothing.

it's official

I'm going back to the museum. (I had big plans to post a picture of myself in my costume today, but this morning Alfred's computer wasn't on so I couldn't get to our pictures to copy one onto my laptop. Like how I blame him? Instead you get this awesome picture of me getting eaten by a hippo at Busch Gardens, please enjoy my pasty white legs.) I met with my former/future bosses last night and worked out all the details. I got everything I wanted, with the slight exception of my old company car. So now we have to buy a car. As soon as I have transportation though I can start. I'll be heading over to Craig's list shortly, even though Alfred said he doesn't want to buy a car from there or ebay again. We'll see what happens, I guess.

So I wasn't too excited about having to go back to work today. I had such a nice couple of days at home, being housewifely and reading and playing video games and such. I rode my bike to the post office and grocery store yesterday. It was just so nice. But this morning I had to go run some errands after dropping Alfred off at the office, which meant I didn't get here until about 11:15. My favorite radio station was playing some really good songs, and I stopped at Starbucks, which I love. I ordered my favorite delicious hot drink (tall skinny caffe mocha) and they gave me a little sample of their new banana chocolate smoothie, which was really good, and healthy of course (you know, the banana). Then they gave me some special receipt that I can take to a Starbucks after 2 today and get a free drink! I'm going to be hopped up on caffeine all day long, I'll be up till midnight again. It'll be great, until I have to wake up early tomorrow morning. Anyway, my little morning jaunt cheered me up a bit. Now I'm waiting to see if I'm ditched for lunch, in which case I will head across the street to my little Mexican place to say goodbye to my friend, the owner. I haven't been there in a month or so, I hope he's not mad at me. He totally recognized me the last few times I was in there, he even remembered that I had a regular table! We have to make the most of these last few lunches I get to eat up here, I have to choose wisely. And of course, then I get to have lunch at some of my old places once I go back to the museum. Grilled cheese and tofu, here I come!

sorry!

I just got a text from my mom, heckling me about my lack of posts. We were out of the office all day yesterday, we were actually out of the house from 7:45am until about 9:30pm, except for about 15 minutes around 7pm when we came back to shower and change. Alfred found a tenant to rent a house that Max's company owns, so we were cleaning it out and getting it ready for them to move in, which they are probably going to do today or tomorrow. This happens to be the house that we were planning on living in, if/when we rent our house until our new house is done, so we now have nowhere to live if/when we do rent our house. Which is now listed on Craig's list, and which Alfred has gotten 2 calls about already. So things are chugging along in that department, sort of, although now that we have nowhere to move to I guess it's ok if nothing happens right away.

Speaking of the new house, I don't think I mentioned it yet but we met with a drafts person a couple of weeks ago to work on our plans. We had drawn up a plan a couple of months ago, but Alfred decided he didn't like it (you like how I throw him under the bus?) so he got a bunch of books out of the library, found a new plan we liked, drew it up with some changes to fit what we want/need, and then the drafts person got to work on it. Here's what we have so far (first floor on the left, second floor on the right):


I'm happy with how it's coming along so far. She's still working on the elevation, so when she gets that finished up I'll post that so you can see how it will look from the outside. Now if we ever get all our permits, at least we'll be ready to get started.

We had a good weekend, very busy. We went blueberry picking with Ilya and Mercedes on Saturday,
then had dinner (including a blueberry pie) and a power hour at their house. Sunday we went swimming at our temporary house,
had a delicious pizza lunch,
and then hung out at their house in the afternoon/evening. Whew!

Now that I have fulfilled my obligations and (hopefully) satisfied my legions of loyal readers, I need to get back to work. The job search continues!

and she's back

We were out of the office yesterday and Tuesday helping to inspect some apartments that Max's company is looking at buying. Which wasn't so bad, because it got me out of the office for 2 days and I got to wear jeans. But we saw some interesting stuff. We saw all types of apartments, from the good: a grandmothery looking place, complete with a jar of cookies on the kitchen counter, to the bad:


That's mold covering that wall, and the ceiling has caved in at the left side of the picture. If you look at the right side you can see where more of the ceiling collapsed in the hallway. We saw about 3 that were this bad, but luckily no one was living in them. It was gross.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to call my old boss about going back to the museum. I don't want to miss out on a new job opportunity by committing to the museum, but then again, I don't want to miss the opportunity to go back there either. Knowing them, though, they're probably not in any hurry to fill the position at the moment. They probably don't mind not having to pay that salary for a little while, especially with the cost of the new museum. I need to make the decision really soon though, as in today if possible. I just don't know yet.

Most people are probably excited about the 3 day weekend starting tomorrow because of the fourth. It'll be nice to not have to work tomorrow (this week was pretty awesome, really) but it's not like I get to hang out at home or anything. We're going home tonight, but coming back up tomorrow to celebrate with Alfred's parents, then spending the night again since Billy's still out of town. Their grandson was just born yesterday, so we don't know when they're coming back yet. We're going to try to go blueberry picking again on Saturday, but the farm we went to last time is out of berries for the season, so we'll see.

I don't even get to make anything fun for tomorrow. Too bad, cause that's my favorite part. I found a recipe for these frozen cheesecake cupcakes that I wanted to try, but Robyn's making the presidential candidates' wives' cookie recipes, and I think we're making ice cream during the day. Oh well. I tried on the t-shirt and shorts Robyn bought me last night (we get festive clothing for every single holiday known to man, I have socks for every holiday you can imagine) and she gave me way too much credit, they're both size extra small. They might have fit me back before I grew hips or boobs or weighed more than 100 pounds, but not now. It's a nice compliment, though!

I feel like this is kind of a grouchy post. I'm not in a grouchy mood, I just don't like having my social life dictated to me. I don't mind not being home for a long weekend if it's something I get to choose to do, but when I have no choice in the matter, it sucks.

Happy Birthday Cathy! and, a new job question

Cathy's turning old today! Well, she's already been old, but she's even older today! No, I will not reveal her age. I don't think she reads this, but I don't need her kicking my ass if she ever does. She was pretty good at Wii boxing. I of course have not sent her card and gift yet, mostly because I do not have her gift yet. I have the card at least! I'm a terrible sister in law. Sorry Cathy. Happy Birthday slaw!!

So anyway. (I use both of those words here a lot, I've noticed). I mentioned last week that I need to find a new job, hopefully sometime soon. Well, Alfred and I have been talking a bit about the possibility of me going back to the museum. I talked to Lindsay yesterday (who took over my job when I left) and it turns out she just gave her notice because her husband got a new job and they're moving. I knew she was giving her notice sometime soon, so this wasn't a surprise to me. In other words, this leaves my old job open again.

My old bosses own 3 other tourism businesses in addition to the museum, and have lost all of the office staff for one of the other businesses (other than the book keeper, who works for all 4 companies) within the last couple of months. They pulled my former coworker, Cathy, back over to that company, where she worked before coming to the museum (to replace Lindsay when she left to have Xyla), (are you following all of this?) and apparently plan to keep her over there since she wasn't doing a very good job at the museum. Ok, she sucked. She made my last year there even worse, she just was not cut out for that job. And she has a bit of an abrasive personality. So after talking to Lindsay yesterday, and finding out that Cathy would (most likely) be gone, I'm thinking more seriously about calling my old bosses and talking to them about the possibility of me coming back. I figure I can phrase it more as me coming back to help them out, rather than needing a paycheck and not being able to get another job.

The pros:

• I knew that place inside and out. It would probably be very easy to slip back into the routine and feel comfortable again.
• It would pay more than what I make now, assuming I started back up at what I made when I left (I make about 40% less now than I did then, plus I had more benefits then, including a car)
• Especially during my last year there, I was in charge. I really liked feeling important and being able to make decisions. I liked feeling competent and needed, which I don't really feel at my job now.
  
• I was burned out. Being away from it for a year, I can look back and remember enjoying my job and the museum in general. I even miss it sometimes. Maybe coming back after having some time away will give me a fresh perspective and I'll enjoy it again.
• They're building a new, larger museum across the street from the existing one. New programs are being created, old ones are being revamped, lots of new exciting stuff going on.
• I liked and miss a lot of the people I worked with. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
  

(This is getting long. (That's what she said!) Here, have a doofy looking picture of me to break it up.)
Ok, back to work. The cons:

• My former bosses can be difficult to work with. They're a married couple; one micromanages things to death, the other is so hands-off and changes his mind so frequently that it's hard to keep track of what you're supposed to be doing. Things changed a lot over the years I worked there, becoming much more rigid and adding a lot more procedures, making things more complicated than they needed to be. They've apparently become more controlling over the past year.
  
• Lots going on with a new location means lots of potential stress. Not the least of which would be finding and training enough new guides to staff all the programs. That's tough.
• If in fact Cathy does not return, that would mean I would have to train someone new to replace her. Which I don't mind doing, but it would mean longer hours and more work for me as they're learning and I'm having to do both jobs for awhile.
• There are some people that I would supervise that are difficult to work with. As in, incredibly annoying and demanding and just difficult. Part of the reason I was burnt out.
• If we do move sometime in the next year, traffic would be a bitch.
  

Another thing is that I left a year ago planning to go on to bigger and better things. I feel kind of, I don't know, I guess pathetic, like I'm coming crawling back with my tail between my legs and admitting failure. Like I couldn't make it doing something else after all. I feel a little foolish, I guess.

I just don't know how I feel about it. Maybe if I go into it assuming it's only a temporary thing, it'll be ok. Of course, I don't know how temporary it would be - the rest of the summer? The full school year? And what if I do stay a full year, do I plan to leave after that? I just don't know! Anyone care to give me some advice??

(By the way, I'm writing this Monday at about 6:30 as I wait for Alfred to finish up so we can leave. I'm going to be out of the office all day tomorrow so I'm setting this up to automatically post Tuesday. Cool, huh?)

stepping it up

My job search, that is. 2 of the guys who worked with us are leaving after next week. One of them is the son of Max's business partner, so it's not like Alfred and I are special because we're related. It's just getting to the point where they can't afford things. Today I actually volunteered to take a pay cut to help out a bit. In other words, I really feel the need to find a new job.

It's a wee bit stressful. Most jobs I find posted I'm either a) not qualified for because the industry is so specific, or b) wildly overqualified for. Plus, so many of the jobs that are in the area I'd like to be in and actually went to school for (preschool or other early education) pay really, really shitty. They're all in the $8-$10/hour range. I'm sorry, I can't do that. It's too bad they don't tell you in college that you shouldn't pick your major based on what interests you, but in what is most marketable in the future. Katie, you should switch to business or something.

I've applied to several positions I've found on craig's list, career builder, and on specific company websites, but haven't heard back from anyone yet. I also need to set up a school district interview since I missed the recruitment fair, and mail out stuff to some principals to try to get their attention. What a pain in the ass. On the upside, at least now I don't feel quite so guilty having nothing to do, since I'm not getting paid anymore!

busy tracy = late post

Holy hell in a handbasket! Today's been busy. I was at the office for less than half an hour total. We went to the gym this morning, then over to the house where all our fireplace inventory is now stored to meet a guy (who used to be a road manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd) to load up his truck with some stuff from the order last week, then over to the office so Alfred could meet a plumber, then I headed over to the house where all the fireplaces are being installed to go over an installation manual with them, then back to the office to pick up Alfred and head to the house to meet the guy again to pick up another load of stuff, Alfred dropped me off and had to go back to the office for the plumber again, then came back and we waited an hour and 20 minutes (!!) for the guy with the forklift to show up to help us load the pallets. By then I had to go meet someone to show them a rental house and Alfred stayed with the forklift guys, I finished showing the house and went back over to meet Alfred and the forklift guys for lunch, then we finally got back to the office at about 3:30. At which point I had to open mail and do my usual morning duties (and write half of this post). After about 20 minutes we left to go talk to the couple we're house sitting for for a couple days next week, then we came home!

We spent last night at Ilya and Mercedes' house. We watched the video of Ilya sky diving last week. It looked like so much fun. My favorite part of the video was the very end: the camera man films Ilya landing, Ilya turns to the camera and announces "I puked!" as he turns and shows that he did, in fact, puke. Meanwhile the guy who's attached to him (they did tandem) has a disgusted look on his face and is unhooking himself from Ilya as fast as he can. It was hilarious. We spent the night there because we're cat/house sitting for them for a couple weeks while they're visiting Mercedes' family in Spain. Both of these pictures were taken at her parents' house when we were there for their wedding and our honeymoon a few years ago. Their house is built into the side of a hill and has a gorgeous view. The huge rock you can see in the distance of the second picture is on the beach where we actually stayed for the week and a half or so we were on our official honeymoon. We climbed to the top of it. We also went diving at the base of it. It's called Ifach. It's a funny name.

order completed

It hasn't rained in months. When does it start to rain? Just as our shipment was being delivered. Of course.

It went pretty smoothly, all things considered. I've had to make way too many phones calls because of people bitching at me and other people screwing things up, but (almost) everything has been delivered, and part of it has even been paid for. And we got to spend a good chunk of the day out of the office! We didn't get here until about 3! Awesome!

So it was kind of funny, the house these were being delivered to is literally next door to a country club. Across the street is the golf course. You can actually see a golf cart in the background of this picture. So this huge flat bed truck has to back in, through the country club's parking lot, and then park on the 1 lane road that leads to the 15 or so houses that are back there. I swear, every single person who lived back there drove in or out in the 2 1/2 hours or so that he was there. There was also a lawn service, a bug service, and UPS. Alfred was directing traffic for awhile, he got bitched at a couple times, but what do you really expect from Republicans?

In completely unrelated news, Robyn made blondies (brownies without the chocolate, kind of like cookies in bar form) for dessert last night. They were slightly undercooked, so the insides were all gooey and warm and delicious. I didn't even want to know how many sticks of butter the recipe called for. Oh dear Lord they were delicious. (Disclaimer: this picture is not of Robyn's blondies. But they look good, eh?) We were there for lunch today too, let's just say that I single handedly ate about a third of the 9x13 pan between the two meals. I could have kept going. I may not have much willpower, but I at least scraped up a little. But I didn't eat breakfast today, so that makes up for it, right? And we went to the gym this morning. (Speaking of which, the main trainer there has been wearing jeans the last couple of Fridays. He's in his 40s maybe, really short, but dang he looks good in those jeans. Sorry Alfred.)

dreams and annoyances

Last night I had a dream that I was in the hospital, and our bedroom was my hospital room. The door was closed and Alfred was outside, and I wanted him to come in, so I started calling his name to get him to come in. Apparently I said his name out loud for real, and woke both of us up. At 4:40. It sucked. Then on my way to the office (I dropped Alfred off to meet his dad) I stopped at Starbucks, and it was freaking closed! What the hell!

I also had a dream last night that I was babysitting for this little boy. The link is for his parents' blog. He's a 4 month old baby with a genetic disease similar to Down's Syndrome in that he has 3 copies of 1 chromosome, but different from Down's in that it's fatal (more fatal than life generally is, anyway). Only half of all babies conceived with this are born alive, and only like 5 or 10% make it to their 1st birthday. (I somehow found a blog for another baby with this condition and have read about several more since. For some reason I read a lot of blogs about sick kids.) Anyway, in my dream he looked totally different but somehow I knew it was him, and Katie kept getting him to laugh. Then he stopped breathing a couple times in my dream. It was weird. And kinda scary cause I thought this baby was going to die in my care.

(By the way, I had a dream last week about someone coming to our house with a gun and getting ready to shoot me in the head. I woke up before he shot. The last time I dreamt about someone shooting me was a few days before Mike was shot. Also weird.)

So now for the annoyances part of my post. This damn order is driving me crazy. Our dealer who placed the order, more specifically. He called yesterday at 4, all frantic because he had a mistake in the order and wanted to know if it had been picked up yet. I called, it hadn't, and they were able to fix the mistake and still have it ready to ship out right away. Which is great, but apparently not good enough for my dealer. He called me again today and was bitching about how the shipping company is going to be late. You'd think he's be appreciative of the fact that they were late and saved his ass from having to pay for a $3000 item he didn't need. He sucks. (The picture is another shot from the house this order is going to. It appears that whole back wall is going to be glass.)

pretend there's a title here

This morning we took Katie to her scuba diving class. She's finally going to be certified! We had to drop her off a little early, so she had to sit by herself in this little alley way to wait for the instructor. She was supposed to do her dives this weekend so I was going to go with her, but now she has to wait till August because the guy can't do it this weekend anymore. Kinda sucks, I was looking forward to diving. Too bad she's going to be back in NY this summer, or we could have gone diving this summer so she could practice. Anyway, I have to include this picture because I made Katie let me take it of her for the sake of the blog. She's a champ.

So I don't think I mentioned this, but I made another sale. Yippee. It's a pretty good one, for us at least. I guess it's good to get one more order in before it's all over. Anyway we went to check out the house to see what it's like and where all 6 of the fireplaces are going, and man, is it big (that's what she said!) It's right on the river, this picture is the view from every room at the back. They've got several rooms that are going to be just glass all the way across the back wall. The only weird thing is that we couldn't find where 6 fireplaces are going to go. (Actually, there's a second weird thing too: we couldn't figure out where the master bedroom and bathroom were. But I digress.) We found a few spots that might be for a fireplace, but not 6. And none big enough for the largest unit they ordered. But hey, it's none of my business. As long as I get a check I couldn't care less where they put them all. They're supposed to be delivered tomorrow. I'm a little nervous about it, but hopefully it all goes well and we get paid fast.

Oh, and Mom, it's funny you mention being a professional blogger - Alfred and I have been talking about starting a blog like this!

and we have a decision

Well, the job decision has sort of been made for me. I've been leaning towards looking for a teaching job, and getting things put into place to start applying when jobs for next year are posted. A little while ago I got a call from the fireplace company we are the distributor for: they're giving our distributorship to another company. But we can still sell in 3 smaller towns in the area. We've had just so much success with the large territory that they're taking away the majority of it so that we can do well in a much smaller area. Makes complete sense to me. I mean, I understand it's a business decision, but we've been told for months that we're safe and have nothing to worry about, they'll protect us. The best part is, the company they're giving it to is a company we approached to sell to. They didn't want to buy from someone smaller than them, so they went to the manufacturer and took our area. So that's cool.

Max doesn't seem to be very concerned about it, but I think it's time to move on. We've lost enough money in this, I'd prefer to just cut our losses and get out. Of course, it's not my money, and I guess he wants to keep trying. But I think Alfred can handle the blistering 1-sale-every-3-months pace I've set so far. I have confidence in him.

It's really not so bad, since I've been thinking of leaving anyway, but it still kind of sucks that I was so bad at this that I completely screwed up the entire company.

Oh well. Who likes fireplaces anyway?

what do I want to be when I grow up?

We went to a Chinese place for lunch - how are these for some good fortunes?


Let's hope it's a good unexpected event.

So I'm debating lately what to do with myself next year, job-wise. I could stay where I am, doing something I'm not too crazy about, not making much money, but with lots of flexibility and something I could easily do part time when we have kids to keep making some money. Or I could try to get a teaching job next fall, which would be something I would enjoy (hopefully), use my degree, and make more money, but would totally lose the flexibility I have here, not to mention having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn every morning until we moved up here to get to work on time. I'm looking at getting a teaching job in the county we're hopefully moving to rather than where we live now. I tried that last summer, didn't happen. There are 2 districts up here I would apply to; the one we will (hopefully) live in would be closer and is better to work for, from what I hear; the other is easier to get a job in, but would require more driving (that county is huge, I could potentially be working an hour or more from our house). Also, since it's the city, more chance to be in a tougher school with harder to teach kids. Both counties pay roughly the same. It's not like I hate my job now, I enjoy being able to be lazy and not do much if I don't want to, but it gets boring sometimes. Not to mention demeaning, having to make coffee and answer phones. It's just nothing I ever pictured myself doing. However, if I stay here I can also focus on building up the made-to-order bakery business I've sort of started.

SO, I made a poll - vote on my life-altering decision please! :)

Opinion Polls & Market Research

why you should move to florida

Because the high today is 83. In March. That's awesome. Never mind that the high tomorrow is only 66. Actually, that's pretty good too, compared to New York or Minnesota. Weather.com says it's only 74 right now though so we'll see. Moving to Florida would also mean living near me, which means you'd get to see things like this more often. I'm awesome. You know you all miss me.

The only problem with it being warm out is that when our building's AC kicks on, it kicks on hard. Yesterday it was in the low 70's outside, and inside it was 72. Today it's going into the 80's, and right now our office is 69. I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt but I'm cold. (Maybe if I got off my ass once in awhile I'd be warm, but who can be bothered to move around.) Really, this is a problem most of the year. If you dress for the weather when it's 90 and humid, you're wearing shorts and a tank top, but any building you go into has the AC set to like 60. I end up carrying a sweatshirt with me everywhere I go. I'm like a little old lady.

The other problem with warmer weather is the damn mosquitoes. I'm not looking forward to them returning. They love my sweet northern blood.

At lunch today I ordered the Stromboli for Two (I had no choice, there was no Stromboli for One.) The waitress gave me a funny look. I told her I really like leftovers. About 2/3 of it is currently in the fridge at the office. It's big and long (that's what she said!)

P.S. Need a movie? These people can help!

rock stars and other random information

We go to the gym twice a week now. It's the gym Alfred started going to for physical therapy for his back, and it was cheaper for both of us to get a membership than for him to pay for each therapy session, so now we both go. Usually it's pretty empty in the morning, maybe 3-5 people other than us and the staff, and it's usually older people who aren't in very good shape. It's all people there for therapy, after all. So we feel pretty good when we're able to lift weights and do squats and stuff because we're the youngest and most fit people there. Well, this morning there was a police officer in there, and he put us to shame. He was there when we got there, and still there when we left an hour and 15 minutes later. He was just lifting weights like crazy, doing machines, making us all look ridiculous. He spent the entire time we warmed up on one leg machine, using all the weight. I was kind of in awe. When he walked past me into the weight room, he smiled and said hi - I felt like I had just met a rock star! Alfred said I should have flashed him. I should have asked him to sign my ass or something. The one girl who works there kept flirting with him. As exciting as it was to have such a celebrity in our midst, I prefer when we're alone with the old folks. If I wanted to see people in great shape, I'd go to a regular gym.

In other news, I'm all alone in the office today. Everyone else is out of town or out looking at lots. So I'm listening to music and blogging. And, since Alfred complained about the lack of pictures yesterday, using my camera! So, here's what I look at all day:

Notice the important looking spreadsheet on my computer. Yes, I put that up on purpose just for the picture. And that's my family calendar in the wall, the one where my name is misspelled for our anniversary. Now for a view of my office from the door:

Kind of boring, huh? At least my flowers still look nice! I want to get a plant but I'd probably just kill it. There's also 2 chairs next to the door that I couldn't get into the picture. I need them for all the important meetings I have.

This is my old desk, before I moved up in the world:

It used to be covered with a bunch of my crap. I didn't have any drawers or anything so all my stuff was all over the table. Now I'm marginally more organized. But lonely. Alfred and I used to share an office, we used to make paper airplanes and throw them over the divider at each other. Good times. But in my current office my computer screen doesn't face the door, so if someone comes in I have time to hide whatever I've been doing and make it look like I'm working. So it's not all bad in here. Anyway, here's what Alfred's desk looks like on the other side of that divider:

Now he's got a lot of crap. He's also got a gift basket that we got for Christmas in there. We already ate all the good stuff out of it (and drank the wine).

I also just ran out to the car to get the protein bar I brought for my post workout breakfast. It's kind of cold and rainy out. Weather.com says it's 61. Yes, when you live in Florida 61 is kind of cold.

P.S. The song that just came up on pandora is called "gigolos get lonely too." Who knew?

I HATE accounting

Ever since our accountant switched back to her old office, I've been the lucky one given the task of bookkeeping/accounting. At first this consisted of writing checks every week, balancing the checkbooks, and checking the bank statements (for maybe 12 companies). No problem. Then I learned I got to do sales tax every month for 2 of the companies. Ok, I can handle that. Then I'm told we're ordering accounting software and I'm responsible for entering all of the transactions and reconciling all the bank accounts every month. This is where it got ugly. Partly because the previous accountant had a habit of making small entry errors - putting in a 2 instead of a 4, for example - and while it was easy enough for me to correct in a checkbook where I could just write in the correct number, trying to fix it in a program that I don't understand is a HUGE pain. I messed up one company and ended up having to re-enter 2 months worth of stuff because of a small error like that. (The other company I totally messed up was completely my fault, unfortunately). Then I just found out today that a problem I was having with December's statement for one company was because she had never reconciled November. If she had done her job before she left, it wouldn't have become a problem for me. Then she acts like I'm an idiot because I'm trying to fix December when the problem is in November. Like I know that!

Even more annoying was when she was trying to teach me the program in the first place. Now, I have absolutely no accounting experience. So she tells me to enter a transaction, I ask her a question about what to enter first, and she tells me to just do whichever I prefer. I had to keep myself from bitch slapping her as I said "I don't understand how to enter it at all, I need you to tell me what to do here." Sometimes she just assumes that I know what I'm doing, and I really don't. I'm sure it's frustrating for her to work with an idiot like me when she's obviously proficient with this software, but it's pretty frustrating for me too. Especially since some of this is completely counter-intuitive. Accountants must be messed up in the head for this to make sense to them.

My favorite, though, is when she treats me like an idiot with something simple, assuming that since I don't know accounting I don't know anything. A month ago I had to save some files on a disk for her. She explained to me in great detail over the phone exactly how to delete the existing files from the disk so that I could save the new ones without getting confused. This coming from a woman who can't figure out how to double click to open a file. I swear, she makes no sense. One minute she assumes I can read her mind, the next I'm a complete moron.

At least she's not in our office anymore. She can talk like no one's business. Alfred and I used to dread going into her office because we knew we'd be stuck listening to her for half an hour. Mostly about her kids and how great they are. I wonder if my mom talks about me that much. I hope not, cause it's annoying. And her kids range from 18-25 years old.

Hmm, I guess she annoys me a little. :) Ranting over! Back to my wonderful accounting program...