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I was completely snowed in last weekend.

What I did not know was that snow gets hard as rock if you do not clean it
right away; Mark always cleaned the snow right away, and I never faced this
problem. Oddly I never learned this simple fact, while living in snowy New
England for over 15 years.

Actually it did not bother me much to be snowed in, because I planned to
do the taxes anyway. However, the worried neighbors started calling, and the
snow that was getting harder everyday started making me nervous by Monday.
I finally had the snow removed by a professional service.

The good news is that I am done with our taxes, thanks to the snow. I am taking all
my documents to my accountant next Thursday to file.

During the last year, paying bills became an enormously hard job, because
of my condition with cancer. Instead of keeping records using the Quicken
program on my computer, we just paid the bills when they arrived. Many
receipts were lost or misplaced. Even though I caught up with the Quicken
records at the beginning of this year, I did not do it carefully. I had to go back
to the receipts, credit cards bills, and check records many times.

So, I created spreadsheets for this year, so that I do not need to go
through this mess next year. As long as I input all the numbers every week,
I should have all the numbers ready next spring! Off course, now the
challenge is how diligently I can input the records.

On Thursday, we had a plumbing disaster. The toilet fixture in our 2nd
floor bedroom disintegrated, and the flushed water leaked to the first floor
ceiling, and then to the basement ceiling. Fortunately, the plumber could come
within an hour, and he discarded the fixture because it is not usable any
longer.

According to the plumber, he has seen the same problem happening to many
fixtures from the same manufacturer recently. Now, the issue is whether we simply
replace the fixture, or remodel the whole bathroom. Since our house is 17
years old, it is about time to redo the bathroom. Another bad news is
that the other two bathrooms in our house are equipped with the same fixtures.
Shall we remodel the other bathrooms preventively at the same time? Where is
the money to do that? Does this take priority over replacing our aging cars?

It seems that disaster always happens when Mark is abroad.