My Saturday

Yesterday I woke up pretty early so decided to watch my NetFlix offerings before running my usual Saturday errands.

First up was Legally Blond 2: Red, White & Blond. I wasn't expecting much but it was suprisingly okay. The wackiest characters didn't appear until near the end and they had small roles. The plot wasn't entirely predictable. And Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe from 24) was in it!

Second was In Her Shoes with Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding/About a Boy) and Cameron Diaz. This is a super movie; I don't think I've cried so much in a long time. It's the story of two sisters who are polar opposites: Rose, a hard-working, plain-looking laywer, and Maggie, an unemployable, beautiful party girl. After yet another night of drunkeness, Rose finds herself saddled with Maggie yet again. When Rose comes home one night after work to find Maggie in bed with Rose's current hot boyfriend, she throws her out and subsequently can't find her. Maggie discovers a long-lost secret and we gradually learn the reason behind why she is so unsuccessful in school and getting a job. I found the most touching part (most tissues used) when she finds someone to help her through her problem.

I skipped the library (I didn't have any books due and nothing on the hold shelf) and went straight to Trader Joe's and then the farmers market. My usual organic farm stand was out of my usual yellow tomatoes so I had to settle for red ones (oh no!). And it must be approaching the end of nectarine season, because the ones I was looking at were really big and not very pretty. I bought a couple anyway. We'll see if they're any good.

When I got back I watched some Michigan football and then the A's game. After beating the second-place Angels Friday night in 12 innings (with another walk-off hit by Marco Scutaro), their magic number was 2 and they could clinch the West with a win. They didn't win. Maybe today. I hope they do it today and can celebrate at home.

I started watching the Giants game afterwards but I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer so went to lay down. I'm not normally a successful napper but when I woke up it was dark. I had slept for three hours! So my evening was spent zoned out trying to recover from the nap. I really hate that post-nap feeling of lethargy and mental muddiness. By the time my mind felt clear, it was bedtime. Luckily my long nap didn't prevent me from falling right to sleep, though I couldn't sleep in this morning. That why I'm posting at 8 in the morning!

A's Game on Sunday

Sal met me at the A's/White Sox game on Sunday and brought a couple other people from her job. We had already gotten tickets so the boys got tix when they got there and sat a couple sections over. They moved over to our section when the people in front of us left with a few innings to go. They'd had enough sun as it was. We were sitting under an overhang so were in the shade. It was a beautiful day for baseball. I'm guessing mid- to high 70s and breezy.

I had remembered to stick a couple score sheets in my bag so Sal and I could score the game. I wasn't able find a extra pen before I left home and Sal couldn't find one in her bag so after she filled out a contest form at the GMC booth outside we stole a pen from them. She got a white A's t-shirt for her troubles. She didn't put it on but I was pleased she had thought to wear green.

Sal was cheering twice for the price of one as she likes the A's but her home team, the Twins, want the White Sox to lose to help their post-season picture. Regardless of how Chicago's doing, those Tigers better keep winning cuz the Twins are really breathing up the back of their necks!

Tigers? Tigers! Oh, My!

It's only the bottom of the 6th inning and the Tigers are already leading the O's 15-2. Crazy! Inge just hit a grand slam. Crazy!!

And did I just see Matt Stairs in a Tigers uni? When did that happen? Ah, I remember the good ol' days when Stairs was playing for the A's behind Giambi in left.

Is Fainting Contagious?

This morning when I got on BART there were no seats to be had. So I leaned up against the wall near the doors and took out my book. When we got to the Coliseum, a bunch of people got on, probably coming from the Oakland Airport. So we were rather tightly packed in.

The woman standing to my left was having a hard time staying upright. She kept losing control and almost falling into me as her eyes would close and her head would drop. Several times I had to put my book up to block her falling into my face. I don't know if she was feeling faint or just falling asleep.

Whatever her problem was it must have been catching because when we were in the tube and not quite yet to Embarcadero I started feeling weak and tingly. I began to sweat and my skin felt cold. I was losing touch with my world, its edges fading and spinning. I turned and faced the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to concentrate on breathing in and out, in and out. I really thought I was going to black out.

I was able to hold it together until we arrived at Embarcadero and I snagged a seat freed up by the exodus of commuters. As soon as I sat down, I felt better. My vision began clearing and my heartbeat slowed down though my feet began to tingle. I was glad to have a couple stops to rest a bit before heading out into the sunshine and work.

Since I've here at the office I've had a headache the whole time and it's been hard to concentrate. Yeah, I'll be leaving work early today, no doubt.

JJ is Neglecting Her Blog

JJ has not posted since last Thursday. I'm just saying.
(not like I've been posting much either. what's up with us?)

Sittin' in the Club

Our accountants gave us two free tickets to the Giants game last night so Leti and I went. She was sick the whole day and we tried to find someone else to go but they were either sick or had other plans. As I'm not a Giants fan and the tickets were free, I was willing to forget it. But Leti insisted she was well enough to go and I'm glad she did cuz we had fun.

The seats were in the Club level which is one level up from the field. You take a special escalator and there are special concessions just for the Club that are all inside. There are a lot of glass walls to see out into the ballpark. It'd be the best place to hang out for those cold foggy evenings. We had it pretty nice. (Other than the loud obnoxious guys sitting right behind us. Can anyone clap any louder?! My ears hurt until I moved down a few seats. Our section was not full by any means.)

I got a hot dog from the fancy concession stand for $5.25. It was totally worth it: a Hebrew National ballpark frank with brown mustard. I even ate the soft bun.

Sal & I are going to the A's game on Sunday. I tried to get us seats in the shade. I'll let you know how that goes next week.

UK Trip Planning Update

Sal got here on time and happy last night. We stayed up late discussing and exploring housing options and preferences for our November UK trip. I sent a bunch of emails out to B&Bs last night and this morning and we've gotten several replies already. We even made one reservation (at Austins Guesthouse in Cardiff) and are ready to reserve two more if we get responses back to questions I sent.

Everyone who's replied so far has had a room available so we're not too late. Not that I'm surprised at that but I did stress out about it a bit while falling asleep last night. We want to stay at our first choices and not have to settle. We got a reply back from our first choice in London, The George Hotel in Bloomsbury. They even have a special price for 4+ night stay in the off-peak season so we're getting a good deal. We'll be staying 5 nights (4 days) there to end our trip.

We haven't heard back from our first choice in Bath yet, The Henry. I hope they reply positively soon. We'll be in Bath for 3 nights right before London. Those are the longest stays we have. We'll be two nights each in York and then Bacup (near Elizabeth's) to start out the trip. In the middle we have one night stays in the Lake District (Keswick), Chester and then Cardiff. Our other possible day stops along the way will be Carlyle (to see Hadrian's Wall) and Salisbury.

We have to wait until October to buy our railpasses. We can get them at 25% off if we wait, so we will. I think we'll be buying our plane tickets any day now. We're coordinating flights so I'll meet up with Sal when I get to Minneapolis and we'll fly to London Gatwick together. Our flights are the same price ($553) even though I'm flying from San Fran. I think I'll be getting mine through my Visa rewards program so I can use some points to get $100 off. I have enough points right now for a free round-trip ticket but it's only good for domestic travel for no more than $500. I fail on both those counts.

We decided while we were over at the mall today (Target, then Pirates at the cinema, then lunch at Chili's) to check out the luggage departments at Kohl's and Macy's. Sallie and I have the same 21" wheeled bag we bought at Kohl's with Anne a few years ago. I was thinking I could pack light enough to get by with it but it'd be tight with wedding clothes & shoes. Sallie also has a larger wheeled duffle bag that she loves but it's a bit too much for our trip. So we were looking for an in-between option and found one at Macy's. They're having a 50%-off sale this weekend. Lucky us. We bought High Sierra 26" wheeled duffles with backpack straps that are just right. Sal got the grey and I got the black. And we got them for only $80 each (sticker price $240) cuz Sal signed up for a Macy's card so we got even more off!

I'm going to have to stop myself from packing too much now. But I'll try to be strong. There'll just be more room for souvenirs!

Broken Frames

I was fiddling with my glasses last night and they broke. Yes, you read that correctly. The left temple broke right off.

I searched and searched for my other pair but couldn't find them. I did find my old glasses so I'm wearing them today. I feel kinda woozy and tired. I'm hoping to find my other pair tonight while I'm cleaning up for when Sal gets here tomorrow. I just can't remember where I put them. I may have to wear my sunglasses all day if I can't deal with my old ones.

Maybe Sal and I will be shopping for new frames this weekend!

VW Stands for Very Wacked-Out

Why does VW think that showing us people having a nice conversation in a car, tooling down the road, and then getting violently slammed into a car crash makes us more likely to buy their cars?

It makes me angry and not just a bit violated. I don't care that the people in the car survive the crash without injuries. I don't like being surprised like that. It's unfair.

I shouldn't watch TV live anymore. I'll be fast-forwarding through those awful comercials from now on.

Fly Trap

Not too long ago I accidentally left some grapes out for a few days. When I found finally them they were pretty nasty but even nastier was the sudden infestation of fruit flies. They're too quick to catch and too small to swat. How was I ever going to control these pests?

Enter my good friend, jj, and her pearls of home pest control wisdom. She said to put some yummy fly food at the bottom of a bread bag and let it sit open for a few days. Soon the flies will all congregate around the bait and you can close the top of the bag, trapping those annoying pests.

Well, I didn't have a bread bag but I figured any long-necked bag would do so I grabbed a plastic produce bag from the farmers market and tossed in some nectarine pits. I was making banana nut muffins from frozen bananas that day too so I dropped in a couple slimy blackened peels. Boy, did the flies love those! Within a couple days almost all the flies had fallen into the trap. I tied off the top of the bag and now my place is nearly fruit-fly-free.

Thanks for the great advice!

My Annual Test

I work for a non-profit and in order to qualify for workplace giving campaigns (and other reasons) we have an independent audit of our financial records every year. As the bookkeeper, it's my responsibility to prepare documents for the audit and to answer the auditors' questions while they're at our office testing our paperwork and procedures.

The fieldwork was this past week (one of the reasons for being absent from this space all week). All three of the auditors who came to the office were ones who did the audit last year. It was nice to have the same people because they were somewhat familiar with our operation so they didn't have to ask as many questions. Plus I like all three of them and I find it easy to communicate with them (which has not been so true in the past).

I've never had any formal training in accounting or bookkeeping so I depend on the audit to teach me how I can do my job better. This year we focused on our procedures for incoming funds, payroll, authorizing expenditures, etc. It's important that certain responsibilities are kept separate so one person doesn't control too much. In a small non-profit, it's often hard to have enough people to keep things separated. I tend to be in charge of a little bit too much and therefore there's potential for fraud. In our internal culture of trust, we tend to scoff at those risks but that's why we have the auditors -- to keep that risk at a minimum.

I feel really good about the audit this year. I felt more confident in my answers to their questions and didn't feel like I had to pass them over to my boss for more complete or accurate responses. I also made an effort to improve my audit documents and to get advice from the auditors on how I can help make their fieldwork more efficient.

They didn't find any adjustments that had to be made which means that all the items that they tested were done correctly. I'm sure we'll have some recommendations from them on how we should improve our procedures, especially for decisions regarding how funds are spent. It's often been just me and my boss making those decisions but with our new organizational structure we have department directors who will be doing most of that. So our authorization procedures have to change, but that was in the works already.

It'll be an interesting year coming up with all the changes and I hope when my annual test comes around next summer I'll be just as pleased with the results.