I ended up working almost all day Saturday (with a brief break for lunch at Chili's) and got a ton done with no one to come in waving bills to be paid at me, and no phones ringing. And had a good long talk with my boss/friend. We brainstormed about possible scenarios. She'd ideally like to work less then 10 hours per week, and mostly stuff she can do from home. I committed to working 16 during business hours (the days Pigpen is in school, from 9-1), and then either another night or two, or a weekend day, up to about 25 if necessary. She thinks we need someone with more of an "accounting" background than either of us have (we were both English majors--but I've never worked in my field, and have worked in banking or finance my whole adult life, other than the 4 years I took off completely after having the boys.) The problem (well, one of many) is that the sort of person she is describing doesn't sound like (a) someone who would want to work for a tiny company--they'd want to work for a CPA or a big firm, and (b) someone we could afford. She wants an almost-accountant who's willing to be called a bookkeeper and paid as one. She's frustrated because while we're both intelligent enough to look at reports and realize when something is amiss, we're not intuitive enough about accounting to immediately realize all the things it might be, and all the things we have to fix if we change that one item. I have a pretty unorthodox approach to accounting (but it works for me). I imagine how a transaction should be, then reverse it. I'm from a banking world where a deposit is a credit and a check written is a debit, so as long as I do everything exactly the opposite in accounting, it turns out right.
So for right now, we're not making any major moves. I've been extremely dissatisfied with our current CPA firm, so I've lined up interviews with four new ones next week. The firm we have now is a large one, and we have a junior associate, who finally managed to pass his CPA exam on the third try. Last month, we received a bill for $760 that merely said "Accounting Services." I emailed and asked for a breakdown of hours, such as our attorney always provides (his is so detailed that it goes on for pages, in .10 hour increments). When I reviewed the breakdown, I found, among other small errors, that we were charged for 3 hours for a meeting that took 1.5 hours (and I am being generous, because he took a personal call FROM HIS WIFE to discuss their lunch plans during it!) When pressed, they claimed the rest was "travel time." At $125 an hour. And their office is about 15 minutes from ours. Um, yeah. So this month we got a bill for $60 with no itemization, and no one has had any contact with them all month--no meetings, no emails, no calls. When I questioned it, I was told it was for the time they spent researching last month's bill. Unbelievable. They agreed to waive it--how kind of them. Anyway, one of the firms we're interviewing is a fairly small one, a woman who left a larger firm to start her own. She has a website, and it looks like they offer more comprehensive services for small businesses, which I think would be perfect. I've also offered to read books and receive online or phone training with our software guru/business consultant. And even if tomorrow morning a gal in a conservative suit and pumps, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and clutching a briefcase containing a calculator and several accounting texts, wafted gently down to our doorstep holding an umbrella over her head, it would still take me several months to train her.
I am loving Ravelry It is such an incredible time-waster, that I don't know how anyone on there gets any knitting done. Right now, you have to give them your email addy and wait for an invite--guess they are keeping out spammers--but supposedly it will go "public" sometime in the future. I got my knitting books listed, and a little of my yarn. Still need to take pics of my FOs and finish listing yarn/needles. For the non-knitters among you, it's a couple hundred thousand people who like to knit/crochet/spin, etc. You set up a profile and avatar. You can track your projects, yarn/needle inventory, and books/magazines. There are tons of specialty "groups" you can join, for anything you can imagine. I joined several: a regional group, knitters with anxiety issues, fat knitters, fans of (respectively) Kevin Smith, Monty Python, and Family Guy, and finally, a group for members with autistic spectrum disorders or family members thereof, called "If You're Autistic and You Know It, Flap Your Hands." Sorry if that offends anyone--I found it quite amusing, given how much hand-flapping Beaker does.
So does anyone out there have recommendations for a good, reasonably priced dishwasher (yes, I know Bosch and Fisher & Paykel are The Best, but I'm not made of money.) Because The Man has just killed mine, only he doesn't know it yet. I have never felt like this dishwasher did a very good job. It's a GE, maybe 8 years old, and I've tried several types of soap (currently using Cascade All in One packs), Jet-Dry, using the temp boost for hotter water, and nothing helps. Plus, having small kids, I have a lot of plastic cups, and it will not wash them...just flips them right side up, and then they're full of dirty water. There is always a little standing water in the bottom after it's been run, which is just plain nasty. It's been getting worse, so after extended bitching last night about having to hand wash dishes by Yours Truly, The Man took apart the filters and yucky stuff today and PUT DRAN-O IN THE DISHWASHER. I had told him repeatedly I did not think that was a good idea. His response was, "The Dran-O bottle didn't say you COULDN'T put it in a dishwasher." Well, it probably doesn't say not to stick it up your ass either, but that's also probably not a good idea. So he left to go out to dinner with some muckety-muck clients from work, and told me to run the dishwasher twice more, on potscrubber. After the first cycle, I peered in, and there's standing suds in the bottom. Plus it seems some water is leaking around the door. A quick Google confirms that it's an "Obvious Bozo No-No". I hope The Man is better at installing appliances than he is at "fixing" them.
