Life After Taxes

It's been a while since my last posting. I had hoped to wait until I could record that the instructor's material was finished, but it's not yet. So I'll post again when I do get it finished. I have finished the first cut at the slides and sent them off to be copyedited. Right now, I'm proofreading the instructor's manual. Once I'm finished proofing it, I'll send it off to be edited. After the editing cycles, all of the instructor's material will finally be done and I'll be able to rest for a change.

The last few weeks have been busy ones. A few weeks ago, one of the back corner windows on the Miata split. I had hoped to get another year out of that top, but that was not to be. So I ordered one off of e-bay and managed to install it without killing it, the car, my family, or myself. I knew ahead of time that I needed to plan on the whole day for it, so there wasn't any feeling like I should have finished earlier. And I knew that it was involved enough that I had to be methodical, so I didn't just jump in and wing it, like I do on a lot of other projects.

This past Sunday, I played one of my pieces at a variety show at the church. I only made a couple of mistakes in playing it, but like some of us were joking before, if it's my own composition no one would know what was a mistake. In fact, you could say that whatever I do defines what is correct.... Well, maybe that's going a little too far.

This week was tax week. I sent them off on the 14th this year. It didn't make any sense sending them any earlier than I had to, because I owed this year. That's an understatement. I got hammered this year, and I didn't even have any of the consulting income I've often had in the past. I found myself having to go through some extra publications and forms to see if I was going to be subject to some extra things that would have made it even worse. Fortunately, I did manage not to fall victim to them, but it was still a painful check to write.

Yesterday, I gave a talk to a group called The Contemporary Club. A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation to a group at a retreat at Paris Landing. One of the people there heard it and asked me if I'd give a presentation to her group. The subject was to be conservation. Now that's a big topic, and they're bound to have had quite a few of the usual conservation topics already. One of the first things I think of when I hear conservation is the conservation of mass and energy principles. So I built a talk around that. I knew I had to keep from getting too scientific about it, but I also thought it created a good perspective for other things. No one fell asleep, and I could see several were paying close attention. So I count that a success. As I was leaving, one of the club members leaned back and said she had a master's in chemistry, so a lot of what I said was familiar to her. So I don't think I was too far out in left field with it.

Back to work proofreading...