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1. At work, we are hitting the part of the year when our maintenance staff finally get to take a small breath after the madness of summer turnovers. Meanwhile, the rental office staff (ie, me and my coworkers) are gearing up for the madness of move-in weekend and the opening of the 2020-2021 rental season.
Yes, this is absurdly early. We are all VERY WELL AWARE that this is absurdly early. But this is when Cornell students start looking for housing, so this is when we have to start making leases available.
*deep sigh*
New Hire #4, whom I have decided to call Miss California for lack of better inspiration, has almost finished putting all of our summer apartment photos up on our Shutterfly albums. Meanwhile, I'm only about halfway through updating the photos on our website, because A) the upload process frequently hits weird snags, B) I can only do it from one computer, since the photos live on a hard drive rather than the office shared drive, and C) I keep getting interrupted by other stuff. So what I did on Saturday was update a spreadsheet for Aunt Boss so we can get our 2020-2021 price charts finalized this coming week, handle a bunch of assorted small Things Going Wrong for incoming tenants, and start in on making sure we have enough floor plan printouts for when we start doing open tours after Labor Day, which mostly involves a lot of tedious mucking about with the photocopier and stapling the resulting pages together because our machine is not fancy enough to collate and staple the floor plans on its own. (At times like these, I really miss the printer/copier from the health garage. That thing was awesome.)
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2. These next few weeks I will knock off a bunch of web classroom tax training courses to finish my yearly CE requirements, and then a bit more besides since I intend to test up to level 3 at Not the IRS sometime in September or October. I am therefore gearing a lot of my CE courses toward self-employment, Schedule C, and Schedule K stuff, since being able to handle that stuff is the primary gap between level 2 and level 3. (This is why I took a bunch of courses on depreciation and rentals last year.)
This year Not the IRS is also offering a bunch of mini-courses that don't count toward actual CE credit, but do earn you "points" and "badges," and has created a leaderboard to show who within each local area has earned the most points. Thus far, I am winning my region by default since I've done five and nobody else has done any. *hands* Whatever, they're easy and it makes me look good/enthusiastic.
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3. Today was the second day of my congregation's annual Grand Recycling Sale, also known as half-price day. (Monday is the bag sale -- or technically, the "everything is free but please leave a donation at the door" day, which we switched to instead of "everything is a dime" day a few years back to save frustration and then made the happy discovery that this also nets us more cash overall.) Since I work both Saturdays and Mondays, today was the only day I could volunteer, and I took all three shifts: 10am-12pm, 12pm-2pm, and 2pm-4pm. I spent most of the day in housewares, with a one-hour switch to linens and a couple breaks for lunch and to do some shopping of my own.
I walked off with one new long-sleeved work-appropriate shirt, one shot glass with measuring lines for mixing cocktails, one gorgeous glass paperweight that I bought just because, and -- this is the important part -- FOUR CORNINGWARE GLASS LIDS of the size I have been fruitlessly trying to find for YEARS.
FOUR!!!
See, lids break a lot more frequently than the actual Corningware dishes, so I was in the awkward position of having several square baking dishes but only a single lid. Now I have FIVE LIDS! An embarrassment of riches!
...
Possibly the strangest thing about becoming an adult is discovering that it's possible to get genuinely excited about stuff like baking dish lids. I would never have believed that of myself when I was a kid or a teen, but seriously, this is one of the best things that has happened to me all year.
Life is weird like that.
(And life is also good, because did I mention that I now have FIVE CORNINGWARE GLASS LIDS? :DDD )
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4. A couple days ago I chopped back the pine tree in the neighboring house's yard, since it was encroaching upon my driveway and making it difficult to access the driver's seat door. This evening, I hacked at some of the other trees that overhang my driveway, and lopped a few more bits off the lilac bush in front of my computer room window, though I was unable to reach the tree branch that is pressing against the top of my bedroom window. (I must remember to ask Landlord Dude to trim that back. He has both better clippers and a proper ladder, whereas I just have my dad's old blunt clippers and a collapsible stepladder.) Then I shoved all the trimmings into a yard waste bag and set it out for collection Monday morning.
Yardwork is a sweaty nuisance, but it does feel nice to be productive and to have a tangible result one can point to after an hour or so of work.
Yes, this is absurdly early. We are all VERY WELL AWARE that this is absurdly early. But this is when Cornell students start looking for housing, so this is when we have to start making leases available.
*deep sigh*
New Hire #4, whom I have decided to call Miss California for lack of better inspiration, has almost finished putting all of our summer apartment photos up on our Shutterfly albums. Meanwhile, I'm only about halfway through updating the photos on our website, because A) the upload process frequently hits weird snags, B) I can only do it from one computer, since the photos live on a hard drive rather than the office shared drive, and C) I keep getting interrupted by other stuff. So what I did on Saturday was update a spreadsheet for Aunt Boss so we can get our 2020-2021 price charts finalized this coming week, handle a bunch of assorted small Things Going Wrong for incoming tenants, and start in on making sure we have enough floor plan printouts for when we start doing open tours after Labor Day, which mostly involves a lot of tedious mucking about with the photocopier and stapling the resulting pages together because our machine is not fancy enough to collate and staple the floor plans on its own. (At times like these, I really miss the printer/copier from the health garage. That thing was awesome.)
-----
2. These next few weeks I will knock off a bunch of web classroom tax training courses to finish my yearly CE requirements, and then a bit more besides since I intend to test up to level 3 at Not the IRS sometime in September or October. I am therefore gearing a lot of my CE courses toward self-employment, Schedule C, and Schedule K stuff, since being able to handle that stuff is the primary gap between level 2 and level 3. (This is why I took a bunch of courses on depreciation and rentals last year.)
This year Not the IRS is also offering a bunch of mini-courses that don't count toward actual CE credit, but do earn you "points" and "badges," and has created a leaderboard to show who within each local area has earned the most points. Thus far, I am winning my region by default since I've done five and nobody else has done any. *hands* Whatever, they're easy and it makes me look good/enthusiastic.
-----
3. Today was the second day of my congregation's annual Grand Recycling Sale, also known as half-price day. (Monday is the bag sale -- or technically, the "everything is free but please leave a donation at the door" day, which we switched to instead of "everything is a dime" day a few years back to save frustration and then made the happy discovery that this also nets us more cash overall.) Since I work both Saturdays and Mondays, today was the only day I could volunteer, and I took all three shifts: 10am-12pm, 12pm-2pm, and 2pm-4pm. I spent most of the day in housewares, with a one-hour switch to linens and a couple breaks for lunch and to do some shopping of my own.
I walked off with one new long-sleeved work-appropriate shirt, one shot glass with measuring lines for mixing cocktails, one gorgeous glass paperweight that I bought just because, and -- this is the important part -- FOUR CORNINGWARE GLASS LIDS of the size I have been fruitlessly trying to find for YEARS.
FOUR!!!
See, lids break a lot more frequently than the actual Corningware dishes, so I was in the awkward position of having several square baking dishes but only a single lid. Now I have FIVE LIDS! An embarrassment of riches!
...
Possibly the strangest thing about becoming an adult is discovering that it's possible to get genuinely excited about stuff like baking dish lids. I would never have believed that of myself when I was a kid or a teen, but seriously, this is one of the best things that has happened to me all year.
Life is weird like that.
(And life is also good, because did I mention that I now have FIVE CORNINGWARE GLASS LIDS? :DDD )
-----
4. A couple days ago I chopped back the pine tree in the neighboring house's yard, since it was encroaching upon my driveway and making it difficult to access the driver's seat door. This evening, I hacked at some of the other trees that overhang my driveway, and lopped a few more bits off the lilac bush in front of my computer room window, though I was unable to reach the tree branch that is pressing against the top of my bedroom window. (I must remember to ask Landlord Dude to trim that back. He has both better clippers and a proper ladder, whereas I just have my dad's old blunt clippers and a collapsible stepladder.) Then I shoved all the trimmings into a yard waste bag and set it out for collection Monday morning.
Yardwork is a sweaty nuisance, but it does feel nice to be productive and to have a tangible result one can point to after an hour or so of work.
