Alex, Tibi, and I went to Freiberg, Germany the week before last (Oct 21-28) with the Oradea district temple trip. This was my fourth trip to Germany in my life (2002 Stuttgart with Grandma, 2005 Frankfurt/Stuttgart for Andrea Jung's wedding, 2005 Freiberg for Sari Kriszti's wedding).
This time around, my German was even more pathetically nonexistent than before! I did have some opportunities to have short conversations in German, and by the end of the week I had warmed up enough to have a 20-min conversation with a man staying in the room across the hall. I forget where he was from, but we discussed the weather (freak snow storm), his family (children in Switzerland) and where the other temples are in Europe. (I had forgotten there were several in western Europe, like in the Netherlands and Denmark, etc.) He also told me how much he enjoyed seeing foreigners (non-Germans) at the temple.
A couple other observations about Germany: the Schengel treaty means I didn't get any new stamps in my passport. :-( Once I cross into Hungary or Germany, I can essentially go wherever I want without having my passport checked at all.
One thing that really, really bothered me was that NOBODY CHECKED MY IDENTIFICATION AT THE AIRPORT. Not a single person! We left the secure area in the Dusseldorf airport on the way there, then had to go back through security and get chewed out for not speaking German by the woman who searched us. In retrospect, I should have pointed out that if they had asked for our ID like real security guards, they would have realized we weren't German.
The point is, anyone could have taken my boarding pass and gotten on the plane. After I passed security, if a man had stolen my boarding pass, he could have taken my place without a hitch, since the airport staff just has everyone scan their own pass as they get on board--no one even looks at the data as it's passing through. It was very disturbing to me. It was true in Dusseldorf, Dresden, and Munchen--all three German airports we passed through.
One last note: even though I was in Germany, and even though I didn't ever get around to opening my Romanian language book, I seem to have broken through to a new level in Romanian. Having to communicate so much in Romanian with our fellow travelers helped me make a breakthrough, and it's suddenly easy to express myself. I'm really pleased! Now if only I could figure out the rest of the possessive pronouns...
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
My favorite day of the week
I love Tuesdays. Tuesday is the day when I make peace with the fact that the workweek has actually started and it's time to get down to business. At the same time, I know I still have several days to complete the tasks that need to get done this week, so there's little frustration or hurry in how I work. On Tuesdays, I feel competent, smart, and productive.
Tuesday is not only about work, either, because rest and the weekend is already in sight. It's only a convenient day or two away from Wednesday or Thursday evening, when new movies usually have pre-release showings at the Polus Center for $3 a ticket. Also, Tuesday is the day Alex and I usually do planning for the business, upcoming projects, and future travel. So I always feel optimistic and hopeful.
Every Tuesday morning around 10 am, Tanti Lucretia* knocks on our door and starts cleaning our apartment. So I usually start the day with tidying up, making space for her to work, getting errands done, and generally getting the "little stuff" out of the way--always extremely satisfying--and by early afternoon, the entire apartment is fresh and gleamingly clean. After Lucretia finished today, I sat down and chatted with her while we both ate a light lunch. A few years ago she bought herself a little one-room apartment to live in. She is already in retirement, so her options for earning extra income are limited, but she is trying to pay off her bank loan in the next year. She is so grateful for the extra income we give her (I'm guessing at least 2-3x what she makes per hour at her other jobs). Four dollars an hour is a laughable wage by our standards, but it makes such a huge difference in her life, and it's such a little thing for us. This is one expense I'm glad to have the opportunity to pay. Today I feel lighthearted, blessed, and grateful beyond measure.
*When Rick was here a couple months ago, he mentioned how nice it was having someone come to cook and clean a couple times a week in Tbilisi. The idea grew on me--at least the cleaning part--and before long, Lucretia was coming over to our apartment weekly. We already knew Lucretia because she comes several times a week to take care of Tanti Anna, the old woman (80+ yrs old) who lives above us. Lucretia herself is probably in her sixties. Anna recently had to cut Lucretia's salary because of changes in her financial situation, and Lucretia was working upstairs less often, so we knew that she (Lucretia) would have the time and be grateful for the money. So now she comes once a week on Tuesdays and cleans our whole apartment. It's not so much that Alex and I couldn't do it ourselves; we just didn't have enough time or energy to do a very good job of it. Now, we just concentrate our efforts on being extremely tidy, and keeping the kitchen and bathroom moderately clean throughout the week, and when Lucretia comes, she does everything else, and very thoroughly. Like mop the entire wood floor and carefully remove all the dog hair from the furniture once a week. It's fabulous. We pay her the equivalent of $15 each time she comes (she usually finishes in 3-4 hours). It's absolutely worth the expense, and we've increased our work productivity by at least that much as a direct result of worrying less about housekeeping.
Tuesday is not only about work, either, because rest and the weekend is already in sight. It's only a convenient day or two away from Wednesday or Thursday evening, when new movies usually have pre-release showings at the Polus Center for $3 a ticket. Also, Tuesday is the day Alex and I usually do planning for the business, upcoming projects, and future travel. So I always feel optimistic and hopeful.
Every Tuesday morning around 10 am, Tanti Lucretia* knocks on our door and starts cleaning our apartment. So I usually start the day with tidying up, making space for her to work, getting errands done, and generally getting the "little stuff" out of the way--always extremely satisfying--and by early afternoon, the entire apartment is fresh and gleamingly clean. After Lucretia finished today, I sat down and chatted with her while we both ate a light lunch. A few years ago she bought herself a little one-room apartment to live in. She is already in retirement, so her options for earning extra income are limited, but she is trying to pay off her bank loan in the next year. She is so grateful for the extra income we give her (I'm guessing at least 2-3x what she makes per hour at her other jobs). Four dollars an hour is a laughable wage by our standards, but it makes such a huge difference in her life, and it's such a little thing for us. This is one expense I'm glad to have the opportunity to pay. Today I feel lighthearted, blessed, and grateful beyond measure.
*When Rick was here a couple months ago, he mentioned how nice it was having someone come to cook and clean a couple times a week in Tbilisi. The idea grew on me--at least the cleaning part--and before long, Lucretia was coming over to our apartment weekly. We already knew Lucretia because she comes several times a week to take care of Tanti Anna, the old woman (80+ yrs old) who lives above us. Lucretia herself is probably in her sixties. Anna recently had to cut Lucretia's salary because of changes in her financial situation, and Lucretia was working upstairs less often, so we knew that she (Lucretia) would have the time and be grateful for the money. So now she comes once a week on Tuesdays and cleans our whole apartment. It's not so much that Alex and I couldn't do it ourselves; we just didn't have enough time or energy to do a very good job of it. Now, we just concentrate our efforts on being extremely tidy, and keeping the kitchen and bathroom moderately clean throughout the week, and when Lucretia comes, she does everything else, and very thoroughly. Like mop the entire wood floor and carefully remove all the dog hair from the furniture once a week. It's fabulous. We pay her the equivalent of $15 each time she comes (she usually finishes in 3-4 hours). It's absolutely worth the expense, and we've increased our work productivity by at least that much as a direct result of worrying less about housekeeping.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
A Momentous Decision
(I should note that I made this decision and started implementing it several hours before I heard Elder Uchtdorf's talk in the Saturday morning session.)
I am not going to be on FaceBook anymore. I'm not going to delete my profile, because I want my contact information to be available and because deleting the profile would have consequences for the business' FaceBook page, but I won't be visiting the site anymore to check up on friends and family, nor will I be posting anything. I changed my password to a randomly-generated code (which I have saved in a safe, but inconvenient, place), and I deleted all my shortcuts to it and the app on my iPad. I can post to our FB page through a third-party app that also manages our Twitter posts.
Why? Because it's an enormous time suck. And in spite of tax season take 2 winding to a close, I find myself with more work than ever, and when I sit down in front of the computer, it's just too easy to get distracted, and the FB news feed never ends. Literally. As soon as you get to the bottom, more appears.
It's not the only thing I waste time on, so I've made other changes, too: I cut my blogroll down from about 30 to only 5 blogs, and I deleted a bunch of my shortcuts, like to Amazon. I have deliberately avoided StumbleUpon since I heard about it, so at least that never became a bad habit. (Sorry, Alex.)
I do reserve the right to not leave FB permanently. But for the foreseeable future, email or call me if you want to get in touch.
I am not going to be on FaceBook anymore. I'm not going to delete my profile, because I want my contact information to be available and because deleting the profile would have consequences for the business' FaceBook page, but I won't be visiting the site anymore to check up on friends and family, nor will I be posting anything. I changed my password to a randomly-generated code (which I have saved in a safe, but inconvenient, place), and I deleted all my shortcuts to it and the app on my iPad. I can post to our FB page through a third-party app that also manages our Twitter posts.
Why? Because it's an enormous time suck. And in spite of tax season take 2 winding to a close, I find myself with more work than ever, and when I sit down in front of the computer, it's just too easy to get distracted, and the FB news feed never ends. Literally. As soon as you get to the bottom, more appears.
It's not the only thing I waste time on, so I've made other changes, too: I cut my blogroll down from about 30 to only 5 blogs, and I deleted a bunch of my shortcuts, like to Amazon. I have deliberately avoided StumbleUpon since I heard about it, so at least that never became a bad habit. (Sorry, Alex.)
I do reserve the right to not leave FB permanently. But for the foreseeable future, email or call me if you want to get in touch.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Back to the real world
In more ways than one. The past couple months have been really brutal--in fact, March and April were arguably the hardest few weeks Backyard Bookkeeper has ever had. Alex and I ended up handling almost ALL the additional workload that came in because of tax season, and for various reasons we were not able to share that workload with our other bookkeepers. (Our workload has just about doubled since January.) And as soon as we got all the eleventh hour clients taken care of by the tax deadline, we had to turn around and get all the regular monthly work done, in addition to the payroll/sales tax work that is due by the end of April, and the few clients who are on quarterly bookkeeping schedules. Part of the problem was that I had planned this week off, so I had the additional stress of trying to get everything done not by April 30th, but by April 21st. It was... quite a challenge.
In the end, it all comes done to triage: what you can reasonably manage to do, what absolutely has to be done, which client can't survive without you, which client will need things while you're gone, and so on. This part of my work is really hard for me. For some reason, I always think that there's a way to get EVERYTHING done, and I plan accordingly. This never works, and I am surprised by my failure every darn time.
So now back to the real world, with more reasonable expectations, a more reasonable distribution of labor among our staff, and a more reasonable work schedule for me. Hopefully.
We are also just back from our mini-vacation, where I imposed a social media and email ban for the duration of the week. It was great. I was actually awake during the day and asleep during the night, and I spent a lot of time outside and as little time as possible thinking about work. This is where we were all week. It was beautiful! I love mountains, and I love green, and I love it even more when I get both in the same landscape. Check out Alex's pictures on Facebook.
So here we are, back in the real world. This week we'll still be busy catching up, getting back in touch with clients, and starting a major new work project. We are also waiting to hear back from Grow America about whether we made it past Round 2 of the contest. If we do, our chances of winning will be at least 12% (4 in 33 or less)--no small feat!
In the end, it all comes done to triage: what you can reasonably manage to do, what absolutely has to be done, which client can't survive without you, which client will need things while you're gone, and so on. This part of my work is really hard for me. For some reason, I always think that there's a way to get EVERYTHING done, and I plan accordingly. This never works, and I am surprised by my failure every darn time.
So now back to the real world, with more reasonable expectations, a more reasonable distribution of labor among our staff, and a more reasonable work schedule for me. Hopefully.
We are also just back from our mini-vacation, where I imposed a social media and email ban for the duration of the week. It was great. I was actually awake during the day and asleep during the night, and I spent a lot of time outside and as little time as possible thinking about work. This is where we were all week. It was beautiful! I love mountains, and I love green, and I love it even more when I get both in the same landscape. Check out Alex's pictures on Facebook.
So here we are, back in the real world. This week we'll still be busy catching up, getting back in touch with clients, and starting a major new work project. We are also waiting to hear back from Grow America about whether we made it past Round 2 of the contest. If we do, our chances of winning will be at least 12% (4 in 33 or less)--no small feat!
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