Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution and contrasts the societies of England and France during that time. At least, I guess that’s what it does. I have never read it (it’s on the reading list). A tale of two ——— is an oft used meme for contrasts, which you find in books, articles, and in conversation.
So, based on my title for this post, you might think I’m about to write how two weekends were different. You might also think that this will be two recent weekends. After all, a blog can be a sort of diary or journal, and my blog certainly is for many of my posts.
You’d be right about it being two recent weekends, as it’s last weekend and this weekend that we’re in now. However, you’d be wrong about the weekends being substantially different. In this case I’ll tell you about two remarkably similar weekends. Similar, that is, in terms of accomplishment.
Last weekend, February 27-28 (not counting Friday evening), I got so much done I was surprised. Saturday morning, rising around 7 or 7:30, I went straight to The Dungeon and caught up on family budgeting. I was about two to three weeks behind due to the trip we made causing me to miss most of two weekends at my computer. But I got it all done, with everything balancing and matching the bank accounts. That brought me to just before 9:00 a.m.
At that time I went upstairs and cooked breakfast for the ladies. It wasn’t terribly elaborate, but it was nice. I then went to the backyard and continued removing leaves. This is a rock yard, not grass, and for about ten years we decided to just let it go. We weren’t using it, so why go to the effort? Summer of 2015 we decided we’d better restore it to reasonable health and attractiveness. The main remaining work at the new year dawned was clearing ten years of accumulated leaves on the rocks. We’d done some last year, but most of the 1/2 acre remained to be done. Last weekend was my third two work on it during this mild winter, and I achieved major progress, leaving only a sliver of it to be done another time.
Then it was inside to fix and eat lunch, then back to The Dungeon, this time to work on the stock trading business taxes. I had already calculated profit and loss for the year, and I had my spreadsheets from last year copied to this year and partially filled out. I was hoping it would go easy. The annual statement from our broker had come it during the week. The main work was to check that against all my spreadsheet entries and make sure I didn’t miss any. I had missed a $13.97 dividend, which I added. The next main work was to compare the 2015 IRS forms against the 2014 ones and see if my spreadsheet needed any tweaking. The forms are the same, so all I had to do was plug in any missing numbers and add a few bells and whistles. That all went quickly. Then it was manually transfer amounts from the spreadsheet to the tax forms and save them.
All of this I accomplished in less time than I expected. The business taxes were done in record time, and I had time to spare. So I filed bills and statements, both for the business and for personal finances. By the time to head upstairs for supper, most of the filing was done. I was way ahead of the game.
Sunday was church as normal, with me teaching Life Group. After lunch Lynda and I went for a long-ish walk, including a large uphill grade. It measured out to 2.65 miles. That felt good. Then down to The Dungeon to work on personal taxes. Again I had to check 2014 spreadsheets against 2015 forms. Again I found no difference. I had to add to the spreadsheets the Social Security worksheet, since Lynda began collecting Social Security this year, but that didn’t take too long. Two hours after starting, personal taxes were done with the exception of my writing business Schedule C. That will go easily once I inventory the books I have on hand. Oh, and I wrote and posted to this blog before doing the taxes.
So the weekend ended with considerable accomplishment, and a feeling that, if I could just do as well every weekend, I’d never fall behind in my chores. This weekend we’re in now would be the test. I’m happy to say that I’ve been just as productive as last weekend.
Saturday morning I helped some friends from our Life Group at church get rid of junk in their basement. Actually, I was the organizer of the work party. We hauled it from the basement, up the hill to the cul-de-sac pavement, loaded it in pickups and trailers, and drove it to the weekend disposal facility for our county. Three hours and that was done. On the way home I stopped at Lowe’s for some shelf material and other items needed.
After lunch it was back to the backyard. It took only an hour to clear away the rest of the leaves, and to remove a couple of large deadfall items from the yard. I then sawed some smaller logs into firewood length. This wasn’t a lengthy process, maybe half an hour.
After that it was down to The Dungeon. I still hadn’t done the inventory of books to sell in hand, so I instead updated the family budget and filed a few papers. It was 5 p.m. and I was done with all I wanted to do that day, so was able to go upstairs and relax. I read some for pleasure, some for stock trading, and some to prepare for teaching Life Group.
That brings me to today, which I can summarize as follows: prep for Life Group early; attend church and Life Group; lunch at church, an informational meeting about the upcoming building project; home to relax a bit; then down to The Dungeon. I started on this blog post, but keep switching off between this post and my budgeting spreadsheet. I’m adding a bell and whistle to it. After that, all I have on the to-do list is e-mail my book inventory spreadsheet to my work e-mail so I can take the inventory tomorrow (since most of my books are at work).
Then, I’ll relax. I’ll head upstairs to relax and resume reading. I have a book I’ve just started reading for pleasure. Perhaps I’ll have time to read in that. I have stock trading reading to do, and some of my mother-in-law’s papers to file. I’m actually behind on that. But, for now, I’m off to my budgeting spreadsheet to see if I can finish that bell and whistle in the next half hour. See you all in a week.
Faith Blum, who is a fellow member at an Internet writers site, has a book out that I suspect some readers of my blog might be interested in. It’s The Solid Rock, which is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Solid-Rock-Hymns-West-Book-ebook/dp/B01CWCDBJK DAT: The Solid Rock sounds like a title for a non-fiction Christian book. But your book is a novel How did you come up with that title? Faith: All of the novels in my series are named after hymns and the hymns are woven in throughout. I chose The Solid Rock because the theme of the song fit the theme of the book so well. I didn’t know exactly how well until I finished the rough draft, though. It was perfect! DAT: Give us a 60 second tour of the book. Faith: The Solid Rock is a Christian Western Mystery about a talented detective with a mission to find his kidnapped colleague who ends up working undercover with a heinous outlaw who has more plans than first meet the eye. DAT: The description of the book at Amazon gives no hint of any romance element. Is there one? And if so, tell us a little about it. Faith: There are a couple of slight romance subplots in the story. I’ll try to tell you about them without giving spoilers away. One is between the daughter of the missing detective and another young man. He’s been waiting for God’s leading to ask her father’s permission to court her and finally gets it. There are also five mail order brides in the story, although their romances are mostly told in the three novellas that will be coming out this summer. The other romance subplot happens mostly in the final chapters and epilogue, so I can’t really tell you anything about it without major spoilers. DAT: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
Faith: For now, I plan to end the series with The Solid Rock. My spin-off series, Hymns of the West Novellas, still has three novellas coming this summer, though. And I am currently writing a series called Orphans of the West about some of the orphans who have been introduced in either a novel or a novella. I am also planning to write two other series’ about the descendants of characters from either the novels or novellas leading all the way up to current times, and possibly a slightly futuristic novel or two. That will depend on how long it takes me to write the other series’. So even though this particular series is coming to an end, the characters will live on.I hope some of you will buy Faith’s book. Check out her website:http://www.faithblum.com/and her series page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HymnsoftheWestOh, and Faith is doing a giveaway: a full set of paperback books! Fill out this form to earn entries to the giveaway. Each entry gives you one point, plus there are opportunities for bonus entries.