Okay I’m back.

Working – The first week I hated it, last week I could barely tolerate it, hopefully this week it will move up to tolerable. One it is temp work, so there are no benefits involved and not a lot of pay. Two, it is accounts payable entry, which is pretty mind numbing work. The first few days were straight out of my nightmares, come in there’s a stack of invoices on your desk, enter invoices, come back a new stack of invoices on your desk. The third day was more challenging since I had completely caught them up on all of their invoices and they were not sure what to do with me on Friday and oh yeah before the mail comes on Monday with new invoices. So I started working on clearing up old invoices that had problems and could not be entered (by someone other than me). Most of the problems occurred because this stuff could be done by a monkey and they were out of monkeys so they ended up with the person who thought they needed to think about it. The basic process is a PO is created when something is ordered, when it is received a Receipt is entered against the PO, when the invoice is entered it needs to match to a Receipt. Sometimes there may be discrepancies, for example a lot of what is ordered has fluctuating pricing (metals, gases, etc) and the price may be up or down, I was told 10% above is okay anything over needs to be approved. Some of the problems I had to solve were: PO number was not clearly identified as such, instead of putting POXXX on the invoice they just put the number in a box labeled customer PO number (invoice has handwritten on NO PO NUMBER); quantity received on Receipt is 680.388 KG @ .45 per unit and the invoice is for 1500 LBS @ .20 although both the receipt and invoice have an equal dollar value handwritten on invoice NO MATCHING RECEIPT; quantity on Receipt is 59,756 @ .00035 invoice is for 59,758 @ .00035 again NO MATCHING RECEIPT. In some sense it reminds me of raising children, they spend more time figuring out why they can’t do something than it would take to just do it. But I have cleared up all the easy ones, and am now working on the more complicated ones and it is at least a little challenging. Of course there is still a stack of new invoices on my desk most mornings (not tomorrow as today was a holiday for postal workers). They have someone that opens the mail (imagine having a job where all you do is open mail, thinking about that just made what I’m doing more tolerable), takes it out of the envelope and stamps it received. Then (I believe) proceeds to shuffle it so that if an original and duplicate invoice came together they end up at opposite ends of the stack to allow you time to forget that you entered one already when you run into problems entering the duplicate. The dress code is professional which means my feet hurt most days. But for now it works, and is most likely for as long as I want it.

I spent all day Sunday just watching football, a lot of great games. None better though than the awesome Lions. Gordon, of course, bet against them on his football card, that is pretty much all it takes for the Lions to kick ass. A lot of good games though.

I have cut down on TV considerably, gave up on Survivor, never tried Housewives, Boston Legal was too flaky for me, tired of Without a Trace, didn’t care for Joey, missed Savages when the taping screwed up the first week and then just didn’t try again, was glad to see Steve and Nicole win on Malibu, but was disappointed that Sam and Scotty’s went for less than Rose and Barney’s. I would like to see that again in a different city. I really like the Apprentice this season. And I like the new mommy show just as much as the old one, I can’t believe they are doing it for no money though, I do like the way the couples get together at the end to discuss the switch.