Baa Baa Knit Stitch

>Less than a week left….

>It’s April 9.

Believe it or not, people are still throwing tax returns at me. I’m trying to refrain from laughing hysterically.

I have successfully refrained from shouting “screw you, Jenny Craig” as I shovel handfuls of chocolate into my face. It’s only a temporary phase, after all.

I have successfully refrained from lecturing people on the importance of me being able to *read* the documents they give me. Fuzzy faxes and receipts that look like they’ve been through the washing machine don’t cut it.

We went to Defcon 2 this morning as the stapler broke. It’s amazing how much I rely on a stapler. Fortunately I found a sub without breaking into tears. At least it wasn’t as bad as the nail in the tire last week. I was very proud of handling that without breaking out into hives. (Kudos to the Hummer dealer here, btw. They got me in and out quickly. And yes, I figure it’s overkill to go to the dealer for a nail in the tire, but it was the only option at the time. )

I’m crawling back into my hole. Hopefully I’ll see all of you next week.

>Happy Easter, everyone!!!

>A Happy Easter to everyone! It’s a fine, if a bit cool, spring day here near the ATL. Thankfully we suffered no damage or even near misses from last week’s severe weather. And we did locate DF Heather, who is quite thankful there was no damage to the loft. We were too.

Where have I been, since it’s been over a month since my last post?? Check the calendar, folks…. it’s tax season, and I’ve been paddling like mad just to stay afloat! I’m thankful that my business is up this year. I don’t advertise and all my new clients come in as referrals, but it does keep me busy. Only a few weeks left in it though. I’m hoping things will start calming down after April 1. Usually by then people have gotten their stuff to me to work on, or they want an extension. People are unusually timely this year due to the incentive payments coming out from the government starting in May. One of the requirements to get one is that you have to have filed your 2007 return. (If you need more info about the incentive, click here. End of public service announcement.)

What else other than working? Well my mom had a little health scare — got extremely dehydrated and I ended up spending a couple of days in Rome to make sure she got to the doc. This was at the same time Richard got shipped to Toronto for a week-long business trip, so things got a little hectic. I’m happy to report that Mom’s better and has gained back most of the weight she lost (when you’re 92 pounds to begin with and lose down to 86, there’s not much room for error), and Richard made it out of Canada without incident. The highlight of his trip, other than seeing enough snow to do him for several years, was the sighting of a black squirrel. I continue to go on follow up doc visits with Mom, altho she insists I don’t have to. I’ve got a pretty wicked case of tendonitis in the bicep tendon of the recently surgically repaired shoulder, and a round of steroids for that is providing insomnia and paranoia which is *really* attractive.

Sometimes you get some neat surprises. I realize on a daily basis I have some great friends who I’ve never really “met”. Like my friend Jerry in Chicago who sends Oscar treats on special holidays like Easter. And last week, I found a package at my door from Needlecraft Corner…. I thought “Kewl, my Just Nan stuff is here.”. But when I opened the box…Isn’t this just the biggest, fluffiest sheepie you’ve ever seen??? And there was a sweet card wishing me a Happy Easter from Kathleen, Drema, and Amber (the shop dog, who looks much like the dog on the card). Evidently Kathleen had been shopping, saw the huge sheepie, thought of me, and they sent it down to surprise me. I’ll admit I had been having a **really** awful morning, and the sheepie just set me laughing for the rest of the afternoon. Gave me warm fuzzies — not so much from hugging the sheepie as from knowing people were thinking of me kindly.

And the same day, a box arrived from DF Teresa with some sock yarn she had picked out for me as a “cheer up, tax season is *almost* over” kind of thing….(Pardon the gratuitous dachshund shot)…. This beautiful yarn is called “As If I’d Let You Dance On My Grave, You Evil Bitch” — the color doesn’t show up well here but it’s a great combo of pinks, greens, and blues, by Politically Incorrect Yarns and Fibers. Those are my kind of people. 🙂

And I have been remiss in not posting shots of the bee-yoo-ti-full birthday pressie Teresa sent me. Just how many samplers do you see with a wiener dog in the corner??? The picture doesn’t do it justice *at all*. It’s gorgeous beyond words, and I’m a total slacker for not having it framed yet. I was so tickled that she stitched that for me to commemorate my 50th year on this earth. 🙂 And with it she sent one of the kewl project rolls that DF Judy gave us instructions on how to make…They are ever so handy for making sure projects don’t get messed up till they’re framed… 🙂

In my spare (?) time, I’ve been participating in the Victory Junction Afghan Competition on Ravelry (do you knit or crochet? Are you on it yet? Friend me! I’m doxietrek! If you’re not on it… don’t just sit there… click the link!). The idea is to either knit afghans or squares that will be assembled into afghans, and these will be sent to the Victory Junction Gang camp in North Carolina, a charity started by the Petty family in memory of Adam Petty. It provides camp for seriously ill children every year, and they attend free of charge, and the week they attend is full of children with the same illness they have. Every camper leaves with a hand knitted or crocheted afghan. As you can imagine, they need a lot of them. (For more info on the camp and how you can help, click here.)

So anyhow, the NASCAR group on Ravelry decided to start knitting, and it evolved into knitting “for” your favorite driver (Dale Jr., of course). I started with squares, but I soon discovered that Gauge is Not My Friend, and I wasn’t able to get the size they needed. Upon the suggestion of my friend Min on Ravelry, I decided to tackle a whole afghan to avoid the gauge issue, and I chose the mitered throw in the latest edition of Creative Knitting. My work so far:Yeah. It’s possibly the World’s Ugliest Afghan. Cheap acrylic yarn… colors aren’t my favorite, but it was what Michael’s had that passed as “bright”. But maybe it’ll make a good snugglie for a kid. And maybe the kid will know that even tho it’s not the prettiest on earth, it was stitched with love.

>Congrats to Uno!

>
see more loldogs ask – i can has hotdog?

Way to show ’em what the hounds can do! 🙂

>When did this happen??

>I have a friend, who, in spite of everything in today’s world, has managed to raise some very well mannered children. They are polite, say please and thank you, and are respectful of their elders.

A couple of days ago, one of them addressed me as “Miss Jean”.

I hear some of you going, “well, that’s a Southern thing.” Indeed it is. We’re proud of our manners down here. I don’t have a problem with that.

My problem lies in the fact that when I was a kid, I addressed my friend Lynne’s three unmarried aunts as Miss Lennie, Miss Annie Bell and Miss Amy. And they seemed to be ancient at the time. Even today I address an older lady at our church as Miss Hazel. Miss Hazel is, to put it mildly, on up there in years.

So when did this happen?? I know I blogged recently about turning 50. Frankly, 50 doesn’t seem all that different than 49, except that AARP keeps sending me stuff (and considering their frightfully liberal agenda, they can just keep it, thankyouverymuch). In my mind, I just don’t fit the “Miss Jean” template. I have spiky hair; I drive a Hummer; I listen to an iPod.

I’m guessing I should just take it as a sign of respect and leave it there. I don’t *feel* ancient (at least not at this point in tax season anyway). **sigh**

In other news….

Remember back in December when it was Hummer 1, Honda 0?? Ran into the lady whose car I hit at The Whole Nine Yarns on Sunday. Asked her when she was having her car fixed, since I hadn’t been contacted to pay my deductible. Funny story, she said. Turns out after I hit her, the car got totaled by somebody else, so there was nothing to fix. Yeah… first thing Monday morning I called the insurance agent to share that little tidbit.

Started on the February TWNY sock guild sock:
Pic may be a little blurry… but I was kind of in a hurry when I took it…. 🙂 Anyway, it’s a toe up pattern called “Spring Peepers”. Isn’t the yarn pretty?? I love toe up socks.

Richard managed to capture this photographic evidence of Sunday afternoons around here:
Rumor has it that the grey haired woman sleeping in the picture is Miss Jean. There’s a darn cute dog with her at any rate.

>Probably the most boring blog entry ever

>It’s been over a week since I last threatened to maim anyone at my accounting software company. Oh, I’m not saying I haven’t called them… I have… I think we finally got up to about 8 hours of support total in January that I better not receive a bill for. Suffice it to say I was even unhappier with them when I downloaded and installed my tax software without a hitch. Thank goodness someone knows what they’re doing.

We did have an open house at our new office this past Thursday. DF Andy did the catering, and the food was impressive as well as delicious! We didn’t have as great a turnout as we expected, chiefly because the weather turned off rainy… I’m not complaining about the rain because we so desperately need it here, but I would have liked it better had it held off for a couple of more hours.

Other than that, I’m settling into normal tax season grind. Clients are contacting me and getting their stuff to me. At this point I’m not filing anyone’s stuff yet, because this early in February they usually have a couple of 1099s that straggle in. Unless they really need the refund quickly I like to give it a couple of weeks to make sure we don’t get any surprises that result in an amended return.

I know all of you get tired of hearing about work. It sort of consumes me this time of year. I may gripe about it, but the bottom line is that I really do like what I do for a living. And I’m blessed to be able to be my own boss at it. Gives me a lot of freedom that I really like.

No pictures, but I have been doing some stitching and knitting. Stitch-wise, I’ve been working on the first of my ornaments for the exchange. It’s just about finished, and when I get it done I’ll post a pic. Knit-wise, I’m working on the Lily Chin reversible coat (if you click on the link, it’s M002) and a scarf from a skein of Malabrigo I got on sale at TWNY. The coat is strictly garter stitch so it’s pretty mindless.

That’s me right now. Pretty boring eh? ‘Bout time. 🙂

One more little thing…..It’s Speedweeks, baby!!! Woo hoo!!!

>I always knew I was unique

>Evidently I just didn’t know how unique I was. Like in the land of accounting software unique.

As a CPA, I have to buy accounting software that’s a step above your garden variety Quickbooks or Peachtree. This is to put out professional looking reporting to convince people who are giving fairly sizeable amounts of money to me that I know what I’m doing. After all, you don’t want to see the guy fixing your car driving around in an old beat-up bomb, do you? Same principle — you have to provide professional looking reports for your clients.

The package I use is one of the leaders in the industry. And it ain’t cheap either.

So imagine my distress this year when I downloaded the update to the software to be able to print W2s and 1099s and discovered that the sucker wouldn’t run on my computer. Runs fine on everybody else’s. And they had no clue why. Exhausted all the possibilities they had. Furthermore, **Richard**, Alpha Geek of all Geeks, also couldn’t find out why.

At this point, there was only one solution: buy a new computer.

Now, mind you, I had pulled out an ancient XP machine to limp along on until I could get the new machine. Software downloaded and updated just fine on there. But it was sslloooowwwww….. and I just didn’t think I could handle it. So off to Office Depot I went, where I procured a shiny new Gateway, 3GB of RAM, dual core Intel processor, 250 GB hard drive. That baby should scream! Yeah, it has Vista on it… but all my vendors now say they can handle Vista, right??

Yeah… well…

Downloaded the software last night. Now, you can download the program off the internet, but any licensing or updating has to be done through a special “connect” function that is internal to the program. So you can’t just go fetch a file off the internet and update (which I find completely ludicrous, but I also find the fact that they want you to have a wired network connection to talk to them ludicrous as well — and notice in all of this that I’m carefully not revealing the name of the guilty party either).

THE FREAKIN CONNECTION WON’T WORK THROUGH VISTA.

And evidently I’m the first person to find this out.

Oh, Joy. Oh, Rapture. Oh serious one way flow of conversation through the phone to the rep on the other end.

At first they tried to blame it on my DSL connection. I informed them that didn’t fly since it worked just fine on the aforementioned sssllllooooowwww XP machine. “Hmmmph” was the reply I got. I also told them I found it curious that **everything else** worked on the internet except for stuff internal to *Their* program, so it seemed pretty obvious to me where the problem was.

After about two hours of conferring with their techno geeks, they decide that I should snarf some files off the ssslllloooowwww XP machine and restore them to the shiny new Vista machine to get me going for now. It still doesn’t fix the problem, but at least I can function. They say they want to re-visit it after tax season. I say we’re going to re-visit it in March when my renewal comes up and they want $$$.

Am I the only person who thinks it’s unreasonable to expect that this stuff get, say, *tested* if you’re gonna claim your stuff works with the operating system???

And for you FSU fans, the new machine is “Garnet Red”. Says so on the box. It was the only color they had. I’m sticking with the FSU take on it to avoid any Bulldog associations.

>Yep, It’s a Snowstorm

>The view from my front door:
The view from my back door:
The snow is still coming down, too. We’ll end up with an inch or two before it’s over, which is a very big deal down here.

Not much on the streets right now, but they’re wet, and considering the temps are supposed to drop into the teens tonight, they’ll make a fine skating rink in the morning. I called our choir director and suggested he get our minister to go ahead and cancel services in the morning and call one of the local news stations to scroll the closing across the bottom of the screen as many other churches have been doing. Seemed like free publicity to me. So far he hasn’t bitten. Most great ideas really aren’t appreciated. 🙂

As for us and our snow day, Oscar is napping, Richard is assembling some Ikea furniture we procured last weekend, and I’m working on some cross stitch ornaments for this year’s ornament exchange. Oh, and laundry. I’m loving my new Ikea laundry cart that I got. I think it’s my new best friend. 🙂

By the way, when you say your prayers tonight, I’d appreciate it if you could include one for my friend Sandra, who is caring for her mother Frances. Frances is almost 90 and is ill, and things aren’t looking good right now. They could both use a little extra support, and I’d appreciate it.

>Snow Watch ’08

>We’re on an official Snow Watch here around the ATL. For those of you in the northern climate, for whom snow is a regular occurrance, I’m sure this is quite odd. But for those of us born and raised in the south, snow is a Big Thing. We just completely lose our minds over it, because we so rarely see it. Grown people get positively giddy at the thought of a couple of inches of snowfall.

For those of you who don’t know, we’ve got a few rules here for handling potential snowstorms. (Let me define a southern snowstorm for you: it snows a couple of inches — 4 if it’s a blizzard — and it’s generally gone by the next day). First, you have to make a run to your nearest grocery store and buy enough milk and bread to do for at least a couple of weeks. I don’t know why you have to stock up that much, but you just do.

Because here in the south, we generally stay home for the day it snows. And lest you Northerners (note my extreme restraint in not using the term “Yankee” — I’m married to a Yankee, by the way) snerk at our reasoning for staying home, I’ll list the next few rules of southern snowstorms:

a. There’s always a layer of ice under the snow.
b. You can’t drive on ice.
c. See a and b once again if you don’t believe me
d. The entire state of Georgia probably has one snowplow and it’s in “the mountains”
e. Go back to a and b.

So, we all stay home, watch the anchors on tv become completely ridiculous with the snow coverage (“We’ll go to Jim up in Gwinnett County who says there’s at least two flakes up there now!”), and we watch all the transplanted northerners who haven’t learned these rules and think we’re just scared of a little snow get out and try to drive in it. By the way, my client who is an auto body shop just *loves* these people. Business is always up for him after a snowstorm.

I don’t want to make light of everything — there are some dangers inherent in this too. Our neighborhoods are covered with pine trees that just love to snap when they’re covered with ice and snow (they sound just like shotguns when they do that), and quite often they take power lines with them, so you have to be sure to have plenty of battery operated lights available. And logs for the fireplace aren’t a bad idea either. Plus, I sure wouldn’t want to be one of the people like my friend Vicky, a nurse, who *has* to get to work through the ice and the crazies.

We had a little taste of snow yesterday — covered the grass but didn’t get on the roads. Tomorrow night it’s supposed to come down again, so we’ll see what happens. Forecasting a southern snowstorm is about as easy as predicting what a dachshund will decide to do when you call him. We all know that’s a bit of an iffy proposition. 🙂 But just to be on the safe side, we went to the store tonight and bought bread and milk…..

>Never give out your address unless you know why

>This is Bob:Bob is my business partner. We’ve known each other for about 10 years now. Actually, he’s more like the big brother I never had. The most frequent phrase heard around the office is “Bite me”. Bob’s an ordained minister, which is good, because he prays for my soul constantly (and those of you who know me know I’m in desperate need of that).

So yesterday afternoon, Bob calls and asks for my address, which I found strange because I got a Christmas card from him this year. But he said he couldn’t find it, so I gave it to him anyway.

I was home, talking to Richard, when I looked out the window. I said “there’s something in the yard.” This is what I found:My first thought: Bob.

It was a pretty dramatic statement, and actually, it was pretty darn funny. Haven’t heard from my neighbors yet….
But isn’t it cute when a skunk says you’re beautiful???

>’Nuff Said

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moar cute puppy pictures