It is a Releif to be able to Mark Another Book on my Bookshelf Off as Read

I am writing on Saturday, and my goal for today is to finish reading Self-Employed Tax Solutions: Quick, Simple, Money-Saving, Audit-Proof Tax and Recordkeeping Basics for the Independent Professional, by June Walker. Do you know why I want to finish it? Mainly to get it off of my Reading Now list, as tracked by GoodReads.com. Do you think that is a silly reason for wanting to finish a book?

No, really, the book has been hanging around on my bookshelf for far too long this year already. This is my second read-through. When Michael was first dismissed from his job a year and a half ago, I borrowed a copy from our friend, Damon, who runs Greenhorn Gardening, a blog/podcast which teaches Organic Gardening methods for beginners***.  It's a great book. Very, very readable. Not like any other tax book I have ever read. I got through it in a week, and promptly asked for a copy for Christmas that year.

This year I decided to re-read it in the midst of preparing taxes for ourselves and for our business. I made a note in the calendar to start working on taxes in January, placed Ms.Walker's book on my shelf, and then put off getting started until approximately the middle of March.

The book provides all kinds of information about deductions and such, with lots of clarifying examples. The first deadline for filing your taxes has come and gone, but there are still plenty of people who have filed for that automatically-granted extension allowing you to continue working on your 2011 taxes until mid-October. Self-Employed Tax solutions can help.

The part of the book I find most helpful is all of the information on good record-keeping practices, and the worksheets she provides for keeping track of all your stuff. She keeps it simple for those of you who aren't mathematically inclined, as many of her very creative clients are not.

I noticed when I visited her site on Saturday that she  has an ebook available with forms and information you can use for your 2011 taxes. I don't know what the ebook is like, but if its anything like the longer book, it is imminently practical.

And, yes, I am finishing this post on Monday, and I did succeed in finishing with the book on Saturday. I'm already trying to get a jump start on our taxes for next year.

Why is it that my tax return, the tax and tag on my car, and my auto insurance all come due in the same month?

***Damon's podcasts are easily downloadable through iTunes. Just go in and do a search on "organic gardening," visit this link, or you can find his latest offerings on the blog. But this post isn't about that.

What I've Been Up To Lately

Taxes. Taxes. More taxes. Taxes consumed me for a month and a half. That isn't to say that I was working on them non-stop during that time. I took long leisurely breaks encompassing days. But even when I wasn't actually doing the taxes they weighed heavily on my mind. It was hard to think about much of anything else.

Next year it's going to be different. Yeah. Sure it is.

Here is how it is going to be different. For the rest of the year I will be preparing quarterly statements. I'll be looking at home office expenses, business miles on the car, every receipt, every expenditure we make, and I'll be compiling that information every three months. I was doing those things already, but not in any systematic way. It's the system that has to change. I always thought I would be able to catch up on these tiny details later, and I did. But tax time would have been so much easier if I hadn't had to bring all of my accounting records up to date before getting started.

I am not an accountant. I do not know how to use any fancy algorithms, and automated software doesn't appeal to me. I do really simple stuff. But I am interested in the details, and I enjoy paperwork. I prepared closing statements for home loan closings for a while, so I am good at reconciling accounts. I can do this. If I keep up with it.

Keeping up with it is the hard part. I will happily tell you how I do that at a later date.

Highlights of the last couple of weeks:

• Finding some old friends on-line and making plans to catch up with them, once I've caught my breath from the residual tax flurry. 
• Trading emails with the effervescent Emily Fowler, who is ministering with her husband and children in France right now.
• Typing up a list of commitments I've made to myself at Stephen Covey's behest, as I've been reading his business leadership classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and resolving to review those commitments daily. So far it is really working for me. One of my commitments is to review my calendar every morning so I'll never forget another WIC assessment or go to an eye-appointment half an hour late ever again. There are stories that go with those examples.
• Deciding to participate in Classical Conversations with Parker next year, so that we can get down to this education thing in well organized fashion.
• Music and Books. More music and books.

I've been busy. But then it has been four our five months since I blogged anything on a regular basis.

One of my favorite website: this one helps with Scripture Memory

I have been trying to put something together to post on here for weeks, but it's all been a no-go. Briefly (or not so briefly), let me tell you about what has become one of my favorite websites: www.scripturetyper.com. This is a scripture memory service recommended by Ann Voscamp, who writes A Holy Experience.

First, why memorizing Scripture is a great idea:

• Scripture memory is awesome for a variety of reasons. With minimal planning it can be done anytime and anywhere. You'll never again be at a loss for something to do while sitting through a Commencement processional.

•  It's great for people who bore easily, because once you've memorized several passages, you always have them with you and you can go over them in your mind without using index cards for prompting. 

• It helps you to focus on whichever passage you are working on. It becomes a form of meditation (the filling kind as opposed to the emptying kind), and the words almost naturally take on their fuller meaning, as you spend more time thinking about what the passage is saying.

• Scripture memory combined with recitation helps you to turn your attention back to God when your mind starts becoming too self-focused during the course of your day.

• Your theology becomes richer and more complete as you start noticing connections between Scriptures and teachings that you may have been oblivious to before. This is a great boon in Bible Study and in Worship Service contexts. Last week in church I questioned a phrase used in one of the songs we sang, but quickly remembered where the idea had been drawn from because I had already memorized that verse. I was able to think about the context of the verse, and even look it up since I had a good idea of where that verse was located.

• Your memory gradually improves as you get into the habit of exercising it daily.

• You know you aren't wasting your time, because this is the word of God you're working on.

 So how, you may ask, does scripturetyper.com help? The site makes several valid claims about their service, but none of them are the reasons why I actually enjoy using their site.

• I think the best thing the website does is build in accountability and review. In fact, that is my favorite thing about it. You can set up your profile to send reminder emails on the schedule you choose. I have a reminder sent to me once a week, but I never need the reminder because...

• The site provides a review page that keeps up with a rotating schedule of scriptures for review. As part of my regularly scheduled study time, I check my review page daily.

• The website chooses the scriptures you review each day based on how many times the scripture has been typed, and when was the last time you typed it. This way you don't forget to review any of the passages you've memorized. It turns out that the scriptures don't stick with you so well if you don't take the time to go back over them often. This is particularly helpful if your memory retention has slackened over time.

• My favorite thing about it is that even if I don't have a physical person to recite my memory work to. I can test myself quickly and easily, without neglecting those verses that aren't necessarily in the front of my mind. Because you never know when you are going to need to access those verses that you first committed to memory nine months ago.

• Another helpful thing the site does is rank its users according to how many verses they have current. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, but for me it is motivation to continue committing the Bible to memory over time. I make a point of not worrying about my ranking, but it is fun to see that number getting smaller the more passages I work on.

The typing/kinesthetic aspect isn't so great for me. The website claims that muscle memory will help you with your memorization, but I have found that typing a verse and reciting it aloud from memory are two very different experiences. However combining the two is a great boon to retention. I don't feel like muscle memory does all that much for me, and at this point I continue to miss-type the same words over and over again.

You know what, if you have a student who has already mastered basic typing skills, I bet Scripture Typer would really help them build up their speed and accuracy. Since I've been typing for twenty years at this point, it may be too late for me to improve too terribly much, but for someone who is just starting out, I imagine this site would be a big help.

It's a pretty cool website, and I like it.

I've been listening to the Civil Wars this afternoon on NoiseTrade. I know I'm already way behind the times, because everyone who listens to Americana has heard them already, but we already knew I was way behind the times. Wow! I haven't gotten to spend any time with the lyrics, or a decent pair of speakers (do we even own a decent pair of speakers anymore?) but those harmonies are really beautiful.




And I've recently come to enjoy listening to a live recording. Back in the day when I was still really listening to music, when it played in my room basically every hour that I was awake, the live recording technology wasn't very good. You could listen to a live recording but it wasn't particularly enjoyable. Apparently that has changed sometime in the past 10 years.

I have many years of missed listening to catch up on. By the way, I'm looking to relearn how to listen to music. I'd like to start listening more closely, and putting what I hear to work, if only for the sake of talking about something I love, i.e. music. It doesn't do a whole lot of good to say, "Oh, I like that," and leave it there. I'd like to relearn, or learn for the first time, which elements I respond to and for what reasons. Who's your favorite online music reviewer?

Checking In: The half-baked Apology they tell you never to make.

I can't believe anyone is still reading this. Although all of my registered pageviews could only be my mother checking in on me from a frozen country.

Sometime this week:

Why I love www.scripturetyper.com. It isn't for any of the reasons that they advertise. Still, its a terrifically useful site, but only if you want to memorize Bible verses. Which I recommend doing.

I am a writer. It's time I started acting like one.