Monday, November 29, 2010

Grindstone, meet nose

The Monday after Thanksgiving; is there any more depressing work day?  A glorious stretch of time off, family, friends and feasting (plus Black Friday shopping for the intrepid - I love Black Friday, but only for the name, as its roots are in accounting), then a massive thud as we return to work for the never-ending slog until Christmas.

This is the beginning of the really, truly hectic (insane, actually) portion of my work year.  From now until the start of June will be stressful, annoying, life-consuming and, every so often, rewarding.

Tonight I'll package and freeze the rest of the leftover roast, clean a bit more and poke away at the Christmas decorations.  The tree is up, the lights plugged into a timer so I can both come home to a shimmering tree and wake up to the same.  The lights are one of my favorite parts of Christmas.

Over the weekend I managed to do a little bit of shopping:  I replaced my cell phone.  At four years old, my phone could have been considered a technological dinosaur, in spite of the fact it was in near perfect condition and worked just fine, thank you.  Call this an impulse switch.

What is it?  A Samsung Acclaim, an Android (Google) powered phone. If they let me stack my work discount and the pay-through-auto-deduction discount, the final monthly plan cost is within five bucks of my old plan - yay!  I'm still getting the hang of it; it vibrates at odd times for purposes I cannot fathom, in spite of the vibrate notification feature being firmly turned off.  Eh, if I can't figure it out I can take it back in next Saturday and have the nice barely wet behind the ears clerk explain it to me in words of one syllable (with diagrams!).

On the agenda for this afternoon:  planning our attack on the year end reporting for non-resident aliens, who have their very own tax code.  You think doing your own taxes is confusing...

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