Slow week

I am almost done with the side job's transition to the downgraded (ie cheaper) Quickbooks version. I got a call yesterday from the support person who was doing the file conversion and said he'd have it done by the end of the day. He emailed me a link to upload the converted files and then he called and walked me through it. I have to say this version of Quickbooks, from what I've looked at so far, seems exactly the same, at least for what we need it for. And the file conversion worked. What it didn't work for was the other company file I was also trying to have converted. So, my side job boss/owner was keeping track of the income and expenses for the commercial building they own. I assumed the file I found, on their old server, with that company name was the correct file, but the last time it was updated was Feb 2021 and only has like a couple of transactions entered. So, I'm not sure where side job boss was using/accessing QB for that. She's going to have to figure that one out and find the file. Then we can get that converted for her. I'm just super relieved my part is done and working. And now that the software is just on my computer, I won't ever have to log into their old server again and deal with any of those issues. All the support people I dealt with at Quickbooks/Intuit were awesome and I can't complain one bit about their service for this transition.

We've been seeing lots of magpie birds in our backyard. I don't think I've ever seen them this close by. Only seen them sometimes when we've been out and about. Makes you wonder what's changed to bring them around the house, LOL. When I went out the back door yesterday afternoon to take some bread pieces to my chicken, a magpie had been on the grass just in front of the coop and then flew off. My chicken was standing at the edge inside the coop, like they had been visiting each other. I gave my hen the bread and then dropped about 4 pieces outside on the grass where the magpie had been, thinking maybe it will come back. No....dh's raven was there in seconds. Stuffed all 4 pieces of the bread in his beak and off he went. LOL. 

No clue what my assistant did for the 3 hours he clocked in for yesterday. He messaged me and my boss he was working. Then a short time later messaged me that he was having trouble getting his remote connection to work and had a call into our IT help desk. I then let my boss know this, as well and went on with my day. At the end of the day I check to see if he got the one report done I needed him to and nothing. I could not see that anything got done - so what did he do for 3 hours? He certainly wasn't on the phone with our IT for 3 hours! I let my boss know and she said she was going to call our IT and find out from them what his IT issue is and how long they spent with him on it. My boss just messaged me that IT told her they got a call from him at 10:45 (a half hour after he clocked in to work), but they didn't get back to him until like 2:45 (and he had clocked out at 1:20). So, what the heck did he do for 3 hours? Now she has to contact him and ask him about that. Ridiculous.

I'm working on seeing if I can get my half sister to take this p/t job. My boss is all for it. The only thing that was making my boss leery of it, is having a Canadian employee - we've done that once before and it was very costly, in terms of payroll fee costs. In chatting with my sis, she mentioned she's doing a p/t job right now, as contract labor and a light bulb went off in my head. We could just pay her like that, instead of as an employee and we'd save money and she'd make more money. She and I chatted for awhile on it yesterday and I explained what the job entails and she's pretty interested. We just need to figure out how it works for her, tax wise. She's still a U.S. Citizen, but a Canadian permanent resident. I think we'd have to 1099 her and it's also my understanding that as a US citizen she's supposed to be filing an annual tax return anyway, even if she doesn't make income in the US. The crappy part, if she takes the job, is she'll be paying into US Social Security, but she'll never see that (well, unless she worked for 10 years, LOL). It does sound like she can take a deduction for US taxes paid on her Canadian tax return, so at least she'd be able to recoup some of it, by lowering her Canadian taxes.

This week seems to be going slow. I got up like a half hour early this morning. I was awake so figured I might as well get up. 

We had to check on Mrs. Neighbor yesterday. Mr is gone for the week. Later morning/close to noon their dogs started barking, but one of the dogs was just freaking out, barking and growling (not like him) for like over a half hour and kept standing at the corner of their kennel where the walk thru door to their garage is just on the other side of the fence. Something was really upsetting him. Dh got worried - he didn't now if Mrs was home or not, but what if she was home (by herself) and something happened to her? Maybe the dog was trying to alert. I tried to call their house number, no answer, so I tried her cell and got her voicemail. I left her a message why I was calling. I didn't want her to think we were calling because the dog was barking, I wanted to make sure we were just checking on her to make sure she was ok! She did call me back shortly after and she was in the city, doing some errands. When she got home last evening we were outside watering flowers and she said she thinks the dog was freaking out because a package got left at their front door! LOL. We again told her, we had just wanted to make sure she was ok.