GetSheila

Shout out to JCW and his mom

You all know JCW, a frequent and hilarious commenter here. (If you do not know JCW, you must be new. Welcome.)

JCW's ma was recently diagnosed with lung cancer.

This, of course, sucks great big donkey balls.

I spent all my after-school time at her house growing up, so much so that when she brought treats home from the grocery store for her kids, she brought one for me, too. And by treats, I mean a snazzy blue Goody comb with a handle that stuck out of my back pocket and made me look cool. I think I got a toothbrush once, too. It was the beginning of my love for useful things.

JCW's dad has also been seriously ill and now this. Gah!

I love you JCW. Though I have not called - because I suck - I think about you and your family every day.

Need to vent? My blog is your blog.

Be well.

Tags: lung cancer

What did I miss while I was gone?

I stopped writing for a few mere months and now suddenly it is hard. Who knew?

Since tax season ended, I want to tell you I:

1. Used my overtime money to end hunger in a third world country re-named "GetSheilaLand" in my honor;
2. Had so much overtime money left after that I paid off my house;
3. Got a boyfriend;
4. Remodeled my house;
5. Started a rigorous exercise program and am now slim and healthy.

But here is what really happened:

1. Used my overtime money to replace my "it's so old it's Harvest Gold - crawl inside the drum to reach the lint screen - give it three extra go's at the end of each cycle to get the clothes actually dry" dryer with a brand new digitally programmable steam dryer on a pedestal;
2. Had a chunk of change to put down against my Prius loan but got depressed when I realized it will still take me over a year to pay off the balance;
3. Got a Wii;
4. Moved all my furniture around so the living room is now actually the living space and the family room - the only carpeted room in the house - is now the exercise room, complete with formerly unused treadmill from the bedroom and yoga DVD's;
5. Have been on the treadmill a total of two times since tax season ended but I do still do yoga every morning and am now adding it to my evenings. Some days are more bendy than others.

Sooooooo, I feel a tad out of touch these days. Did I miss anything good?

Tags: tax season follies

No I am no dead, thanks for asking

I'm baaaaaaack. Well, sort of. I shall begin posting regularly again soon. Just how regularly, I have not yet decided. Any preference?

In the meantime, please go watch this video:An Engineer's Guide to Kittehs. It is approximately six and a half minutes long and entirely worth it if you are a cat person. Or perhaps if you just like engineers. Or both.

Some snips to pique your interest:

1. A rigorous lounge training schedule;
2. The Corporal Cuddling Method;
3. And my personal favorite: Cat yodeling.

I would write more but there is a bag of chocolate chips on my kitchen counter calling my name. Maybe I will actually bake them this time. Then again, is there anything more yummy than raw chocolate chip cookie dough? No, no there is not.

Tags: cat video

Are brain-eating zombies just outside the door? They do not say.

Created by OnePlusYou

I know. I have not posted in forever and now I am posting this lame thing. But it freaked me out!

One of the questions it asks to determine how long you could survive trapped in your home is if you have any pets. Why? Not because the love they share with you will keep your spirit healthy. No. Because they are a potential FOOD SOURCE.

Gah!

I beat Hsien, who can only last a mere 56 days. Peanuts! Then again, she does have three people to feed compared to my mere one.

Hm, they did not ask how many CHILDREN you have to use a potential food source. I wonder why...

Tags: memes

Wheelbarrow Love

I bought a wheelbarrow. It is red and beautiful.

I have not used it yet but I did lovingly stroke it with a damp cloth to remove the bird poop that accumulated during its stint as a display model at Lowes.

First job? To gather all the rocks strewn willy nilly throughout my garden in one place so I can figure out what to do with them. I do not know what the original intent was with the rock placement. I am assuming there actually was intent but time and neglect have distorted what was, I am sure, a lovely gardenscape.

But there was no wheelbarrowing today, no sirree. Happy Easter, by the way. My mom, sister and I feasted on traditional tuna noodle casserole with a side of au gratin potatoes because, you know, there were not quite enough carbohydrates and fat in the casserole.

What.

So it's a new tradition. I, for one, embrace it. Everyone got to sleep in. No one had to slave over the preparation of a big, fancy, time-consuming meal. The only disappointment of the day was not getting to hide Easter eggs but mom and Kathryn refuse to pick up baskets and hunt them down so what is the point? Party poopers.

If Easter is not your thing, Happy Belated Spring Equinox. Bite the ears off a hollow chocolate bunny in celebration.

Tags: easter

Now you see it, now you don't

Ta-da!

What? You don't see it? How about this?

No? Okay, one more clue:

THAAAAAAAT'S right. There used to be a two and half story tall cypress tree in those first two photos just like the ones still standing in my neighbor's yard. Take a look at the first photo again. Notice how the fence is still a lovely golden brown where the tree used to protect it was while the rest of the fence is that dull weathered gray fences get when you do not take care of them. If it had compadres, like my neighbors trees, I would have simply had them topped, but it was all by itself serving no purpose whatsoever other than to gather spider webs way up high where you could see them (ick) but not reach them to get them down. Also, I am pretty sure there was something living in there like an opossum. Or so the neighbors said.

Look what else my godlike tree man did:

It looks innocent enough but an entire tree used to be there! Here is a wider shot to show you why I took it out:

It had been planted way too close to the house, the spa, and the patio (on the left). It was also incredibly messy when it dropped its bazillions of flower petals in the fall. Normally I would just rake that stuff up but it was right over the spa. Alas, it had to go.

What I find amazing is how Tree God is able to drop a tree in such a small area, not to mention grind the stump out and leave a nice flat spot with nothing to indicate a tree used to be there but a dusting of sawdust.

(Don't ask me about that spiky plant in the photo. It just sprouted in the last few weeks out of nowhere. It was not there when I moved in last July! I hope it turns out to be a lily of some kind. I think I had better dig it up and move it to a better location before it gets any bigger.)

And the bonus shot of the day is Mystery Plant!

You saw a spindly, sad version of this plant last year. I shall endeavor to take a photo of it in full bloom so we can finally identify the thing. It really is quite pretty. I think I will try to divide it and plant it all around the beds. It is a giant cluster of giant bulbs and I have loads of them out front, too.

Oh the fun of gardening when you don't know what the hell you are doing. Tra la la.

Tags: yard and garden

House Obsessing as Procrastination

I yearn to remodel my house.

Then I hit myself over the head with that saying about not focusing on getting what you want, but rather wanting what you already have.

And then I go back to yearning about remodeling my house.

The sticky part is I have no money. But that should not stop me. No. What I would really like to do is state my wants and needs to someone (designer? contractor?) and have them draft up a plan telling me how much the whole plan will cost, but broken down by project so I can take things on in stages as the money becomes available. I also want that person to improve upon my initial idea and come up with something much better than I can think up all by me-self.

But who is this magical person? First I thought: designer (because I watch way too much Divine Design and Candace Olson seems to do it all, in one sitting while the camera is rolling.) But do designers really know all about building codes and which walls can be knocked down and all that? I am thinking no. So, a contractor then. But "contractor" does not call up visions of beautiful design. It instead makes me think of walls ripped down the studs and drywall dust flying everywhere.

My apologies to contractors everywhere. I am sure you are so much more than that.

So who do I call? Where do I begin? And what am I doing thinking about this now in the middle of tax season when I should be spending every waking moment working on somebody's taxes?

Whatever.

Remember how I really REALLY wanted to remodel my kitchen? I am over that now. Not completely, but I have decided I need a new master bathroom first. And probably a new guest bathroom at the same time, since it will probably be easier to do them concurrently since they share a plumbing wall.

See? SEE? This is another problem! I tell myself I can start small and just do one room but then I realize it would be more cost efficient to do it along with the one next door and it just snowballs from there. Not to mention the part where doing both bathrooms at the same time leaves me with NO TOILET. Gah!

I need a plan. My Queendom for a plan!

Tags: house obsession, tax follies

My love affair with Quickbooks Remote Access

It is more of a love/hate relationship, really, my affair with Quickbooks Remote Access.

Quickbooks is an accounting program the great majority of our small business clients use. In the past, I would get a backup of the client's Quickbooks file, restore it to my computer, make all my changes, and then give the client a list of journal entries to book.

Which of course they would not do, a fact I would only discover the following year when nothing rolled forward correctly and I could not tie to the prior year's tax return.

::sigh::

There are other ways to get the client file adjusted but suffice it to say none of them work on some clients. Enter Quickbooks Remote Access.

I can now log into the client's file remotely - access their computer while sitting at my computer - and when I am done, I am DONE. The real beauty of it is that while I am in the client's file, I can set it up so the system will not allow them to post earlier than a certain date like, say, the end of year I just wrapped up with a tidy little bow. HA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!

The "hate" part of my love/hate relationship with Quickbooks Remote Access is having to deal with the time lag. The slower the client's computer, the longer the delay. It reminds me of the olden days when computers were new and their responses were slow but 'tis a cross I am happy to bear. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. Or something.

I am sure there is an appropriate Star Trek reference that applies.

Live long and pay as little tax as possible. Yeah, that's the one.

Tags: tax follies

Lack of planning on your part does not create an emergency on mine

I have always wanted to use that line. No such luck so far this year. Tax season is going surprisingly smoothly.

Of course, 'tis early yet. Three weeks to go until the corporate tax deadline. Two weeks after that, April Fool's Day, which usually brings out the crazy people who suddenly realize the tax deadline for individuals is a mere two weeks away.

"Omigod I have to file my taxes! Can you help me? Can you help me RIGHT NOW? You're not busy, are you? What do I need to bring you?"

Because having filed taxes every year for the past twenty years is apparently not enough practice to give them a clue what they might need for THIS year's taxes.

Then they are surprised to discover all of your available appointments have been booked by people who actually plan ahead and, though we do take mail-ins and will try very hard, there is no guarantee we can get it done by the deadline on such short notice and with all of the other returns that came in the door before theirs arrived.

But so far, no crazy people. Just a lot of Quickbooks backup files and many, many journal entries.

And a lot of hungry accountants spending way too much together.

Tags: tax follies

And the chili, it was good

It is this chili, found through this blog. Combined with Marie Calendar's cornbread - made from a mix where you just add water - it was perhaps the most perfect meal ever. I suppose I should have added a vegetable on the side but I am 43. Why start now?

I have never made chili before. It turns out it is pretty easy, except for the part where it took three hours and I sat down to dinner at 10:00pm. (Note to self: make chili in the crock pot or on the weekend or do half the prep the night before. Whatever you do, do NOT start it at 7:00pm at night and expect to actually eat that night.) I was so starving by the time I ate, I was not sure if the chili really was good or if I just thought so because I was so hungry.

Because the recipe makes a ginormous pot full and I am only one person, I took two thirds of it in to work today. (Note to self #2: never tell The Big Kahuna when you have left something out of a recipe for he shall tell you it would have been better with the missing ingredient.) I left out the jalapeno peppers because a) I am wimpy, b) several people at work are also wimpy, and c) I just don't like them. Even without them, it has a bit of a kick. The chili powder? The ground cumin? The quarter cup of minced garlic? I don't know but it sure was yummy. Turns out it WASN'T just because I was so hungry.

Verbatim's chili. Try it! (My only other substitution was half ground beef and half ground turkey instead of all ground turkey, but I only did that because I had some ground beef I needed to use up.) And I highly recommend the Marie Calendar cornbread mix if you are short on time or just don't feel like making cornbread from scratch. 'Tis quite yummy.

Hm...I wonder if eating chili at ten o'clock at night had anything to do with my upset stomach in the middle of the night and waking in the morning to dreams of being trapped in a house surrounded by flesh-eating zombies.

Tags: cornbread and chili