A medley of extemporanea1

T is home, at least for a day or so, before leaving again for a week’s junior Christian Leadership Conference.  Then, as soon as she’s back from that, she and L are driving to Minneapolis for the Mensa Annual Gathering.  T is the national coordinator for the Mensa teen SIG (Special Interest Group), which means she just about has to be there, failing death or disaster.  And that means that M and I will be thrown back on our resources for TEN DAMN DAYS, which is the longest time M has done without Mama since she was born.  I only hope we both survive.  Fortunately, TxAnne has nearly promised to come down from Waco for the Fourth weekend, to visit and help with seeing after M.

Today we had some unexpected overtime offered; return inventories have been rising rather than falling (they’re around 30,000 right now, instead of 7,000) and management needs to get them closer to under control.  I worked 556 1040s, which averages to 75 returns an hour.  That’s the best hourly rate I’ve ever managed on a steady run of normal live work, and it pleases me.

Homes tour went off remarkably well, last weekend; we estimate we had a couple of thousand visitors come through the house during the two days.  The neighborhood association netted around $14,000 in funds, and while that isn’t the best we’ve ever done (word going around was it was fourth-best), it’s certainly respectable.  A couple of days later, I got a nice thank-you note from the couple whose house I had captained, along with a gift certificate for dinner at Hyde Park Bar & Grille.  It’s always nice to feel the work you did was appreciated.

And while I was really getting excited this week, I listed a washstand set and a kerosene parlor lamp (also known as a “Gone with the Wind” lamp) on eBay.  The washstand set has already drawn a bid, so it’ll sell no matter what.  I only hope the lamp sells as well; it’s missing its upper globe which knocks the value down a bunch.

I phoned a bookdealer acquaintance in Dallas this afternoon, to make sure she hadn’t fallen off the edge of the earth.  She hadn’t—as I suspected, she’s been run to death working on the closeout sale for her bookstore.  I’m only sorry I couldn’t get to Dallas while the sale was going on, because I would have loved to run barefoot through the stock.  Paula did say she and her brother are assembling catalogues of their father’s personal library, to be issued once the store’s closed and cleaned out.  I bet there will be some truly wonderful items in there.  Her father really knew what he was doing when it came to books, and I’ll always regret that I didn’t get there to look over what he’d assembled.

1Extra points to those who recognize the quotation.

The sculpture navigates a cautious Japanese ocean.  Fnord.