A Snowy Sunday in Marbleton

For the second time in as many weeks, I’ve been the victim of a financial audit. Today’s, however, was a lot quicker, and a lot less painful than the kind I’ve been preparing for daily over the past four weeks at work. Today’s audit was conducted by a kindly brother who lives in my ward, and who (by his own admittance) has difficulty balancing a checkbook. Yes, it’s the infamous (insert forboding music; perhaps a batman-like “Dum, dum, dum!” [Not to be confused with Mom’s “Dumb ditty-dumb dumb dumb.”]) stake audit.

He did a good job, I’d say. He let me run the 10-key, because he couldn’t do it without looking at the numbers, and, not to boast or anything, I can do it with my eyes closed. I answered some of his questions about auditing and internal controls, like why the bishopric is not supposed to keep financial records (It’s a matter of the authorization–custody–recordkeeping theory. Strong internal controls do not permit one person to have any combination of two of the three without mitigating controls.) He found a couple of tiny issues, and both of them were mistakes on my watch. I gave him some suggestions for how to judgmentally select “random” dates when picking deposits for testing.

While we were inside, a light snow fell outside. It was one of those beautiful snows that is light and fluffy like good pancakes. The chain link fences and trees looked like they were covered in feathers. The nice thing about snow up here, is that if it’s snowing, it’s warm. Once we lose the cloud cover, it gets cold. Some of our friends emailed this week because we made the news in Salt Lake with our -27° weather. Apparently, it gets colder than that. Stay tuned for further weather updates.

Julie got a new calling today, but since she hasn’t been sustained, I can’t tell what it is. (Although from the sound of her phone conversation behind me, she’s telling every Tom, Dick and Jeannette in the West. Whatever.)

I’ve got seminary this week, and I believe we’re starting 2 Samuel. Poor King David; he had such promise, and then he screwed everything up through a couple of dumb decisions. It’s a sad, sad story. I hope the kids will pick some good things up from it.

That’s the news from Marbleton this week. We have added the weekend of February 29th to our 2008 touring calendar. We’ll keep you updated as we know more.

2008 Touring Dates

You may want to bookmark this post. I’ll try and keep it current with our comings and goings between here and there.

• 01/30/2008 (Tentative)–Aaron will travel to Provo for the BYU career fair to try to recruit folks for gainful employment.
• 02/29/2008–The family is going to Salt Lake to run errands and hang out. We’re going to the CES “Evening with Elder Packer.” Should be good.
• 03/14/2008–Vacation. We’re going to Disneyland. I love the idea of taking a vacation in the middle of winter. I haven’t been able to do that for a long time.

The week in review

This week I spent my first real time on the other side of the audit fence. From Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon, the auditors from Tanner LC were at the office doing tests and writing documentation of our controls as part of our audit. I must admit that there were certain parts of me that waxed nostalgic for the old days, but overall, I don’t think I’d care to go back to that life for anything.

I certainly have tried to make their lives as easy and pain-free as possible, because I know that they probably have 12 other clients who are not making the transition to the new SASs without a fight. We spent a lot of time late in 2007 doing documentation and write-ups of our controls, and I put together a 58 page document filled with flow-charts and matrices, so that they wouldn’t have to spend as much time doing that, and I worked hard to make sure that they had the things they needed to complete their planning and preparation work so that when they come back in two weeks to do the financial audit, they’ll be ready to go.

But getting all those things done, and keeping up with my regular workload takes time. This was also my week to teach Seminary, so I started each day at 5:00 AM, and didn’t get home before 7:00 PM each night, so I am feeling pretty wasted this week. Last night when I got home, I crashed with the Julie and the kids on the couch, and watched Cars. Andrew and Kristi’s son Ethan loves Cars, and several times during the movie, I was able to think about Ethan’s demonstration of the same scene. Like: “Hi! My name’s Mater. Like Mater without the ‘Ta.’”

Anyway, that’s what’s happened this week in my life, I think.

A Poem: Why I Love Christmas In Wyoming

When it’s Christmas in Wyoming,
And the gentle breezes blow,
About seventy miles an hour
And its fifty-two below,
You can tell you’re in Wyoming
‘Cause the snow’s up to your butt.
You take a breath of Christmas air
And your nostrils both freeze shut.
The weather here is wonderful,
So I guess I’ll hang around,
I could never leave Wyoming—
My feet are frozen to the ground!

—Unknown

My dad sent this to me today, and I thought you all might enjoy it. It’s not as bad as the poem makes it out to be, but it’s close.

Snowy Weekend in Logan

We spent this weekend in lovely Logan, Utah with my sister and her husband. We also got to hang out for a little while with my brother and his wife and Julie’s brother and his wife (link pending). All in all, it was a great weekend.

We went with the intent to visit the temple, but we didn’t check the schedules very well, and it was closed. So we played Guitar Hero with Drew, and Curses with Emily, Drew, Jimmy and Michelle. (My big curse was to talk like Mr. T and say “I pity the fool” every time I spoke. For those who haven’t played the game, you ought to try it. It was a hoot.) We saw Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrell. Emily and Drew wanted me to watch it because he’s an accountant. (“What’s your favorite word? Integer.” Yes indeed.)

We went to church with Emily and Drew, had some lunch, and tried to drive home, but we got snowed in, and had to crash for another night. But now we’re back, and safe and sound. Thanks to all who helped us have fun in Logan.

New prescription glasses at a great price

So, being the curious fellow that I am, I try to read a lot of interesting stuff from a lot of interesting people. One day I stumbled upon an article on 43Folders about buying prescription glasses online. Being a long-time wearer of spectacles, my curiosity was piqued. I read the article, which pointed to a blog called Glassy Eyes. Ira Mitchell, the owner of said website, got fed up with the whole prescription eyeglass system, did did some research, tried a whole bunch of glasses, and started a blog to tell about his experience. I joined the rest of his readers and tried a purchase from Zenni Optical. That was two weeks ago.

Yesterday my new glasses came in the mail. The prescriptions seem pretty good and they came with anti-scratch, anti-reflective, UV blocking lenses. All for about $20 a pair. Wow. Last time I bought glasses (4 years ago), I probably paid 10 times that amount just for frames. And when those frames got broken, I was very sad to have to shell out that much again to keep the lenses going. If only I had known.

There is a downside to this process. You can’t try things on in the store to see how they fit or look. I did OK with my purchases, but Julie doesn’t like the new frames as much as she liked the old. The old rated 9 on her scale, and these are only showing a 7 on her scale.

Pictures to come.