Madness In My Method

Well, at least it's better than 2:30 or 3:30 like last night.

And at least this time I have the thunderstorms that are rolling through to mostly blame. I was pretty soundly asleep until then. I still decided to go ahead and take a Benadryl as a knock-off sleeping pill. Even if I sleep in till 1pm, I know my brain and body needs it. I'm thoroughly exhausted and I can see where it's affecting my periphery thinking and energy levels.

My goal for tomorrow later today is to finish the painting of my bathroom cabinets and baseboard. You know, that project that I started during the first month that we owned the house approximately a year and a half ago? I'm tired of looking at the blue tape that is STILL on the floor and opening the cabinets and drawers without the handles that were taken off many moons ago.

Up for grabs either later this weekend or starting next weekend is to see exactly how fast I could actually come up with a design for our bar. If you've visited, then you know that our bar section of the kitchen is just a counter with scattered alcohols, glasses and sundry. The cabinets above were threatening to come down in a spectacular way until I emptied it of its contents, and by all accounts that's not a half bad idea (just subtract out the whole "spectacular" part of that equation and we're good). So, like I did with the building of the bookcase for a friend, my goal is to measure out the space, create a design in Excel (a great substitute for graph paper - although I am tempted to grab the graph notepad out for old times' sake), create a 3-D version of the design in Google Sketch-Up, and then build.

Now, unlike that bookcase, I don't plan on spending a year and a half on the project. Fall is starting up which makes for perfect weather to do wood working out in the garage. I'm a pansy, and too hot or too cold puts a stop to that pretty quickly. I'll be pestering the crap out of Tom to remind me how not to chop off a finger with the circular saw. I really wish I had more experience with the wood-working tools so I didn't have to keep bugging him, but my chosen projects seem to be few and far between.

Reminder to Self:
Take BEFORE pictures of the bar, this time, dumbass

Provided that I don't lose it first.

I have a file full of receipts. Not just any receipts, but big purchases. And by big I mean anything that I would place under the category of furniture. Or computers.

Or lamps.
And alarm clocks.
and my electric razor (and the trimmer as well).
... and my cast iron gum ball machine.

Basically anything that came with a warranty and/or a manual. (Including my Progressive steamer basket)
I have a receipt for when I framed my Howling II movie poster, the Future Kill movie poster (with H.R. Giger art), and the M.C. Escher The Eye print. You know. Back in June of '94.

So the point of this post is that I'm cleaning out the receipt file.
No. Not that kind of cleaning; are you INSANE*?
I'm moving the 1/2 page sized or smaller receipts and manuals to another section of my file drawer because it's full going sideways and not full going length-wise.

*Yes. I was born this mad. Yes, you are still reading me. :)

I would just like to note that my bed, purchased on 4/11/98, still has 4 years left on its 15yr warranty.

I just thought that this completely trivial fact about nothing that I for some reason found funny/cool/weird/worthless enough to share with the rest of you who still believe me to somehow be sane simply had to posted.

I have stuck in my head as an ending to this madhouse of a post a likewise mad woman (Moira Brown from Fallout 3) quipping in her high-pitched overly-happy voice, "Happy Hunting!" This of course has absolutely nothing to do with the receipts in my drawer what-so-ever, unless you count the time I spend looking through the actual booklets and marveling at my own madness method for receipt retention.

EDIT: Because I had to: I still have the instructions for using the Sophist-O-Twist, which look like are these.

Yesterday I was a wired accountant extraordinaire (added to windows' dictionary because Gates has never heard of Webster).

EDIT: Important News in case you didn't get a copy of the mail out from the IRS a short while back.

For all of yesterday I was still running on 1.5 hours of sleep, a pack of cigarettes, a little semblance of food around noon, and a lot of caffeine. I made it to the 8:45 teacher meeting early at 8:30. In all my sleep-deprived mind I kept thinking that class started at 9:45 despite the fact that throughout this entire semester the class has been scheduled for 9:30. I bought a muffin and cappuccino for breakfast and researched printer information in the computer lab for the next hour while waiting for class to begin. I showed up to class right on time at 9:45 - except that I was 15 minutes late and didn't realize my mistake until walking in sheepishly. 15 minutes early to meeting and 15 minutes late to class - go figure.

Class ended and I ran to purchase the printer. Then I ran to get lunch for the_paco, who was covering my afternoon shift for me, and for my coworker that I wanted to buy lunch for since she was kind enough to buy lunch for me on a couple of occasions. Side note: I really need to go by the bank and have cash in my purse again for those situations.

Back at home I managed to get the new printer installed and then spend the next couple of hours finalizing company accounts and forms. Fortuitously, our family CPA who is also a long-time family friend had a cancellation, so mom got us an appointment for between 5-5:30pm. I quickly raced to get everything finalized and printed off and still had do a few forms by hand in the car on the way there. We finally showed up around 6 after battling traffic, but that worked out perfectly for the CPA friend who was still trying to finish up with another client. Mom managed to get one set of grandparents taken care of as well as her own taxes and we made it back home by 10pm. Then I raced to file my other grandmother's, my sister's and my taxes online. At 11:15pm we jumped into the car to head to the post office hub to drop off the company taxes. H&R block wanted to charge an arm and a leg (>$500) just to file electronically for us the paperwork that I already had filled out. Fuck that shit. Luckily the car line for IRS tax drop off was pretty quick and I made it back home by 11:45.

With 15 minutes to spare. That was close.

My leg was cramping up, I had given up my first yawn while in the car line at the post office, and my allergies were about to kick in. I took a Benadryl (which knocks me out cold every time), some ibuprofen, and 1/2 a valium. I was *this* close to sleeping through my alarm this morning, but instead I managed to snooze for just a teeny bit longer and still made it to work on time despite a pit stop by McD's for breakfast and coffee.

Then damn if the phone lines at work started screwing up again. Luckily this time it only lasted about an hour.

Tonight - beers and good company. Tomorrow - I'm fucking sleeping in.