Musings

My leg is still cramping, and my whole body is vibrating in time to the road after drving for four hours to get home. I probably should have spent another day in Farmington, but I couldn’t find a hotel. This ugly little town (in a beautiful setting on the Animus River) is a boom town right now because of the San Juan Basin oil and gas industry. I’ll be heading back the first of the week, and calling for a reservation tonight so I can be sure of getting a room. I took the laptop and had every intention of writing, but trying to retool the accounting for my company proved to be pretty damn stressful.

I’m worried about my bookkeeper (I’ve known this woman since I was 16. My father hired her as his assistant and taught her how to keep books), but I had to put that aside, and cope with the tsunami of paper that fills her office. When I took over the company I purchased a computer and an oil and gas accounting program, but I could never get her to overcome her allergy to computers. I finally got her to use the internet last month. All of this being a way of saying that my bookkeeper is still working in big green ledger books by hand. I’m sure all these piles of paper make sense to her, but it was daunting.

I unearthed all the bills and got them paid. I pulled in a marvelous woman who had run an audit for me on the company that was purchasing our gas. Thanks to her expertise and deep understanding of the oil and gas business she established that this company had been skimming money from us for years. I fired them, brought in a company that she recommended, and things have been much better. Diane immediately started getting us into the twenty-first century, but it was touch and go. There’s a tremendous amount of paperwork associated with this industry. State and Federal taxes have to be paid every month, and a sheaf of papers filed. We managed to get to Fed X fifteen mintues before they closed so we wouldn’t be delinquent.

I spent a hour at the bank getting us set up to handle payables by wire transfer. I kept sending faxes to our accountants to make certain these notices from the Feds weren’t anything I had to worry about. Diane is someone with deep understanding and a love of her work. She is also a terrific teacher, but she was drowning me in details that I just couldn’t absorb. I finally raised my hand and said feebly — “I’m the big picture person. The manager. Remember?” Still, I feel like we have the right person to help us. The plan is to get the office automated, and then Diane will find us a permanent person for the job.

Next week I will probably start trying to create a filing system for the carbons of the checks and the invoices. At least it’s summer and the wells working — no compressors going down. No freezes in the lines. I just hope I will have the mental energy to write when I get back to the hotel room. I feel strange admitting that I didn’t write while I was in Farmington. I was making fairly sweeping decisions. Maybe when I’m doing a boring task I’ll have some reserves for writing.

My bookkeeper was moved out of ICU this afternoon and I was able to visit her before I headed home. That helped. She was very weak, and I was struck by the deep affection between her and her brother. (The brother is my pumper. My father hired his father for the job, and Tom took it over after his dad’s death. You have to say we’re loyal to our people.) It also left me a bit shaken as I contemplated a modern world in which we don’t have large, extended families. I’m an only child who married late in life, and never wanted to have children. I can’t imagine anything worse then being old and sick and alone. My friend Victor Milan says that science fiction is more than just fandom it’s a family. That people look out for each other. But that’s a lot to expect of friends. Ah, well, to quote another friend — “When the time comes I plan to just fall down dead all at once.”

I have to report on one exchange between Tom and me. Tom is a self-described “conservative”. I told Tom that if his sister can’t return to work I intend to pay her a hefty severance bonus. He was very pleased, but said gruffly that he would not say anything because that decision was between me and the board of directors and we didn’t have to do anything. I gently reminded him that I’m a liberal. He finally admitted he was really glad I was a liberal.

So, now I’m going to watch the end of Olbermann’s newscast and go to bed.

Melinda

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.