It appears to be a pretty day through my window.

ButI haven't really sampled the weather. I've been preoccupied with Janett's first real Quickbooks client. Jose took the call and relayed to us that the client wanted to be set up on Quickbooks, and we assumed that meant installing the program on his computer, selecting a chart of accounts and maybe entering beginning balances. As it turns out, the program was already installed with a workable chart of accounts. What the client really wanted was to be told how to do things appropriately for their unique business, especially how to account for inventory, sales. and costs of sales, as well as how to generate appropriate transaction documentation in a fast paced environment. We'd met on Thursday and Friday evening I sent them a few pages of recommendations on how to proceed and pointing out a few potential complications. Saturday I sent another page, clarifications and explanations of items included in the Friday letter which I thought would be helpful to non-accountants as they reviewed the first letter over rhe weekend.
I woke up at 3:30 this morning with a better idea for one step in the process, and a couple of questions, so I sat at my computer and typed in notes on the possible improved procedure and the peripheral questions, and went back to bed for a couple of hours. I'm thinking of emailing them a note of the amended procedure today. Not that I assume they're at the computer on a Sunday, checking their emails, but to update them at the earliest possible moment in order to give them time to think about it a little before we speak tomorrow, and in order they have written notes in front of them when we speak.
I think we've done enough work to justify Janett's standard "set-up" charge, but I don't know if they'll like my recommendations, or consider our proposing a plan to be the kind of work they anticipated being billed for. I think if they appreciate our recommengations and don't object to the bill, the question will remain as to how much additional help they will need catching up on the several months they've been operating with manually prepared sales documents and trying to keep their records on excel sheets. Also, things like sales tax provisions will require a little tinkering, since they probably thought they were selling a service and proceeds weren't taxable, which is only partially true.
Don't mean to bore you with the details, but it's an interesting experiment in light of Janett and my attempted collaboration (which is every bit as complicated as learning about customer relations).

Maybe, another good thing about blogging is that it

may prove to be therapeutic; may help me to get in touch with myself. What's the psychological name for what I am experiencing? An episode? And would the term be, disassociating?
I know, ND losing a couple of close games in the last minutes may have something to do with me feeling dislodged. But selling corned beef sandwiches at Irish Fest last week end, roasted corn on the cob at Heritage fest this past week end, and tootsie rolls to people a couple mornings in between? Why am I doing things I never did before?
I've stopped going to Huffington Post, because they post provocative captions that elicit all kinds of moronic responses, and the provocations and the morons both annoy me, and I generally sense that the commentors might not have read the articlein the first place. I can't even go to Facebook without remembering the simile of the internet as the drunken librarian who won't shut up. But TV is even more disturbing. The five o'clock local news is the closest thing to a real news show on all 100 24 hour stations, and even they tend to sensationalize. The dramas are even worse, contrived and implausible story lines, devoid on meaningful dialogue, but long on featured actors and actresses striking their favorite cold blue steel poses for minutes of each show. Also, what's with these full color renderings of what bullets, blades, and blunt objects do to a victims vulnerable anatomy. How cold and callused do they wish us to become? And don't get me started on flash backs and flash forwards. The Office is my last refuge.
I can't afford to try to discuss the economy or the political environment except to say I'm a lttle worried for all of us. Personally, life is a somewhat out of kilter as well. We may be moving next month because our landlord stopped paying the mortgage last year, and the sheriff is scheduled to auction our building off. Not unreasonably, the landlord also stopped paying the utilities a couple of months ago, and we got a warning from the city that they're going to shut off the water the day after tomorrow. I went to our downstairs neighbor to propose we go halvsies on the arrears to keep the water flowing another month, and she, matter of factly, informed me that her son took a call from the gas company last week and that they said they were going to shut off the gas. WTF, people?
Maybe, it's just me, rapidly approaching my 65th birthday...no, it's more than that, but age may have something to do with it. Tonight I saw an ad for an apple NANO, or something like that, and I didn't know what it did, and they didn't tell me. They didn't tell me anything, but there was a song, something about wanting a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket.
I'm going to retire for the evening with my newly arrived edition of the Atlantic, (Thanks, Kim). And I do feel a little better.

PS I omitted reference to the constancy of God, and our security in Him, because i didn't want to obscure that reality with my disoriented perspective. After mass on Sunday, though, I saw a bird nesting on top of the cross on top of the steeple, and in my mind wanted to compare notes with him on why we were each there, looking for some awareness shared that would reassure me.

I Write Like Arthur C .Clarke

Sorry, I tested my writing on someone else's page and don't know how to link to the page here where you might insert a sample of your own writing for analysis. If you'd like you could go to Kim or Lauren's pages and give it a shot.

PS would you say Arthur Clarke is a good writer?

Letters

As I grew into my 30's and 40's, I would be impressed with women I knew who continued to correspond with friends from college or from even earlier in life. I don't know men who do so, which may not be a fair basis to generalize. But the virtues implicit in correspondence always struck me as virtues of a passing age, friendship, honesty, an air of permanence through fluctuating environments, a wish to communicate, making one's self known, while supporting the other through informed affection, and, not least, having a command of the language and adequate penmanship. Not that I got to read the ladies' correspondence. That was just what I sensed and revered

I would have thought a good letter should read like a mini-essay, crafted, and have a point or make an observation. The year's chronology tucked into a Christmas card, while informative, did not qualify. On the contrary, the brief history dissipates the air of permanence, or should I have said timelessness?

I suppose this gentle envy and nostalgia were what led me to post to a blog page. My posts are often rambunctious, lacking in gentility and refined thought, but still I am corresponding, (and circumventing the penmanship requirement). Why haven't I posted lately? I guess, because I felt I had expressed all my opinions, and was becoming strident in my insistence on my point of view prevailing.

But because I stopped coming here, I stopped visiting other's sites. This evening I read three months worth of daughter Kim's blogs, and enjoyed her style and content, including etchings and photos and the in the moment accounts of life far away. I felt a little bad not to have been more attentive. I suppose I could simply resolve to come to read more often, but that would violate the time honored first tenet of corresponding. To get a letter, send a letter. I guess, I'll resume posting.