Catchy Name Needed

I am kind of groggy but I am bored and not yet sleepy enough for bed. We'll see what I can get out before I crash.

I am spending the night at my aunt's house, but I am primarily here to go to the bank in Normangee tomorrow and turn in the bank stock certificates with my mother's name on them, and get new ones with my name and Paula's instead. It required coming up here a day ahead of time, since the bank has the amazingly old-fashioned hours of 8-2 - isn't that where the term 'bankers hours' came from? Since there is no way in hell I'm liable to start out from Houston and be able to get there by 2:00, I am here in Bryan in order to get a head start on things in the morning. At least I'm closer, and hopefully my aunt will wake me up at a reasonable hour. She usually does.

I went to a bead shop on the way up (Antiques, Beads, & Crafty People, in Pearland), and signed up for two more classes - wire wrapping and peyote stitch. I doubt that I will ever really do any major projects with peyote stitch (which involves seed beads) but I wanted to know the theory. And then tomorrow on the way home I am going to swing by another bead store on the far side of town just to check them out.

I am also going to go visit my mother's grave, since her headstone has been installed since I was last there. Hm, should I take flowers, do you think?

I have no results for the "How Texas are you?" quiz, because I am apparently not Texas enough to check a box that says "Forget driving a Porsche, you'd rather have a brand new truck." Aargh. I got annoyed by the stereotyping and didn't answer at all. (Not annoyed enough to refuse to link to it, though, you notice.) However, for some reason, the one about how the only spices you know are salt, pepper, ketchup, bbq sauce, and Ranch dressing amused me instead of annoying me, even though I've heard variations on it before. It's still very Texas. Nevermind that I loathe ranch dressing and am not really all that big on BBQ sauce, the stuff is inescapable around here. So are pickups, actually - although everybody that doesn't actually own a ranch or something is suddenly scrambling to get rid of theirs. Anyway, the silly quiz as a whole was mildly amusing, I just didn't think you could really get anything resembling meaningful results out of the thing. (Although I suppose expecting meaningful results out of a Blogthing is probably ridiculous, in any case!) (And besides, if you think about it too hard, the part about ranch dressing being a spice will break your brain.)

Well, anyway. What else? I have been shopping on Etsy again - this time I bought these lampwork earrings, which I have been eyeing for a couple of days. In semi-related news, you may have noticed that I have mostly stopped babbling about jewelry lately - I think there's a definite connection between the lack of bead-talk and the increase in WoW talk. If I spend all my time on the latter, there's no time to make jewelry. However, there are still beads and findings all over my dining room table and I have no doubt that I will pick it up again eventually. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I was thinking about the carmine glass beads I bought a while back and wishing I had a bracelet made of them to wear - unfortunately I didn't think about it early enough to be able to actually do anything about that. Mostly I have been staying away from the beads and the shopping online, which is probably a good thing, on the whole.

I had the afternoon off yesterday because I was supposed to do financial-type things because this afternoon I have my long-delayed appointment with Mom's accountant and I was supposed to be preparing. And I actually did do some financial-type things, and an awful lot of sorting through papers and things like that, but unfortunately I am still not prepared. I just decided that I am going to have to do that annoying thing that people do (annoying if you're an accountant, anyway) where you take all the papers and dump them on the accountant's desk and let him sort it out. Or let him help me sort it out, at least, or something like that. Because otherwise it's clearly never going to get done. I seem to only be able to deal with one piece of the estate business at a time - lately it's been the house, and everything else has been on hold. The good news, of course, is that with the house selling (knock on wood - I have this fear that something will still go horribly wrong with it), there is light at the end of the tunnel there, and we can look at getting everything all closed out and done before too too long.

Huh. An Austin doctor and his wife gave 55 million dollars to the UT School of Music, and the whole school is being renamed in their honor.  (I assume somebody did the math about how much it costs to rename a school - seems like that would be a substantial amount, right there.) I have to admit that the "Butler School of Music" (technically it's the "Hisfirstname and Herfirstname Butler School of Music", but you know that's not actually what it'll get called in normal usage) does sound fancier than just the plain ol' UT School of Music, though. And such things probably have an impact in recruiting and so on. Maybe they've just been waiting for the right donor to come along to give them a chance to do it.

There has been an ongoing discussion in my department about the phrase "herding cats" - most of my co-workers weren't familiar with it, which is a bit odd because it seems like I've been hearing it for years. It's an interesting concept to try to explain - "Well, cats aren't herd animals, right? So what happens when you try to herd them?" I forgot all about the Super Bowl ad from a few years back but one of my co-workers came across it. I'm putting the link here because it's still a funny ad. (And it worked for me so hopefully you won't get rickrolled.)

Oh, I'm about to find out for myself about the health of the Houston real estate market - the townhouse is going on the market in the next few days. If they post pictures online I'll put up a link. It's just a little two-bedroom townhouse but it looks pretty good. (mslilly- who I think is the only person on my friendslist who lives in that area - you know anybody who's looking for a townhouse in Clear Lake?)

Bah. I am back at work today and I am grouchy. I have no real concrete reason why I'm grouchy, I just am. So be warned, I guess!

I had the day off yesterday because I was supposed to go to the accountant about doing a tax return for my mother for last year, but I didn't go. I just didn't have my shit together. And then the accountants' office pissed me off, because apparently by attempting to reschedule I "lose my preferred status" or some such crap. It's my mother's preferred status and I won't be needing it any more, so whatever. (The accountant is 40 miles away in my home town, so traipsing all the way over there to the accountant every year for the rest of my life seems sort of silly.* I'll go once more for my mother's stuff, but after that, no thanks.) So anyway, I stayed home and went through papers and sorted and shredded and so forth, which is what needed doing before I would be ready to deal with taxes. I thought I could get this done Sunday and be ready to go on Monday, but it just wasn't happening. I was not in the mood and was being balky about it, for one thing, but I also just think it was more than a one-day  project. So hopefully this (both missing the appointment, and even more, getting mad!) was the kick in the pants I needed to get me going on it.

My dad's birthday was Saturday, and I was off doing the quilt thing and he decided that they would come see us that day and didn't tell me. Luckily they didn't start for Galveston without checking to see if I was home first! They are now going to come visit next Saturday instead. (That's an extra motivator on the shredding/getting rid of extra crap thing, because the house is kind of a mess. I have several boxes of Mom's junk that I still need to go through.)

I'm glad I went to the "quilt thing" (i.e., retreat) for the day Saturday, even if I didn't really have time to go, because I got one of the things on my quilt to-do list done, which was putting the binding on that quilt that my mom made for my sister. I'm pretty good about doing the handwork part of the binding once the machine part is done, so we can practically consider that quilt finished! I think I'm going to enter it and maybe one or two more of Mom's quilts in the guild quilt show at the end of April. I can't enter anything of mine because I haven't finished anything in the last two years - with the exception of one small quilt that's gone far, far away - so I'll enter her stuff instead. Maybe in another two years I'll have something finished. (That or I'll be buried alive in a pile of jewelry by then, which also seems possible at this point.)


As far as the primaries go - I was really, really evenly balanced between our favorite two Democrats, but I think what tipped the scales in the end was the negative tack the Clinton people inevitably let fly with at the last minute. I was home all day yesterday and I got the full blast of CNN (hey, it's better than Oprah and soap operas) and ad upon ad upon ad. And at the end of the day, I tilted toward Obama.


*Actually my dad is still going to that same accounting office and he lives more like 75(+) miles from there, all the way on the other side of Houston. I wonder if he'll start to rethink that now that diesel is $3.50 and up?

So, after all this time I finally have an estate account. A rather largish estate account, actually, since the money from one of my mom's big CD's got put into it as well as what she had in checking and savings. A good portion of it is going to get spent right off the bat, though - the estate owes me several thousand dollars to begin with, since besides the funeral costs, I've been paying a number of her bills (like the management fee on the townhouse) myself for, what, three months now - and there's several thousand more in unpaid bills for her care the last few months of her life that are still floating around. And then there are the lawyer fees. Then we are probably going to turn around and spend a goodly amount - several more thousand, at least - to renovate the townhouse before we sell it. Everybody keeps telling me it will be worth the money, so I am taking their word for it, I guess.

I spent the entire day yesterday doing all this stuff, pretty much. I went to the bank and the other bank and the lawyer's office and the local water authority, because the water bills were drafting out of an account that no longer exists. And I need to do the same for the electric bill, but I can't find the damn bill. Aargh. Maybe I'll go home for lunch and look for it.

I am grouchy. My Letters Testamentary turned up (although I haven't actually seen them yet, I am assured by the lawyer's office that they do actually exist) and now that means I have 10 zillion extra things to do. I hate being an executor.

I might actually have a court date in a couple of weeks. Hooray!

I was really going to put all this in the same entry as the list, below, but I hit enter by accident so I'm going with the flow.

The estate lawyer was nice, and not just because he didn't make me put any cash down. I liked him. We only have to go to court once, apparently, which will be in a couple of weeks, to get me appointed executrix. After that you just file the papers. (And actually, I don't have to go to court in person at all, but they said if I don't, it holds up the paperwork. If I go, I can get the Letters Testamentary - is that the right phrase? - the same day, but if I'm not there they mail them and it can take up to a couple of weeks. So I'm definitely going.)

(Translation for non-lawyers: as I understand it, Letters Testamentary are the documents - or possibly actually only one document - that say that you are officially the executor/executrix and can open a bank account for the estate and stuff like that.) (The things I'm learning these days.)


The other big lesson from today is that a person's ashes weigh more than you think. Seriously, they're heavy.

I paid no money down on the car, partly because I apparently am going to have to pay something to the estate lawyer on Wednesday.  (Or maybe not, but he said something about a check in the letter he sent, and I want to have enough money to pay him if I actually need to!) In any case, we are about to start moving forward on this and that's something I definitely want to do. I want to get this mess over with as soon as possible.

Wednesday is shaping up to be a fabulous day. Before I go to the meeting with the lawyer, I have to go get the original will out of the safety deposit box and get some papers from Art. (Which I'm going to have to call him tomorrow and ask him to gather up, 'cause I won't have time to do it myself. Anyway, he knows where everything is and I don't.) Then possibly a TWO-HOUR meeting with the lawyer. Oh joy. Then after that I get to go up to the funeral home (which is way up in Houston) and retrieve my mother's ashes. THEN after that I go back by Carmax and sign more papers. And then I'll probably have to go to the lawyer's on the way back and take them copies of the death certificate, I'm sure. Like I've been saying, the fun never ends.