This week at work kind of sucks. I feel somewhat of a load off because most of my deadline stuff is done. By some strange miracle. Even though it seems to be one of the most hectic seasons here due to lack of staff. But I am stressed with the weird/foreign projects I am left with.

But I am getting more experienced and working faster all the same. I Don't think this is the most hours I ever worked a tax season, but definitely the most work I ever did. A good 25 individual tax returns signed with my name, a good 10-20 I helped with (mostly prepared) on top of that. Plus last week I got out 4 partnership returns (made about 10 partners happy). & this week I have 2 ugly partnerships to plow through (might take all week) and various other things.

Ah, might not sound like much but this is on top all of our regular/usual work which I still trying to mill through. I've got a pile a mile high of partnership/coporate financial statements where the work was done enough to prepare the taxes, but the final financial statements are not printed and completed - all that timely administrative work and making the financials pretty. Just no time. It just means May will be tedious getting all that junk out. Probably issuing 12/31 with 3/31. Never this behind before overall.

Some things that are going really good though is a big manager left last year and I was kind of thrown to the wolves on big financial planning in December. I was really nervous about it, but the thing is the old guys are so anti-computer and I found a way to automate most everything and get it done pretty fast. So the usual 12/31 crunch just wasn't as bad as I imagined. & to top it off as I go through these tax returns everything is panning out as I had predicted. Right on. Score 2 for automation. Accuracy and speed. Plus I made a hell of a lot of mistakes 12/31/05 which were fresh in my mind and I Was determined not to do again - LOL. The combo worked out well.

Anwyay, you all might assume I am going on vacation April 18th. But no, we have 3/31 financials to work on and payroll tax deadline of 4/30. All it means is we have 2 weeks to cram in 4 weeks of payroll work. I could be terribly sneaky and get to it since I am feeling caught up, but I have the feeling some of my co-workers may need a little more help with 4/15 stuff - that I should make myself available to help. Then we will have 2 weeks to cram. It is just one never-ending treadmill here from about December 20th through April 30th. May will be a catch-up month, but at least time to breathe. But what I really look forward to is summer. Maybe cutting below 40 hour weeks for june, july, august. Taking 1/2 day fridays or something, haven't decided. Waiting to see how the workload ends up I guess.

I think I will take a Friday off in May though and we will go to Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Aquarium is not cheap, nor probably the drive, but we can go for the day and stay with family a couple of nights so will be fun. Kids will love it. Probably just earmark my writing money for that. Hopefully the kids will be free - will have to check.

http://www.mbayaq.org/vi/

Dh and I usually sneak off for a weekend in May, but I miss the kids so much from working so much and our cruise is 1st of June. I think we can wait for that - 4 heavenly days away from everything - just can hardly wait.

Anyway, there is great excitement here because BM's preschool is raising baby chicks and they were scheduled to hatch today. Anyway when I dropped him off this morning one was trying to hatch out. BM is SO excited. I was telling dh that about the only thing I remember from my preschool was we did have those little chick eggs in an incubator. So it will probably be a pretty memorable experience. Anyway, he could hardly contain himself he was so excited to see the baby chicks. We'll see how it pans out. He was telling me how he wanted to play with them today. I said, um, maybe Wednesday. Like his brother they will be very little and delicate to start but maybe in a few days they will be running arounf with the kids. He might have to wait to next week - I am not sure how long they keep them before they give them back - 4H or something.