The Morning Commute

I had this odd choice while zipping along the highway towards the office this morning.

Should I continue driving behind the dump truck, letting the sand, gravel & grit sand-blast away the paint of my car, or do I continue driving behind the micro sub-compact car with a box spring & mattress twice the size of the vehicle precariously tied to the top and flapping dangerously in the wind?

There wasn't much choice: there were only the two lanes and the two vehicles were driving in lock-step with each other 5 mph below the posted speed limit.

*sigh*

I ultimately chose the ant-sized car with the box spring & mattress on the theory that death would come quicker if not somewhat padded.

On the good side, the days are indeed getting longer: this is the first commute in months that I didn't have to turn on the headlights of my car the moment I left our driveway.

The Morning Commute

I had this odd choice while zipping along the highway towards the office this morning.

Should I continue driving behind the dump truck, letting the sand, gravel & grit sand-blast away the paint of my car, or do I continue driving behind the micro sub-compact car with a box spring & mattress twice the size of the vehicle precariously tied to the top and flapping dangerously in the wind?

There wasn't much choice: there were only the two lanes and the two vehicles were driving in lock-step with each other 5 mph below the posted speed limit.

*sigh*

I ultimately chose the ant-sized car with the box spring & mattress on the theory that death would come quicker if not somewhat padded.

On the good side, the days are indeed getting longer: this is the first commute in months that I didn't have to turn on the headlights of my car the moment I left our driveway.

Busy, Busy

I'm trying very hard to keep focused on work but I'm continually distracted by the pending hotel negotiations for Harper's Ferry Hoedown in November.

I was able to get copies of past contracts with hotels we've used for our ACDC dance event and HFH event. Between these, our 2009 IAGSDC convention hotel contract and some small past experience I've picked up over the years, I have a set of must-have items I can use for our upcoming negotiations.

Thanks to being an information pack rat, I've also been able to dig up approximations for the number of room-nights, hall expenses, caller fees & travel expenses, guestroom expenses for the callers, DJ expenses and such. I've managed to hammer out an approximate budget for the revised Harper's Ferry Hoedown; now we can at least guesstimate how much additional overhead we can eat without losing (much) money. So many variables...

Last night's plan included putting together an estimate of our tax returns but it took most of the evening to simply pull together all of the charitable donations. Any charity acknowledgment letter goes into a file but there's a lot which aren't received; to be all-inclusive, I check every credit card statement, all our checkbook registers and PayPal accounts for 2007, followed by double-checking against the matching gift history of my Dear Employer. There are still a set we know should be out there somewhere but we'll need to sift through kent4str's enormous pile of crap tidy in-box for stragglers.

At least all of the square dance calling expenses & revenues are well-tracked with QuickBooks. The only work I needed on that front was count the number of gigs with each club, use Google Maps to get a door-to-door travel distance and look up the annual mileage allowance from the IRS. In all, we drove 1970 miles for calling gigs in 2007. I hope to enter these and other numbers tonight.

Busy, Busy

I'm trying very hard to keep focused on work but I'm continually distracted by the pending hotel negotiations for Harper's Ferry Hoedown in November.

I was able to get copies of past contracts with hotels we've used for our ACDC dance event and HFH event. Between these, our 2009 IAGSDC convention hotel contract and some small past experience I've picked up over the years, I have a set of must-have items I can use for our upcoming negotiations.

Thanks to being an information pack rat, I've also been able to dig up approximations for the number of room-nights, hall expenses, caller fees & travel expenses, guestroom expenses for the callers, DJ expenses and such. I've managed to hammer out an approximate budget for the revised Harper's Ferry Hoedown; now we can at least guesstimate how much additional overhead we can eat without losing (much) money. So many variables...

Last night's plan included putting together an estimate of our tax returns but it took most of the evening to simply pull together all of the charitable donations. Any charity acknowledgment letter goes into a file but there's a lot which aren't received; to be all-inclusive, I check every credit card statement, all our checkbook registers and PayPal accounts for 2007, followed by double-checking against the matching gift history of my Dear Employer. There are still a set we know should be out there somewhere but we'll need to sift through kent4str's enormous pile of crap tidy in-box for stragglers.

At least all of the square dance calling expenses & revenues are well-tracked with QuickBooks. The only work I needed on that front was count the number of gigs with each club, use Google Maps to get a door-to-door travel distance and look up the annual mileage allowance from the IRS. In all, we drove 1970 miles for calling gigs in 2007. I hope to enter these and other numbers tonight.

We're Coverboys!

The interview with MetroWeekly last week and the photo shoot earlier this week have borne fruit and we're it:



I haven't read the article yet; this issue should hit the stands tomorrow.

We're Coverboys!

The interview with MetroWeekly last week and the photo shoot earlier this week have borne fruit and we're it:



I haven't read the article yet; this issue should hit the stands tomorrow.