And with the end of March comes freedom · Mar 27, 10:58 PM by Amberlee

Tax time is over for me in just a few hours. My work, and that of the CPA, is finished for our personal and business returns for 2005. Believe it or not, the IRS owes us for once. Thanks for small favors.

In addition to this yearly experience, I also spent March being poked and prodded by doctors. I have been diagnosed with a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrom which is apparently short for: you’ve got cysts on your ovaries for reasons that we’re not quite sure about so we’re going to give you some horse pills to take and insist you go on an Atkins-style no-carb diet for at least six months and see if it just corrects itself and if it doesn’t then we’ll want to open you up and hack something.

Lovely.

I spent three weeks waiting for test results and the last week or so reading the ADA website, checking for decent cook books, and trying to understand this whole carb-craze thing now that it’s totally out of fashion. For the record, I am not a person that does “diets.” This is probably why I’ve needed to take some weight off for a while. But, frankly, I love food. I’m also a really great cook. I’d already decided before the turn of the year that I was going to get to a point where I was eating mostly veggies in six months and had picked up a load of cookbooks to that end, but now a lot of my new recipes are toast thanks to the fact that they have too many carbs.

I’m not much for pimping things but I have to say that this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0848730534/002-5630235-5574463?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

is by far the best thing I’ve found. As a cook of more than some experience I could tell the recipes were sound and somewhat flavorfull. The introductory text is understandable and readable. To top it off, it had one of the major things I was looking for: a cheat sheet for the grocery so I could easily know what fruits and veggies were best for a low-carb plan and stick to those without having to do mental mathmatics every time I went to the store.

I can’t say that doing without rice, potatoes, and chocolate is making me much fun to be around but hey. I’d rather take pills for a while and be stuck to some diet modifications than have them yank out my ovaries. Not that I’d miss my ovaries, mind you, it’s just the whole cutting and recovery thing that I’m totally uninterested in.

Last, but not least, I can finally say a little about a big project. I’ve been working with a friend in Japan on an idea I had for an illustrated children’s book. Some connections and words here and there have the project moving forward and in the hands of an experienced editor. I’m still keeping details under wraps as there are more meetings and hoops to jump through, but right now the magic 8 ball says “all signs point to yes” for my story (and my friend’s fantastic artwork) to be published in Japan. It may even come out in a magazine!

To say I am excited is an understatement. Still, the situation is a little nerve wracking. I’ve got a lot of story work and tightening to do and my friend has a lot of drawing ahead of her. Still, to know some of my little characters may find a life and an audience in Japan (and perhaps elsewhere along the way) is a wonderful thing.

So there’s your March for you. I’m largely glad it’s over since plenty of my time will now free up so I can focus on my writing and vegetable garden. Please keep in mind that things in various directories of the website continue to get deleted as I pare down, archive on external drive, and get ready to finish the re-org here. I know. Maybe I’ll never get it done but at least I keep moving forward bit by bit.

Ja!

WTF? · Feb 7, 04:30 PM by Amberlee

Ok. I haven’t done a political rant in a long time. I’ll spare everyone the long-winded bunch of crap and sum up my thoughs like this:

Mr. Gonzales, just because you can do something doesn’t make it right or legal. The “other Presidents did it too and did it way worse than us,” defence just doesn’t hold much weight with me. I’m betting it won’t hold a lot of weight with members of Congress either. And, based on past decisions of the court and past decisions of recently appointed justices, I don’t think the Supreme Court will side with you either.

I mean, what the fresh hell? Are you people going to start saying it’s legal to inter people in concentration camps because Roosevelt did it too?

Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You are already doing that at Gitmo.

You could think that the Attonrey General of the United States of America would have stopped that, “but they did it too!” crap before he left high school. However, since his boss seems to have failed upward in spite of the fact that his mental capacity looks to have stalled in middle-school I shouldn’t be shocked.

headdesk

Still busy · Feb 4, 02:17 AM by Amberlee

Well, things are still busy here. The flu has made its way into the house so i am dealing with that in addition to finishing up information for end of year taxes.

Tonight I archived the old blog files on my external hard drive and deleted them from the server. I’ll be removing a lot more as days go by. Most of this content will not be returning.

Hope all is going well for the bunch of you and be sure to update your bookmarks!

Once more into the breach · Jan 12, 12:25 PM by Amberlee

While the laptop is back up and running, and I have reconstructed most of the lost month of data, end of year Tax information time is now looking me hard in the face. This is the time of year I just hate. I never took an accounting class in high school or college. Numbers and I are not friends (unless I’m spending money). The tedious nature of book keeping is not something I ever thought I would do outside of managing my personal checkbook. So, dealing with gathering tax information for the business is a big pain in my ass. Mind you, most of it has been kept up to date this year: all the books are reconciled through end of November this time around and I have even pulled the bank records for last year and moved them to their archive binder for storage. Still, I have six months of back receipts to enter for credit purchases (yes, I know, I am lazy) before I can burn a copy of the books and send it off to the CPA. I am hoping to get those done by this weekend so all I have left to deal with is waiting for the W-2s and 1099 forms to arrive.

I have to say that I don’t know how those that run businesses without the help of professionals manage the task. They are far more number minded than I could ever hope to be. My mother did this for she and my father for YEARS as they ran their restaurant. My grandmother did all the books and tax information for the many business ventures my Grandfather ran for their entire married lives (67 years) with only a look over by a CPA or lawyer during the final 20 thanks to nutty changes to tax law.

At any rate, this means that I have little time to write or even think about writing. Since I have original work on the table that needs to be addressed, this becomes a little problematic. Thankfully, deadlines are “soft” and I have a couple of weeks for outlines before I have to do tough editing work. This is also helpful because my mother will be back from her winter in Florida. My mother is a fantastic editor when it comes to spelling and commas. Her husband isn’t bad either. This means I can write, edit, write, edit, then pass to her for an outside eye before it leaves me for view by “professionals.” It’s my own personal beta for my real stuff. Certainly, there are some stories and content I don’t think I would want her to check over lest it make her squicky. ^_

So, expect only sporadic updates until the end of January. At that time I hope to get back to work on the reorganization of the website. I’m doing it “offline” and saving it to my external drive so I can get everything organized and as I like it then upload it wholesale. However, as I get things finished I am taking quite a lot of the content down from the server now. Much of it will not return at all thanks to a new “separation of powers” between my writing, photography, and personal bloging concerns. The content, if moved for copyright reasons, won’t have redirects either so if you find something you enjoyed missing you should try sending me an email and I can point you in the right direction or tell you that it’s gone for good.

Now that I’ve procrastinated the bills and receipts for another twenty minutes, time to get to work. Hope life is going well for all of you and I’ll try to keep in touch! Don’t forget, I don’t have comments running here right now but you can always drop a line. If you’d like to see comments return you can tell me that too.

Swift is dead, long live Swift! · Jan 7, 03:17 PM by Amberlee

Spent the last week or so dealing with the fact that the HD on my year old PowerBook G4 went belly up. Trying to get Apple to give me a replacement was such a pain that I finally went to Frys to get a new one and put it in myself. Since I had to send the drive to data recovery Apple got shitty about putting in a new drive without having the old one. So, I shelled out for the new HD, shipped off the old one, and I won’t get anything helpful from Apple until the drive is back.

Whatever.

Right now, most of my time is taken up with paperwork and writing. I’ve got a lot of things to reconstruct and end of the year files to be ready for my CPA. Should keep me busy until at least the end of the month.

In other news, I picked up a couple of cookbooks while over in Australia. This week’s new recipes are Bang Bang Chicken and Spring Rice Salad with Lemon Dill Dressing. Lots of veggies and I have half the ingredients in my pantry already!

I also picked up holiday decorations after Christmas for a song. After a seven year hiatus I will be decorating and having a tree next year. Very excited about that. I even have cat-proof things for the tree. No way for him to break them and too big for him to chew and choke on.

That’s about the size of things here right now. No website updates until after my data is recovered and the stuff is off to the CPA.

Bah · Dec 27, 04:45 AM by Amberlee

Still not recovered and sleep is still random. I did, however, make it to Target early in the day and picked up new decorations for my tree. Last year I got an 8 ft prelit tree at Target after the holiday was over. It was a 300.00 tree and I got it for under 100. My decorations have been packed away for about eight years now—moving and other things have made doing anything but baking and shipping out said baked items at holiday time pretty much a no-go. Also, my husband isn’t much into decorating. Personally, I don’t mind that. I think stringing up a bunch of lights on the outside of your house and turning them on every night for a month is nothing more than a good way to run up your electric bill. Still, I do enjoy a pretty tree in the house now and again. So, since I have no idea what is left of my decorations and at least half of them were antique glass (which is not too cool when you have a cat) I went out for all new stuff. From garland and shatterproof orniments ones made of foam, wood, or metal to a star for the top of the tree I’m all ready to rock and roll for a holiday party next year.

Personal items also accomplished yesterday include all bags unpacked and only two loads of laundry left to wash. Today, at some point, I do the banking, hit the gym for a water session, and see my ortho about my back. Thursday it’s back to the real world of books for the business, filing, and payroll.

Oh well, all things end.

Now I’m off to try and get another few hours of sleep. I get lucky and when I get up next time I’ll be able to stay up for at least 14 hours and get back on a normal pattern.

Well, that was certainly interesting · Dec 26, 04:54 AM by Amberlee

November and December were just as nutty as I expected them to be—thus the proverbial radio silence until now. The run-up to the trip to Australia was really crazy and I didn’t even have the usual birthday dinner. Instead, I gave three Microsoft exams at the testing center while madly trying to print off checks, ensure all the bills were paid, sending out invoices, and printing off things to go over for the flights over and back.

I did, however, get some lovely birthday presents. My friend, Ren, sent me a box of goodies and my husband obtained a new companion for the laptop. Swift now has a spiffy black nano iPod named Gulliver to keep him company. So far, Gulliver has some Police, my audio lessons of Japanese, the RotS soundtrack, and some music from Cowboy Bebop. I have determined that Gulliver’s set of headphones suck (the little white things hurt my ears) so I’ll be doing a search for some nice workout headphones that don’t hurt my ears and a good set of noise reduction ones for regular use.

Trip to Austalia: awesome. I tried a boogie board. I got a tan. I drank lots of frozen fruity drinks with Malibu rum, had some great food, hung out with my friend Kylie, and did some investigation for the great migration. Husband is about 3/4 sold on the idea of the move but wants to go back in winter (July/August). Not only does he want to get an idea of the weather then but he also wants to meet with CPA, Lawyers, and government people on second trip. The overall goal is to get things set up so that we can come over for two more weeks and get a branch of the business ready to go (including bank accounts and whatnot) when we make the next run. We will definately be coming over on a business owners visa set if we do the move. While a lot of what husband does is in big demand, the rates are only running around 85-95k a year with pension and that’s a heck of a pay cut for us now. Also, most of the really good jobs that do what he’s into seem to be under government classifications for defense so you have to be a citizen. Since he’s got a classification in the US for top secret thanks to his parents and his own work with defense contracters here in the states, we think he could qualify in the long haul but it’s getting the citizenship and if they’d be ok with a dual or not in that kind of a setting. Likely? I’m thinking, no.

So it’s a branch of the business in Australia for us. Given the fact that we have two pretty good options for that (our co-operation in golf and our own computer consultancy firm) we think we can make a go of it. We’ll have to wait until the taxes for the end of the year are done to see what we have in overall flow for 2005 and then we’ll see what’s up. I figure it will take three years for me to get this house ready, boxed up, and everything taken care of to move. We’ll see what happens.

The trip back from Brisbane got of to a rough start. We spent almost three hours sitting on the tarmac thanks to a fuel spill. It was rather hot and it meant that the fuel was expanding and building pressure in the tanks. Since we were doing a non-stop to LA from Brisbane they needed to have the tanks full so they had to pump, stop, wait for the pressure to go down, then start pumping again. They were also in a hurry. This is a bad combo. In the end, it meant that they over pumped and the safety latches blew the hose off as a precaution dumping a good hundred gallons or more of aircraft fuel all over the side of the plane and the tarmac. We got surrounded by fire trucks, hosed down with foam, then we had to wait while the fire marshalls came and said that the foam and the other stuff was all cleaned up. Then they cleared them to start fueling again and loading more cargo. In the end we had fire trucks twice for fuel spillage and our steward (we were in the back of the aircraft next to the back doors) said, “guys, if the plane catches on fire we’re going out that (points to the opposite side of the plane from him) door. Got it?”

Yeah, that’ll make ya feel real confident for a flight.

So, thanks to this delay we got in to LA two and a half hours after expected arrival. This means we missed our connection and Quantas stuck us on another flight with NorthWest to get us home. Problem is that they didn’t give us tickets they just assigned it and gave us a slip of paper with the new info. When we got to NorthWest they gave us the boarding passes and assigned our seats but told us that if we didn’t have the tickets issued from Quantas (or a “FIM”: flight interruption manifest) that we wouldn’t be allowed to board. Everyone at Quantas was pretty much gone so it took my husband another hour and a half of running all over LAX to get what we needed. At least they gave us a free room at the Mariott and some “distressed passenger” vouchers for food so our 9 hour layover was filled with an ok meal, a shower, and some rest.

We got home a literal day late but we got here and we slept right through most of Christmas. What little we were awake in the last two days has been spent watching my Samurai 7 DVDs. I also got a set of Space:Above and Beyond on DVD.

Goals for the next few days include doing three bags full of dirty clothes and getting on normal time by Thursday when I give more exams. I’ll also be going through the mail, paying bills, and calling up the payroll folks to be sure we all get paid for January 1st.

Yep, already I’m sorry to be home.

Finally, I’m hard at work on original stuff for kids. Cross your fingers for good news in the next few weeks as Ren and I try to get something going with a Japanese publisher!

Oh, there goes the dryer. Time to get back to work. Hope all of you had a lovely holiday and I’ll see about updating and doing some more web site work in the next few weeks.

Happy Holidays! · Dec 2, 11:07 AM by Amberlee

Getting my wishes to all of you for an enjoyable holiday season out of the way now. In nine days I’ll be on a flight to Australia with the husband and I won’t be back until around Christmas. We’ll be enjoying the sun, hot weather, and looking around to see if we really do want to move to Brisbane.

I’ve been a real nut the last few weeks trying to get all the shopping and cookie making in. A big “sorry” to those of you that get a store gift instead of the usual cookies this year but I just didn’t have time to make them for everyone. I also reduced the variety this year. No decorated sugar cookies. I know, it’s a sad thing, but they take FOREVER to make. I just didn’t have the time.

Aside from work, baking, and shopping not a lot to report. I’m still downloading and deleting a lot of stuff on the site so I can reorganize it and upload later in the year. We’ll see how it goes.

Also, mild interest in various location to some original writing. If I actually manage to get it published, I’ll let you know!

Take care everyone, be safe, and don’t eat too much!

The Windy City · Nov 13, 12:30 PM by Amberlee

Returned last night from a trip to Chicago. No pictures this time as the goal was getting all the holiday shopping finished. I would have enjoyed going to a museum or an area of the city I hadn’t explored before, but there just wasn’t time. This happened mostly because my mother was with me. Mom has type II diabetes and needs to eat at regular intervals. This means I can’t just get something on the go or skip meals or anything. Eating took up about half our time each day. It’s kind of a pain but it’s how things have to be so you just deal.

I also had the interesting bit of luck that President Jimmy Carter was in Chicago to sign his new book one of the days I was there. It just so happened that my mother and I were discussing his new book (along with the man himself) on the drive up. We decided to stop and pick up a copy at the Borders across from the Water Tower while we were out and, wouldn’t you know it, there was a sign that said he would be in doing a books signing in an hour and a half. Mom and I went: WOW! Sign us up!

Most book signings I have gone to in the past have been different. Some have included readings or questions from an audience prior to the actual signing. Normal signings take quite a time because you are allowed to speak to the author as they sign your book and they often write something personal in addition to their name.

Due to President Carter’s security and whatnot there was no reading and no Q&A. Additionally, in order to get through as many people as possible in the two and a half hour session, we were told that President Carter would not personalize books. We also had to turn over our packages, coats, and any items that might contain hidden objects to two Chicago plain clothes police officers prior to approaching the President with our book for signing. There were loads of “Smiths” hanging all around the building to ensure the safety of the former President. In short, it was a very interesting experience.

Of course, it took us two hours or so of waiting to get out books signed. It killed our day. However, I had the chance to tell the only living President I truly admire that I think he is a wonderful person and had a book signed by him. A nice trade.

I managed to get everyone on the gift buying list except for Clara taken care of. The few people not on the “buy” list are getting cookies that I will bake next week and send out the first of December along with holiday cards. Everything needs to be done by the 7th so I can focus on sorting, cleaning, and packing for the trip to Australia.

Yes, I will take pictures of that one.

Now it’s time to do laundry, take care of fall lawn work, and get things clean and sorted. If I can do most of the deep cleaning and pickup now I’ll only have to dust before I go in December. Thank goodness for Sar and his help! He’s here to give a hand with lawn stuff today and he’ll be house sitting and cat watching while we are gone.

Hope everyone is well!

IE check · Oct 18, 09:17 AM by Amberlee

Not shockingly, IE shows some minor problems with site layout. The search box on the right extended out of the image border and the textpattern image dropped below the image box. Why this happened in IE but not in Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, or Safari I have no clue. (OK, I do, but we’ll skip the Microsoft hate at this early hour of the morning.)

Otherwise busy day today. Got up at the crack of black to get laundry finished and am now at our offices to put in a day of paper moving. Banking, sorting, throwing away, sending out a bill or two, and whatnot are all to be finished by around 2pm. I leave not long after to go home, pick up the cat, and take it to a vet appointment on the other side of town at 4:30. After that I stop at my hair place to drop off something for my stylist and then I may come home where I need to finish cleaning the bathrooms and then I may rest.

Yeah, right.

So, minor CSS edit today to correct IE problems but that’s the sum of work on this place today. So far people seem interested in having me archive the old blog entries so I’ll be thinking about how I want to do that. I will let all of you know that the China information and all the photographs will be leaving the site (this includes the NYC trip, China, Australia, and those sorts of things) no matter what. All of that information will be archived for my own personal use and will be edited, changed, and reworked for the launch of my professional photography site next year. Professional and contractual obligations (not to mention copyright issues) will come into play at that time and thus part of the reason for the site update and split.

Now I’m off to get something done that pays bills.

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