quixotic cinnamon orange

And…open!
celebrate with cinnamon orange
guess who?
magick of course
tonight is the night
of rumors and lies
of curses and truths
tonight is the ride of your dreams
and its going to be magical
chasing the rainbows of the summertime
tasty and warm
how do you know it exists
this universal quixotic?
because anyone can take a notion
and make it their reality
its all up to you
make your heart dance with delight
ride the magical wind
tonight is your night!

the beast

The beast or should that be the elephant in the room is doing things for trade, while in general I trust people but doing work in trade just doesn’t ever seem to work out. I traded my massage therapist for his business card design in trade for massage sessions. My part is completed, I paid out of pocket for the printing and graphics and yet, he has been too busy, cutting his pot, being emotional, working with other “paying” clients (his words) to bother giving me two sessions which he owes me. What pisses me off the most is “his other paying clients” WTF? I paid for my sessions in advance by doing his business card design. I was in need of a massage – my arthitis is acting up but no he didn’t have time because he was cutting his pot? I ended up going to someone else. And now he wants more stuff done, oh well, I’m too busy working with “paying clients” = cash is required up front period, I can use the money to go get a massage 🙂

Moral or note to self = no more trade and no more low quotes – quote what you really think its going to take = be real

whoa, estimates

whoa, hold on a minute….my accounting system sends out emails and they are generic emails which say

Dear Customer :
Your invoice is attached. Please remit payment at your earliest convenience.
Thank you for your business – we appreciate it very much.
Sincerely,

Now I suppose that I should customize the email greetings but this is the case of the accountant who has very little time to do her own accounting and really has just set up the basic defaults, also is the case where I just don’t want to do my own accounting after doing 10 hours or so of accounting. I don’t mean any harm by it nor have I had complaints from any clients about the genericism (not a word huh?) of the default template….until today when I got this email back from a client. Seriously, I don’t take offense when I get emails from vendors that say “dear customer”

If you wish to retain me as a client, I would prefer that you make it more clear what the time estimates are for your work. blah blah blah. If I wanted a big corporate accounting firm to treat me this way, I would certainly hire one to do so. “Dear Customer” rather sums it all up.

Now hold on a minute, I had originally estimated 200/month for the accounting but that had alot of assumptions factors in, like for example, personal accounting, he had maybe one or two accounts and that their scheduling system was fully integrable with QB, neither is the case however, it was an initial estimate only, not set in stone.  

Lets go over some big words:  Estimate means an approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth, does not mean that the amount is set in stone, it means that might be the cost. Lets go further, might means it could happen, a possiblity or chance, still not set in stone. When the weatherman says that it might rain, that just means there is a possibility of rain, not that it will rain. Possiblity means that its likely to occur. Therefore an estimate only means that its an approximate calculation that it is likely to occur, not that its set in stone.

Lets back up to this email I received this morning, because I know how certain potential clients are going to act about receiving their invoices, I followed up a few hours later with an explanation email about the invoice. I sent the invoices out at 2am, followed up at 6am. I had to sleep, I should be allowed to sleep don’t you think? Instead of jumping to conclusions and sending out emails, one should really check their emails and then again this is where the concept of estimate rears its ugly head for those that have difficulty with big words. 

Even on my engagement letter, it states:  Our initial monthly estimate of total fees is $150.00 to $200.00 per month for accounting services  but still its only an estimated amount of time/money not set in stone or simplier terms: its an approximation calculation of money.

I’ve actually spent a hella of lot more time on the accounting but because I knew this particular client wouldn’t pay me for all of it, I discounted it out or just didn’t bill it out. Honestly, it should have been doubled what I billed, by now you’re probably shaking your head thinking why does one retain such a client? simple and honest truth: money.

creepy

I feel like I’m dating and I didn’t get the invite to date. If he didn’t live next door,  I’d never see him again. Seriously, I can find a better massage therapist, actually in fact am seeing another massage therapist off/on.  I don’t like needy men, I especially don’t like the fact that he keeps coming over here and then proceeding to tell me how to my job while getting in my space. Please put a filter on your mouth, seriously, no one needs to know the details of someone taking a dump, only in little kids is that cute. And now he keeps suggesting movie night with just me and him, creepy! Do people do movie night? If a group of friends – I suppose movie night would be cool  but my group of friends would probably just watch the movie instead of telling me all the details of making the movie, how they know the actors they don’t really know, etc.  I  can’t imagine being alone with him in a dark house watching movie on a tiny little TV that he thinks is top of the line – creepy beyond thought.

And telling me when my schedule can accomdate him or asking me where I am when I’m not home or where I’ve been, its getting intrusive and really stalky creepy to the point where I’m afraid to open my front door because he’ll show up whenever he feels like it.

I’m just creeped out…its time to tell him and let the cards fall where they may..I’m not losing anything over it and maybe  he can stop dating me

zenni

Its that time of year again..time for my optical checkup and I need new glasses, the ones I have are are all mangled more or less from the cats sitting on them but I really can’t afford to buy new glasses or so I thought, just found this amazing deal on Zenni Optical – cute eyeglasses for a 10th of the price of my current ones. Now at that rate, I could have a few pairs, one to sit by the computer desk, one to take with me in the car since I only use them when driving at night or when I need to look at really tiny print on the computer, one for a different mood. glasses1

So you’re probably thinking but you like trying on different styles and seeing which one works better, you can still do that, go shop but don’t buy from the store, find the ones you like and then go look at Zenni Optical for the similar styles. And its simple, you click on the frame of your choice, enter your prescription info you got from your doctor and make sure you request your doctor gives you pupillary distance info, you’ll need that for ordering and add to cart.

glasses2

Instead of buying 200.00 eyeglasses every year, check out Zenni first. Look at these cute eyeglasses for only 8.00 each, like I said before, I’m going to buy two-three different kinds, different styles depending on the day or mood, with Zenni Optical I can afford it.

glasses3

They have many different styles from titanium, full rim, half rim, bifocals and even those premium photochromic glasses that turn dark in bright light…normally you can get those starting at 230.00 but at Zenni, they start at 27.00 and they even have kids styles. Why would you shop anywhere else?

health care reform

trust me when I say I have many thoughts on this subject just no time to write them out, promise though I’ll get to it soon..until then…excerpt from an obama speech/answer about the health care reform

So our hope is that over time, over the next three, four, five, six years, because of all these changes, that we’ve actually saved money from this even though more people are covered. But let me give you an example.

If you’ve got a house and you’ve got a big hole in your roof, and it’s raining and snowing through that roof, and there’s some people who are inside the rooms where the roof’s OK and they’re nice and warm, and then you’ve got a few — you know, your family members in that room where there’s a big hole in the roof and they’re shivering and they’re cold, if you repair the roof, that’s going to cost some money.  But if all the water damage from your floors and all the heat that’s going out of the roof and all — you count all those savings over time, it may turn out that it actually is saving you money and, by the way, all those family members now are warm, too.  You’re not the only one who’s warm, right?

huh? how does that relate to anything? and if I have a big hole in my roof and its causing water damage to my floors and my heat is escaping – first I”d like to know why my heat is turned on, why I don’t have a tarp on the roof to stop the water damage and why I’m sitting in the room freezing while the rest of my family members are warm in the other room. And exactly how does the escaping heat and the water damage save me money in the long run?

When you use examples, seriously they should make a point in few short words instead of giving the feeling of blah, blah, blah, blah, I was reading his answer to a question and started zoning out, imagine if I had to sit and listen to it live, I’d probably start tuning him out. After reading this article: Mr. President, Is it Wise to Add More Taxes? I realized he has no clue, he talks in circles, he tries to talk to the people and ends up sounding kinda of stupid. Read it for yourself, see if you get bored

chrome – not

I’ve been having weird email issues, my outlook would open then immediately close. At first I thought I had a virus, so I ran several different anti-virus and anti-malware programs, cleaned out my temp files and history and used Eraser to completely erase my recycle bin…that didn’t fix the problem.

Then I thought maybe I had a corrupted or several corrupted outlook files, I admit they were getting big and I had a phantom reminder keep popping up but it wasn’t worrisome, a little annoying but not horrible. So my first thought was to repair my pst files and compact them and finally archive all the old stuff (yikes that took me hours – I should do it more often). That seem to work at first and outlook would stablizes for a day, then it would start all over again.

So I thought maybe I should find a heavy-duty repair and recover pst file program and use that, I found one called Disk Doctors Outlook Recovery and they have a demo mode, I was able to significantly reduce the size of my pst files and that seemed to do the trick for a day…then it started happening again

So I thought maybe I had a bad install of IE7 – so I reinstalled IE7 – that fixed some IE7 issues in general…but it started happening again…so I deinstalled all additional addins and unneccessary program and yet that still didn’t fix the problem.

After doing some more research, I found that the google toolbar was the possible culprit in the problem and as soon as I deinstalled the google toolbar, all was well….but, of course there is a but, silly goose

but I realize I had never had a problem with google toolbar until recently, what had I installed that was causing the issue? + I really missed my google toolbar functions…..

I had recently downloaded google chrome and after doing a little research this morning, found alot of people saying google chrome causes issues with Outlook, IE7 (yes, I still use IE – I should move to Firefox or something else, maybe someday) and that when uninstalling chrome, it doesn’t remove completely

Anyways, after making sure that Google Chrome was completely removed from my system. I reinstalled Google Toolbar and all seems well again…Outlook is opening as it should and staying open. Google Toolbar is back and working….for the moment

Moral of story: google chrome – not and I should backtrack through my steps of what I installed recently and undo until I find the issue.

Disk Doctors is great – I’d definetly buy it someday when I have the money, not only does it recover lost emails and corrupted files, it reduces the size of the .pst files which is wonderful because outlook seems to be able to handle only 1.5GB of info before it just doesn’t like you.

Time and Energy

The essence of time, motion and energy. Did you know that “Kinetic watches are timepieces that utilize the power from the human body to keep the watch running. There are no batteries needed and you should not have to wind the watch to keep it going. Kinetic watches have oscillating weights that are turned by constant movement from the wrist. The constant movement turns into a magnetic charge in the watch and then into electricity. Kinetic watches are powered by kinetic energy. The term kinetic energy comes from the Greek words kinesis and energia, which mean motion and energy”  (source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-kinetic-watches.htm)

That is so cool. Wouldn’t it be cool if the power of the human body could fuel the energy for your own electricity?

oh but that’s another subject entirely, the subject here is Seiko Kinetic Watches specificially from Blue Dial. Blue Dial has an amazing assortment of Kinetic Watches, this one Black Anodized Stainless Steel Hexagon Black Dial is pretty cool or this one Ladies Two Tone Dress Watch (although I think my mom might tell me I used to have one like this)

I suppose if I was a watch sort of person, I would buy myself a congratulations, I’m graduating Ladies Base Metal Dress Bangle Style Bracelet Blue Dial 

Whatever your watch style, check out Blue Dial because time is not only about energy, its about motion, the power to fuel time.

not your girlfriend

if you have called me 4 times in the span of 3 hours and I haven’t returned your call, most likely I’m busy or it could be I’M BUSY!!!  If in fact, you hear me hammering in my house, doesn’t mean that I’M NOT BUSY just means I took a break from the computer for a few minutes, does not mean that I’M NOT BUSY, could also means I don’t want your help. If perhaps, I still haven’t answered your calls and my lights are on, still doesn’t mean that I’M NOT BUSY, it could perhaps mean that I really don’t want to talk to you or perhaps I’M BUSY. Even my clients know that I will call them back within a few hours. Just because I work from home, does not mean that I have all the free time in the world to discuss things with you especially when you never get the hint to go away. If in fact, I happened to have a melt-down in your vinicity one day, does not mean that I’M NOT BUSY, that probably means that I am twice as busy because I decided to not deal with my life for one day. If I still haven’t returned your calls that does not mean to come over, bang on my door and check on me. That does not mean that something has happened to me, just means I don’t want to talk to you and I’M BUSY (Rule #1)

I work 12 hour days lately and then I do school work for 2 hours per day, when I actually have time to eat dinner and watch TV for one hour, I want too in peace, that does not mean come over and hang out while my dinner gets cold to discuss your day. I am not your girlfriend, nor do I want to be.  Please find someone else to latch onto.

Here’s a really good article: she’s not interested in you

ah, i feel much better. still quite annoyed but deep breaths, letting it go