What I've Been Doing for the Last Six Months

Two websites that I've spent an inordinate number of my waking hours on over these last few months have gone live this week. I doubt any of you will care about either of them, but these things have taken over my entire consciousness, and it's my blog, isn't it?

First is the mighty AdvantageAudit.com, which I've mentioned in passing a couple of times (in ways that even people who worked with me probably wouldn't recognize). It's a dedicated site to sell a new product which is nothing like a book at all -- it's sold as a Word download, is used as a worksheet/organizing form, and which no one in the world besides Wiley proofreaders will ever read straight through. But it's, I hope, going to be a very useful tool for public accountants in the USA doing audits of small companies, who will now have a quicker, easier (but just as definitive and trustworthy) alternative to gigantic, cumbersome software packages. Again: you don't care, and that's OK.

Second is something that a few of you might even find useful: the brand new JKLasser.com, spawn of the mighty Your Income Tax series of books. (Before there were software packages that would explain how to do your taxes, the Lasser books were there -- and I still think they do it better, though that could be nepotism.) The old Lasser was a subscription website, with the contents of several books available entirely there, but it was a complicated thing, and the people who want a book to explain how to do their 1040 forms, it turns out, really want a book rather than something else electronic. So the new site is entirely free, filled with tax news, tips, and analysis from some of the smartest and best-informed people in the tax world -- it'll be updated daily (or nearly so) as things happen, and it should help anyone who has to pay American income tax to pay the (legally) lowest amount.

In additional Hornswoggler drama:

• The Wife got two new tires for the Mighty Minivan this morning -- it had been riding around on a donut for a week since something (a nail?) punctured the rear passenger tire.
• Thing 1's drama settled down over the weekend, and this school week seems to be back to normal (he said, crossing his fingers)
• But there's always drama when you have teens and tweens in the house (he muttered)
• Our new basement stairs were finally installed today -- the old ones were submerged in six feet of river water during the flood (remember the flood? it seems like every damn thing I've done since then has been because of the flood), and that weakened and loosened them so that they had to be replaced
• And, if we're lucky, the new basement system will start to be installed by the end of this week, and (fingers doubly crossed, now) will actually be done before Christmas, so I can move my office back down there, start putting books back on shelves, and finally get back to "normal" with my life.

One can only hope.

At this point, I have five working days before the big end-of-year vacation, and what looks like seven-to-ten-days worth of work to get done.  For all of those reasons, I may remain distracted for the foreseeable future.

Or I may ramble like this semi-regularly. These are the risks you take with a blog; they're baggy, misshapen monsters that defy all attempts to shove them into line.