Thursday, May 17, 2018

AMAZING WHAT HAS GONE ASTRAY IN A MONTH AND A HALF

When one thinks that one is sort of keeping up, well... one is not. 

We received the new carbon monoxide monitor today - it looks right.  We ordered a different propane monitor - same company as made the carbon monoxide detector and will send the one we have back - not comfortable with it not indicating that it is working properly. 

So far the leak under the sink has not returned - might have been because husband washed hair in kitchen sink.  We will see.

Spent much time trying to find a new policy for our reenactment unit.  Today we found an agency that gave us a “maybe”, instead of a “no”.  The company they use has written some policies for reenactors, not sure if they still are doing so.  In doing the paperwork for them, I found an ad we received several years ago from a company that did these policies - husband contacted, they no longer carry these policies. 

Yesterday I had a chance to do some of those bank recs which are sitting and waiting.  Again, I started with the more important ones.  I did the April one for our reenactment unit first and then  same for my embroidery chapter. I could not find last month’s bank recs for them.  In a panic I looked through the papers I previously set aside to deal with later.  I checked the file drawers.  I looked in my “to file” section in the stack of holders that sit on my desk (amazingly that has mostly been kept up through all this).  I looked in the stack on desk.  I looked in the financial folder for each in their slots in their sections in the same holder. Not there!  Finally I remembered!  Boy was I stupid.  I don’t file bank statements into the file drawers when I reconcile them.  I put them into my “grab and go” emergency folder and at that time file the one from the prior month.  This is such an automatic repeating thing - how could I forget?  So the ones I was missing were in the grab and go.  Well, the one for our reenactment unit was.  The one for my embroidery chapter was still missing.  I finally remembered that it was set aside in the notebook I use to keep track of the money received for the group.  I had forgotten (until I did this month’s reconciliation) that suddenly the statement shows a calculation of the monthly fees due on the account - all zero so far - and this account is not suppose to have monthly fees.  I set it aside to take with me next time I go to that bank to ask what is going on and forgot.  I will be going in to make a deposit for the group and will ask about the fee calculation.

I also had a chance to reconcile our business banking accounts for April.  They go fairly quickly - very little business.  This time I remembered where last month’s statements were - since I had just done the other two statements.  I even had a chance to do both months of our lesser bank accounts (small savings accounts and a checking accounting to transfer money out of that bank easily).  I did not get to the statements for our IRAs.  They are quarterly statements and came at the beginning of April and are next to be done.

I still have not had a chance to post the breakdown of the bills I paid last month to the computer.  I had posted them quickly when they were paid, entirely to “uncategorized expenses”.  This way I us the program to double check my arithmetic  - my balance and the computer’s balance for any account should be the same, but it saves the time of breaking down the expenses on a busy credit card statement.  These statements are in the folder to have their posting fixed.  By posting them to the “uncategorized expenses” category, one which I did not set up, but is place for the program to post expenses which were not posted by me, I know that when I have the program make me a statement for reference, if there is anything in that account - it was done and I better do it!

I also did not have a chance to backup my computers last month.   I should have done the monthly and a quarterly backup of each (on two different external hard drives).  So yesterday I did a back up on each drive for my main computer.  I had been having a problem syncing my older mobile phone with the computer - it would not attach and I thought it was a peculiarity of the phone which sometimes happen - it is “old” and a pre Iphone or Android.  I decided not to panic and set it aside.  Then when I tried to attach the first external hard drive - it would not attach.  I tried again in a different port - then tried a port on the back of the computer instead of the front as I have a hub attached to the back and the disks on same were fine.  Did not work.  Why should it - nothing else seems to work right.

I still did not panic and did what one does when nothing works right.  I shut down the computer and rebooted.  That did it and it worked.  So I made both backups.  Today I did same to my work laptop.  I have to go back and backup some flash drives of data and then this computer will be backed up. 

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

To paraphrase a saying about setting aside projects partially done - .  “If you don’t have time to finish it now and you set it aside, when will you have time to finish it?”

This is what has happened to me.  New problems keep popping up which are mostly beyond my control. 

Try to get things done in full  - or get back to them right away - don’t set them partially aside.  If by some chance you have no choice (as I did not) make sure you keep all of what has to be done together in a logical way so you can go back and remember what has to be done and how to do it.

    

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