Fun with Words

 General  Comments Off
Aug 272010
 

The Artist was out front with the weed whacker, clearing up the overgrowth along the driveway. Marchesa didn’t know what to make of it. She crouched on the back of the couch, watching him out the front window. When he moved to the side of the house, she ran over to the side door to watch from there.

The Director strolled by and attempted to pet her. She jumped about a foot and scooted out of reach.

“She’s all discombobulated,” I told him.

Seems he’d never heard that word before. “What’s combobulated?” he asked, laughing.

“It’s discombobulated,” I clarified, “I don’t believe combobulated is a word. It means she’s confused and disoriented. The Artist has the weed whacker out and it’s freaking her a little bit.”

“I guess that’s one of those words that always has dis in front of it,” he said.

“Yep. Kind of like I’ve never heard of anyone being gruntled.”

He was giggling for five minutes over that one.

 Posted by Bertha at 7:52 pm  Tagged with:

Cutting Back on Luxuries

 Geek Wannabe  Comments Off
Aug 262010
 

Last time I was taking classes at the community college, we’d buy our own blue books for essay exams. They’re available in the student bookstore for thirty-five cents. For multiple-choice tests, the teachers would pass out ScanTrons with the exam. I assumed it had always been thus.

This year, as our history teacher went over the syllabus, he warned us that we will have to buy our own ScanTrons this year, as well as the blue books. Evidently the school is really tightening its belt, or something.

Now I’m wondering if, at one point, the blue books were given out with exams.

 Posted by Bertha at 9:38 pm

Grammar Nazi

 General  Comments Off
Aug 202010
 

When I’ve got all the bookkeeping-type work caught up, I go see if the office manager needs help with any of hers. She frequently does. In addition to general office administration, she makes updates to the website, authors the church’s monthly newsletter, writes the weekly Sunday bulletin, and a host of other tasks.

The second week I was there she asked if I would mind looking over the Sunday bulletin, just so there would be a second set of eyes checking it for typos and errors.

Ten minutes later, I returned it with several little red marks—a couple of typos, a grammatical error or two, and one paragraph that I simply thought was worded awkwardly and offered a suggestion for improvement.

“I was an English major my first trip through college,” I cautioned her. “Never give me something to proofread unless you actually want it, you know, proofed.”

She was delighted. It’s not like she has a lot of mistakes, she just needed someone else to give it a once-over, and the associate pastor is frequently too busy to do it before it has to be printed. Now I’m proofing the bulletin practically every week.

It’s nice having a job that lets you use more than one skillset.

 Posted by Bertha at 3:36 pm  Tagged with:

Back in School

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Aug 172010
 

High school starts next week, but college started yesterday. I’ve already done one assignment for my accounting class.

I also signed up for a basic history class, covering “western civilization.” I chose this class for several reasons:

  • Ideally I plan to keep going to school as long as I have time and money to do so. A lot of the higher-level classes require the same first-year classes, like history, English comp, and basic algebra. I’ve already taken quite a few of those basics, might as well take the rest.
  • It looked interesting, and I was afraid I wasn’t getting into my accounting class so I wanted to take something.
  • All of my close friends and relatives are very smart people who can converse intelligently on things like history and world events. My history is quite weak and I can’t really participate. I plan to remedy this so I no longer feel like a fucking moron.

Our instructor is an energetic, self-assured Italian man who paces the front of the room and talks with his hands. He spent the first class going over the syllabus (this is apparently required, all teachers do it the first day) in between anecdotes about prior students and warning us about the dire consequences of plagiarism, failure to study, or not showing up on test day. He referred to himself several times as a “benign dictator.”

I like him already. This is going to be a fun class.

 Posted by Bertha at 5:34 pm  Tagged with:

The Cost of Education

 General  Comments Off
Aug 132010
 

For a while there I didn’t think I was going to get into the accounting class I wanted. I signed up for the waitlist as soon as I could, but even after the tuition deadline nobody was dropping out. Apparently people signed up for a 200-level accounting course are able to manage their finances well enough to cover tuition. Imagine that.

Earlier this week, checking on the waitlist, I grumbled “They’ve got enough people waitlisted to fill another class.”

I wasn’t the only one who noticed that; a day or two later I got a notice that a second class had been opened and the waitlisted people were all signed up for it. Woo hoo!

So I went off to buy a second textbook. I’m already signed up for a history class, just because it looked interesting (and I was afraid I wouldn’t get the accounting class, so I wanted to take something). My history book was $170 at the bookstore ($130 used); I rented it from Chegg.com for $60.

My accounting book? That one costs $211 at the bookstore ($158 used). I searched textbookly.com and found a (new!) copy for under $60.

Same books, half the price. Why do I feel like the textbook market is a bit of a racket?

 Posted by Bertha at 12:50 pm

Conversation with the Kid

 Breeder's Corner, General  Comments Off
Aug 092010
 

When I go to the grocery store, I bring my own reusable bags along with me. I have some light nylon bags that fold up quite small, so I can keep them in my glove compartment.

At the checkout, I pulled out a couple of bags. “I have more if we need them,” I told the checker.

My son chuckled. “Yeah, she has a bag of bags.” He finds it amusing that my nylon bags are themselves stored in a nylon bag.

“Well of course,” I replied, “what would you keep bags in?”

“A box, of course,” he teased, “don’t you know anything?”

“I have two teenage children,” I laughed. “Of COURSE I don’t know anything!”

“Touché.”

 Posted by Bertha at 7:47 pm

Sharing Thoughts

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Aug 082010
 

We were watching the TV ad for Sunkist, where all the exuberant teenagers run toward the ocean to the sound of joyful music.

I looked over at my husband. “Do you remember Joe Versus the Volcano, with the island people who loved orange soda and had all their clothes and houses and religious icons festooned with parts of orange soda cans?”

He looked back at me. “That’s what this ad has been reminding me of, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”

 Posted by Bertha at 7:47 pm

I R SRS BOOKPR

 Accounting Stuff, General  Comments Off
Aug 062010
 

For the last couple of days, I’ve been doing month-end maintenance.

I’ve reconciled Quickbooks with the bank, and with the office manager’s records of donations to the church. I did the month-end entries and transfers. I printed the numerous reports that will be needed by the Stewardship Committee next week.

Cricket patiently walked me through the whole process; there’s a remote-login program installed so she can see what I’m doing from her computer, and she talked to me on the phone as I went through all the steps. I took copious notes as we went along. Frequently she would stop me and ask why we were doing this or that, or what I thought we should do next, making me think about it so she could be sure I was understanding the process.

My brain hurts. It was fantastic.

“You don’t even need me any more,” she moped as we were finishing up. Then she brightened. “Oh wait, next month is the end of the quarter—you’ll need me for that!”

Oh, yes. Yes, I will.

 Posted by Bertha at 5:56 pm  Tagged with:

OMG FISH

 Cat Tales, General  Comments Off
Aug 052010
 

The Director had never happened to be in the kitchen when I opened a can of tuna.

As a result, he had never witnessed the performance.

*crack open tuna*

*cat appears out of thin air*

Marchesa: Is that fish?! I want fish!! I love fish! It smells so good! PLEASE give me fish! I must have some fish! OMG I HAVE NOT EATEN IN THREE WEEKS AND I WILL KEEL OVER DEAD IF I DON’T GET FISH RIGHT THIS MINUTE!!!

*accompanied by weaving around my legs, stretching up toward the counter, and general feline drama and histrionics*

Me: Here, just a little.

Marchesa: NOM NOM NOM MOAR PLZ

The Director: Do all cats meow that much when you have fish?

Me: Pretty much, yeah.

 Posted by Bertha at 6:41 pm  Tagged with:

Slow Week

 Accounting Stuff, General  Comments Off
Aug 032010
 

Things are still pretty slow at the church office. Which is fine, as I’m still learning how everything works.

Cricket has everything all set up to be efficient and streamlined and organized; all I really have to do is follow her system and I look like I know what the hell I’m doing. Last week our associate pastor stopped in and asked if the payroll stubs had been distributed yet—they had been. Then he wanted to make sure the head of the preschool had gotten hers—she had. He was pleased that everything was taken care of already. All I did was follow the schedule Cricket set up for me on my calendar: payroll is due on the 15th and the 30th, and she schedules us to actually run payroll a couple of days early so we’ve got some buffer time in case there are problems. This has the side effect of making me look incredibly efficient and on the ball when I have the payroll done the day before it’s due.

Right now the only real bee in my bonnet is that I don’t yet have access to the server, which means I can’t back up Quickbooks. This makes me twitchy. The problem with using volunteers to perform IT functions is that they can only come do things when they have time between paying jobs. Rumor has it our IT volunteer will be coming by this week to get things set up for me.

 Posted by Bertha at 7:25 pm
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