July 9, 2009
Dear Everyone:
Last Saturday was
Independence Day, a National
Holiday (US), I'm sure you noticed it.
Independence Day and
Christmas Day are the only two remaining
National Holidays that still occur on the original date, regardless of
the day of the week. All the
others are "observed" on the last Monday preceding the original date.
Because last Saturday was a National Holiday, I was
off work on Friday.
“Jeannie” was off work because she hasn't had much work lately.
A slow economy
sinks all boats.
So we met at the townhouse (my old place) and went to the
mall
for lunch and shopping.
After lunch, we made our way to the same large department store where I
had bought the new refrigerator for my "new" place.
“Jeannie” said, "Nothing says 'New!' like a glass top
stove."
So we picked out a new stove for the townhouse and arranged to
have it delivered the following Monday.
“Jeannie” would be there because she didn't have any work for
that day either.
“Jeannie” insists that, if she didn't have all the
work to do for the townhouse, she would be out "stomping" for more work.
But she has done a tremendous job fixing the old place up.
She even broke a piece of wood off the carport to take to the
paint department at the Really Big Hardware Warehouse Store where they
matched the color so she could paint the trim around the front window
and front door. Hardly
necessary, but it adds to "curb appeal".
Also adding curb appeal:
Her potted geraniums which she moved from her front porch to
mine. They are
"well-established" and only need watering every few days.
She has more plants planned for the back patio.
Last night I stopped by to put the garbage cans
back (Wednesday is garbage day in my old neighborhood) and found our
friend, the plumber, hard at work on the upstairs bathroom.
“Jeannie” called this morning (while I was away from my desk) to
report that he had finished just about everything.
About the only thing left is the staging and that has to wait
until after next Monday, when the asphalt driveway is being resealed.
So by the weekend after next, we may just have a listing in place
(be the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.)
As I mentioned, last weekend was a three-day
weekend and I had hopes of spending some "down time".
My back, which was recovering from a previous injury, decided to
re-injure itself a couple of weekends ago and I haven't been able to sit
at the computer for more than a few minutes without having to stand up
because of the pain. It is
getting better, slowly. I
have the idea that if I just keep quiet and rest, it will improve.
But every waking moment outside of work has been spent on the
townhouse. Someone told me
it's like having a second job.
Hopefully it will pay off soon.
In other news…
I believe I have mentioned the Horizons Program at
work, a fast-track mentoring system for newly hired young people.
So much better than the “Sink-or-Swim” method in use when I
started with the “Generic XXX Company of Fill-In-Blank” 36 years ago.
Well one of my younger co-workers has been “forced out of the
nest” to work in another location.
And I’ve “inherited” one of the projects that she
was working on. This
involves a Business Unit (BU) which has had a huge project, called
“ProjectONE”, in which they have moved from many, many “little”
accounting computer programs into one really BIG accounting program
called “SAP”. (Pronounced
“ess-ay-pee.”) If you know
anything about accounting software, you’ve probably heard of SAP.
It’s made by a German software firm and is quite notorious.
Anyway, they’ve moved their operations into SAP and
now they want to decommission the applications that they were using,
notably one called JDE (JD Edwards, another well-known accounting
application.) There’s just
one little catch: Because
they do business all over the world, we have to figure out what the
correct retention is in each country in which they do business.
It’s going to be quite a little adventure finding
out what the rules are in all those countries.
For instance, in
The Netherlands accounting data has to be kept
for six years, but the application doesn’t have to be kept at all.
In
My new community has their
Homeowners Association
meeting the second Thursday of every month, so I’m heading over to the
Clubhouse in a few minutes.
Love, as always,
Pete
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