It's still too, well, March-like to think about making any plans, but this Saturday Robin and I meet my brother at Mom's old place to go over some of her stuff as well as estate matters, and we've just solidified those particulars. I have two or three fairly time-sensitive medical things I want to take care of, dentist and podiatrist and blood draws and so forth, and lots of friends I want to see now that all is okay with the car and my eyesight, but all that will wait until April. I have a good handle on my job duties at the moment, had calls this afternoon with both my fellow EAs whom I'm mentoring as well as my supervisor ("I know what both your short-term and long-term career plan is" she jokingly began our call), and finally wrapped up at least the first stage of my client meeting scheduling (emails have gone out to all the EAs on that end). And I hate to say it, but I have even successfully created an AI agent to take information from my higglety-pigglety schedule and create a table for me putting all the meetings in chronological order, saving me at least a couple hours. As AI use is pretty much mandated by my firm and is part of my goal setting this year I'm glad that's done. We also saw the Paul McCartney bio about his life in the 1970's, which was very well put together and really tight visually, so that was another good reason to work from home today. And now pre-Opening Day baseball is on (Yankees versus Giants) so must go...

The weather wasn't rainy but had turned a bit colder, so I had to don the winter jacket this morning and wound up waiting 10 minutes at the transfer point from the express to the local bus, so that wasn't fun. However, I knew what awaited me at the office - a tasty bagel and lox sandwich with all the trimmings, and tons and tons of meetings with folks I hadn't seen in awhile. That's really my main incentive for coming into the office in the first place, seeing folks including the partners I support (even the ones I used to), fellow exec assistants, pretty much anyone I run into now that we're all in the same building rather than three different NYC locations. It filled my day pretty quickly, and guaranteed I don't have to come in again for the rest of the week as we're only mandated two in-office days a week and I'm pretty beyond exhausted. At least it kept me from thinking too much about how this would have been Mom's 95th birthday had she lived just a few more months. And yesterday was, I think, the 18th anniversary of Dad's death, so wherever my parents are (even if it's just in my heart and memories) they're together now, which is of some small comfort. The candle has been lit to remember Dad and now Mom, and now we move on because time travel does go both ways, but we move only forward in real life and look to our memories and dreams to move backwards.

I schlepped into Manhattan on a very rainy Monday because I was asked to oversee the start of an inspection for which I was in charge of all the preparatory logistics. Fortunately it went off without a hitch, and since I'm doing two consecutive days in the office this week I was able to leave everything in a locker leaving me unburdened for the commute home. It's just about stopped raining now but the cold lingered. I think we were all taken in by False Spring.

Well, that's a relief. The last time we do taxes on our own. With all the assets I'm inheriting from Mom's estate in 2026 it's just going to be too complicated to do this ourselves next year. Besides which, our eyes are getting to the point where we're having major trouble reading fine print, whether it's on a W2 form, a driver's license, even on a TurboTax screen. Best let a professional do it; after all, we can afford that little luxury now. My list of assets is going to wait until I see my brother next weekend at Mom's old house to go over all her belongings, decide what I would like to take or suggest giving to her brother in his assisted living apartment. Should be among my last trips to that part of New Jersey. But first I need to get through "PCAOB Week" at the office. Then only a few more days until April!

I've decided to store my long winter coat in the home office closet tomorrow. Today we were so warm in the living room when we returned from food shopping that we actually ran the air conditioning for awhile! I know part of it is that the landlord has yet to turn off the heat, but knowing March (and after the winter we've had) I'm reluctant to mention it to his office as I'd rather the heat run and not need it than the other way around. I'm not even calling them about the annual rent increase letter, which ought to have gone out by now. Nope, that's on them! Meanwhile, we rested up a lot for tomorrow, when we plan to get our taxes done and when I finally start making a list of all my current and expected financial assets (which in the old days we used to call bank accounts and credit cards).

Very, very glad we figured out how to use my iPhone's hotspot on Wednesday. I worked from home today when our internet and cable service went out for the third day in a row (for a period of a few hours, twice today) and was able to get everything done. I'm even, amazingly, in good shape as far as quarterly meeting scheduling, which I didn't think I would be. Only about a dozen to go between two clients! And all immediate fires seem to be put out. Next week is a big and somewhat stressful one, where we see if all our plans for the first PCAOB inspection at the new office come off without a hitch. Fortunately the logistics have been a team effort so I'm hoping things go smoothly, but that's a whole weekend away...

I'm told our home internet went out again today for a few hours, so it looks like this may be a regular thing for the next few days at least. This makes blogging, among many other things, very tricky, but I'm glad I learned how to use my work phone's hotspot to get onto my office intranet and such, so I can get things done! Not an issue today as I was physically in the office, getting ready for next week's big First Inspection at the New Office event (for which I'm in charge of logistics), mailing out more documents re Mom's estate, and securing more funds for laundry and such. Love how many Manhattan errands I can get done now! Ninth Ave might be a pain to get to and from, but once I'm in the heart of the Penn Station area the sky appears to be the limit. And I've managed to create (with Robin's help) a how-to so others with wonky home internet can access their phones' hotspots as well! So, very productive, but now I'm tired and I really, really want the weather to get milder again...

So yeah, our internet went down around 6:30 this morning and didn't come back until almost 3 PM. As it was a work-from-home day (and I wasn't about to schlep into the office with the cold outside and my feet being what they are) I didn't think I had much recourse. I went back to bed, then had to resort to *gasp* going analog, and got through all my comic pamphlets and smaller-sized graphic novels. Around noon Robin reported he was able to connect to his phone's hotspot for wifi and I thought, let's try the same with my work phone, which is from a different carrier and has a decent data plan, I assume. We finally figured out how to work it and I had no connectivity issues at all for the rest of the time until the home wifi returned. My supervisor wants me to do a presentation to the other exec assistants on how to connect to wifi via the firm phones, so if I have time tomorrow I'll start playing around with our new PowerPoint tools to see what I can come up with. In the meantime, I'm just glad  I can play my online games again.

OMG, my poor aching feet. Not only did I do a lot of walking around the office, but I had a bone density test at lunchtime which involved walking to and from the subway in both directions, plus the usual commute, and it was damn cold and windy! My left big toe did not appreciate it at all, nor did other parts of my body during the test (which I found very interesting otherwise, it's like an MRI only with just one arm and you don't have to go inside an enclosure, you just let the arm scan you). In any case, I'm home now, settling in to watch the World Baseball Classic final (the commentators are of course rooting for Oo-Ess-Eh and the crowd for Venezuela, which let's face it has a lot of all-star players in MLB anyway) and grateful I don't have to move around much tomorrow as it's a work-from-home day!

I'm trying like heck to ignore the torrential rain outside and the cold that's coming in at the back end of it, so I implore each and every one of you to Have a Dandy Day (via BoingBoing)!