Pretty Good Weekend

I guess I should start with a quick synopsis of how last week went. Last week was my first experience with ‘close’. For those of you not in the finance world, this is the period where the prior months books (transactions, invoices, etc) are closed. This process involves making changes, adjustments, and general fixes to the books. For my team this means hundreds of journal entries (debiting one account and crediting another).
Close is generally three to four days. During those days we work from 8am to 8pm. This month, as I’ve talked about before, I was training on the new job while still performing and training a new person on my old job. Lucky me close overlaps with the peak of the invoicing cycle. I know to a lot of you working 60+ hours in a week is somewhat routine. But for me, I’ve gotten used to the 40-45 work week. Too much more than that and, well…

Anyway, on Friday at about 3pm my manager walked around told everyone to go home. Let’s just say there was no need to tell me twice.

Friday night was good. We had Kim’s birthday celebration. You can read all about it on her blog. Saturday was pretty good as well. I got to sleep in a little before heading out loan James my VUE so he could move a dresser. I got some yard work done during the day. I had hoped to get the whole yard mowed and cleaned up. It took my about two hours, and four full lawn bags, to do just the front yard. I ended up not getting to the back yard. Hopefully the rain they are predicting for this week will hold off long enough for me to get some of that done.
Saturday night I had the guys over for cards. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve done that, so it was nice to be able to play again. Surprisingly enough I was the big winner of the night (for only the second time in the last six months or so). This time we actually played until only one person was left standing. I took the whole pot, which was about $45. Not a bad return on my $5 buy-in.

Sunday morning I did the church thing, of course. Went to Panera with a few of my Faith Works friends, which has become more or less a normal thing for me. I then went out to lunch with the parents and Michael for Mothers Day. We all gathered at Kim and Chris’s to spend the afternoon, and have dinner over there. Now I’m home, sitting on my back porch at my new patio table, typing this on my still-new laptop; enjoying the last few moments of this pretty good weekend.