New School - New Day

Son number two started school today -- at a new school -- and on a new schedule. The schedule is what in California (or at least our school district) is called a "Modified A Track" schedule. Which is a change from what had gone on in the years prior (before $ cuts from the state.... let's not even get into THAT fiasco).

Previously, the elementary school near us had three "tracks" which meant that they could shove more kids into each school per year since our district was bloated with kids and rather lean on extra classrooms and teachers ($$ looms again) plus there was a bonus for the schools that had a limit of 20 students per class for grades K - 3(?). At any rate, now that the budgets have all been cut students are shoved in any which way to fit the building (36 students per class is now not unusual -- at least that's what I've heard from some of the teachers in the area ), so the schedule didn't have to go all wonky -- BUT -- it wasn't going to go back to a "Traditional" school year.... why, I don't know.

Son number two is used to a traditional schedule -- and for that matter, he's been going to a private school since Kindergarten. This year (4th grade) the economic situation meant that a school change was necessary.

So far, things seem ok. He did say that the stuff he's starting with is stuff he learned way back at the beginning of 3rd grade, but that might be just review. We'll see where things fall as the months go on.

For me, it means one less family member home during business hours -- which is change from summer vacation. The rest will be going about their business / school by the end of August & I'll be back to WORK with out too many interruptions! (what an awful Mom I am.... :) )


And if that wasn't good enough, this afternoon, in a fit of efficiency, I'm actually starting to tackle March's monthly totals / taxes.

Field Trip Number Two in two days...

Well -- The thing in the middle of the picture is an Australian Skink (on the small side). The fuzzy stuff at the bottom of the picture is someone's hair and then there's the pair of knees at the top of the picture.

This is one of the very few photos that came out (I keep telling you, my skills with the camera are shaky at best) of the first part of a two part field trip last Friday. We visited a local natural history museum where there were mock-ups of different California habitats (with real stuffed animals staring nose to nose at you -- including a full sized Puma / Mountain Lion / Cougar..).

The second portion of the trip was a nature walk in a semi-local State park with a guide. It was GREAT! Unfortunately, many of the kids were either unimpressed or spent their entire time worring about dirt getting on them. Rather sad. Most of the parents enjoyed it, and number two son (who had come last year to the same park with the same guide for a walk for cub scouts) was having a great time getting more detail than he had absorbed last time. Too cool.

Yesterday I tried to get a picture of the large black carpenter Bee that was buzzing around the mock sweet pea (I think) bush in front of the house yesterday, but again.... my skills with a moving object...

here's the best shot:




The plant is the one with purple flowers. The bee.. well even as big as it is to my eye, you can hardly see it here... it's to the right of the plant and it's the black flapping thing on the underside of one of the flowers. Boy do I wish I had a real camera with a telephoto lens and some real skills. Nice plant though.

Yesterday was supposed to be a finishing day to get the books covered and boxed for the Book Fair this coming weekend. Well, I spent two hours covering, but not boxing and the bookcases which were supposed to come down & get stacked ready for the van haven't been. I'll try and get some more done after this. Right now I'm sending out my monthly newsletter with a note about the fair. Probably way too late, but that's the way it's going around here this month.

Hopefully, I'll spend more time tomorrow boxing and preparing than trying to enter new books into the database. At least, that's what I NEED to be doing.

Now it's off to baseball.

Blustery, Blustery day

Winnie the Pooh dealt with blustery days all the time. Maybe because he was in England where it rains regularly. Maybe because Blustery is such a fun word to say. Who knows.

Today, the only way you could describe the weather here in Northern California is blustery. It's raining (whoopee!!! and I'm not being ironic here, we are finally up to 6" (just over) of rain for the year and that's STILL not enough to pull us out of the now severe drought we're in. The combination of accumulated rain that goes to our reservoirs and the snow pack in the Sierras is what keeps California from becoming a dust bowl in the summer time. Last year, our reservoirs were down to a quarter of what should be there.... this year... well, it's not a pretty sight. As for the snow pack, it's starting to grown, but was still just above 50% of normal as of the last survey at the beginning of February.

SO, here it is on a cold, windy, blustery day (not a HUGE amount of rain, but dribble drabbles enough to keep the school kids inside). The usual puddles that turn into lakes at the very thought of rain have not appeared.
(good in some ways, but not so good in others)
(I have very fond memories of putting on my bathing suit after school and splashing through the three foot deep lake that was the parking lot of my apartment complex -- also racing bikes through that amount of water was exhilarating.... I tried to talk my sons into trying it but....)

(Here's the deal, in Modesto, and much of NorCal, water runoff from rain is collected in ROCK WELLS which help gather the water -- the rain can, sometimes, come down in sheets or solid walls of rain -- Rock Wells take HOURS to percolate the rain from the street down through a series of small rocks and dirt and thence to the ground below or to run-off basins.... in the mean time, if a drain gets plugged or if the rain comes really FAST, the rock wells back up and the streets and parking lots turn into lakes. DEEP lakes. That's when you have to NOT drive your car through them or the car stalls and you looks completely stupid for going through when you should have known better.)

But back to the day. It's a good day to stay inside, drink cocoa and get some book work done. (hopefully my accountant has had her breakfast and finished her early meeting to get started once again on my poor little tax account)

I ran out of cocoa mix about four days ago, so no cocoa, but after I finish this, I'm planning on getting down to business (for real!) and logging a bunch of new stock into my database.

Enjoy.

taxes again... the state has gone bonkers!

So you all know I finished my sales tax stuff & sent it in on Jan 29th.

Since then I've handed my Fed & State tax info off to my accountant for her to do her mojo on -- I try to get my tax stuff in early as I do normally get a refund from both the state & the fed. Since I can use the money NOW, I wanted to get it all done & turned in as soon as possible. My accountant, is, predictably, in the midst of deluge time herself, so my itty bitty tax stuff is not the most pressing. Unfortunately, this leads to today's mini-rant.

Last week, the comptroller of the State of California, put a hold on all tax refunds -- actually going so far as to send out IOU's to citizens. I haven't gotten mine yet, but I know I will. If it's pretty enough, I might frame the letter. Californians have NO IDEA when we will get our refunds. It might be two months, it might be six, it might be two years from now. Who knows.

I really do need my refund sooner than later so I'm a bit edgy about all this, but the REASON for the IOU's is the real kicker.

Here's my rant from my website on WHY it is the state is in trouble (actually, it's a mini-rant as well & doesn't go into all the reasons WHY we're in this state, but why we haven't gotten OUT of this state)....

here it is:

My taxes are all in (as I mentioned last time) but just before I am ready to send in my CA tax info, the state has frozen all payments of tax refunds. Yes, I should be getting one, but no, I don't at this point know when it will be. Maybe 2011, maybe never. I could actually use it NOW, but that's not gonna happen.

The state of California is MESSED UP. I would love to go up to Sacramento (and hit the bookstores, etc) and knock some heads together in the legislature. It's the legislature that's continuing to hold things up. They REFUSE to take the plunge and ask for some hard steps to be taken (IE: raising taxes) to pay for the mess they've made of the budget. Because -- and this part REALLY gets me -- if they are caught raising taxes a couple of things will happen: first, the Republican party for the US has told their members that they will be sanctioned if they do .... HUH? The rest of the nation, that doesn't have the same problem as us is telling us we CAN'T do something about it? ; then there's the backlash yet to come -- most of the Republicans don't want to raise taxes because in two years (or however many it is until they are re-elected) the voters will REMEMBER that they raised taxes & vote them out of office. -- WHO THE HECK CARES ABOUT TWO YEARS FROM NOW!!! We need a budget passed NOW and a selfless, honest civil servant (that's what these guys & gals are SUPPOSED to be) would not think about his own future, but would think about the future of the Great State of California....which we certainly are NOT right at the moment.

It's sad. It's wrong. It's a mean and petty way to get things done & it needs changing now.



That's what I had to say --

Now I want you to know that I'm not a rabid / radical Democrat. My husband is a ... well, he was a Republican until this last election... but that's another long, LONG story. Now he's a Libertarian. I am certainly not going to diss his policital party in front of him, and for the most part, I like to stay far away from partisan politics, but MAN, would these guys (and that does include Democrats) either PEE or get off the POT already!!!

GRRRRRR....

hopefully in a better mood tomorrow.

DONE!

In celebration of finishing tax stuff, I'm going to go buy myself a piece of German Chocolate cake & eat the whole thing all by myself... if, that is, I can hide it long enough from my number one son who is an eating vacuum at the moment.

It's done.
Finished.
Complete.

I've paid the state sales tax bill and gotten confirmation online already (took five minutes to fill out the online form & get back a response -- not believing a soulless machine, I had to do it on paper on the form myself first...but that's another story.) I also figured out the city sales tax & will ink over my penciled numbers and make out the check tomorrow and mail it off. Then it's completely done until next year.

Hopefully, I'll be more up to date about getting my monthly totals done this new year.

And, strangely enough, I was completely flummoxed to find out that this last year (2008's ) grand totals were just $10.00 different from the year before (income I mean...)

THAT'S WEIRD -- at least to me it is. It's never happened before. Also, because prices on EVERYTHING increased so much during the last year, it FELT as if I was making far less.

I wasn't. I was just spending WAY MORE on everyday things like FOOD (which is a BIG part of the household budget -- see the note about my vacuum cleaner number one son).

Even December wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

Now I can get back to funky, cool, unusual books.

New President... new administration... new order.... hopefully.

Just like millions of other folk around the world, I feel it is important to at least mention that an historic event has just taken place. Congratulations, Mr. President Obama, I wish you well.

I was a supporter of Hilary Clinton, and quite hesitant to find our next president was going to be rather less experienced in many ways than I had hoped, but I have to admit that during the transition Mr. Obama has made some very hopeful and, I hope, SMART steps towards fixing some of the ills that have befallen us as a nation. I also hope that the nation as a whole, and the congress in particular don't end up stifling some of the positive changes that can be made (take a gander at what the state of California's legislature has done to take a sorry situation and muck it up further...).

There have been times in the last few years where I've felt like apologizing to the world for being an American. A former neighbor of mine, who emigrated from Iran, (not only were he and his wife my friends, but his children were my sons best playmates for several years) and I had numerous, long conversations about what it was like to live in the US and in Iran... and about changes he had seen in the 30 years he has lived here...there were times when I wanted to tell him that I wasn't THAT type of American, that I didn't believe in some of the wrong-headed, wrong-hearted things that were being done in the name of MY country.

I hope, that with Mr. Obama's leadership & forward thinking attitude, that I won't feel that way again. Ever.

Good Luck, Mr. President.
God Speed.
I wish you well.

The Taxman Cometh...

Yup, it's that time again...

well, for those of us who pay sales tax it is (depending on when you decided to set up your tax year, etc.). For me, it's January to December, which means that my sales tax info is due January 31st.

I try to be an organized person. I try to keep up with all the details of my business and for many years, I was ahead of the game... monthly totals worked up by the next month, making it very easy for me to see how the business is going, making figuring tax amounts a breeze...

But about three years ago, something happened. I don't really know what, but with the kids getting older and doing more and with me trying to work at three or four different projects at a time, the monthly accounts fell by the wayside. This year seems to have been the worst. Today, I just finished the monthly totals information for MAY 2008.

Yup. I'm seven months behind at the moment. I know I'll get it done before the 31st, but it will be a rush to do so, making me panicky and rather cranky until it's done.

THIS YEAR, I PROMISE TO DO BETTER!!!

(Of course, that's what I said last year & the year before that).

I know, in my head, that one of the reasons it's been harder to want to get this done is that looking at the numbers is downright depressing. It's the same old-same old you've heard from everyone else in the U.S. of A. -- times are getting harder and money is not being spent.

That goes for book dealers too.

No matter what, though, the taxes must get done (the state of California is VERY good about getting their due...especially this year) and I WANT to do my duty and pay them. So I'll soldier on through the rest of the paperwork to get it done as quickly as possible. (picture, in your mind, me standing proudly in front of a slowly waving flag ... you know, like the president does... while patriotic music is whiffing in the background.)

Have a nice day.

Me, I'll be pounding the adding machine buttons and muttering under my breath...