Monday 2/10- It’s mid-February, and in my industry, that means that the tax season has begun. Even though it starts out slowly, it’s important to do as much as we can early in the season, because it would be disastrous to fall behind and have to make up for it at the end. Ramie started working on preparing tax returns this week, and as soon as he was finished inputting all of the data, most of those returns, really all of them except for the most complicated, would come to me for final review and then a Zoom meeting with the client to go over everything. These next 2 months will be very busy but boring for us and probably for you to read, since we’ll be mostly stuck sitting behind our computers. It is a necessary evil, but somebody’s gotta do it!
We had also got a message today that our new Dimex (ID cards for our residency) were ready to be picked up, and since today wasn’t overly packed full of tax work, and we would just get busier as time goes on, we drove the 45 minutes each-way to the post office to pick them up.
When we got back home, Ramie had to meet with Carolina, another one of our neighbors, who has made the decision that after 7 years of living in Costa Rica, it's time for her to move back to her home country of Belgium. She is in the process of selling her home and rental casitas, but will be leaving the country before a sale is finalized. Carolina wanted to talk to Ramie about watching over everything and managing the property for her after she leaves. He might as well, he does already have many of the houses in our neighborhood under his watch and care, so what's one more to add to the collection?
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| Play time with dad is always fun! Attack mode on! |
Instead of going to the office here in town where often things don’t get handled correctly, or even at all, he decided to go to the main office about 20 minutes away in Dominical.
When he arrived he was stopped outside the building and informed that they were closed for lunch and he would have to come back in 45 minutes when the workers return. UGH! Instead of finding some place to sit for 45 minutes, he drove back home, ate lunch, and drove back. When he finally got called up to the agent he explained what was going on, that we recently installed supplemental solar but our bill has gone up instead of down. The agent asked for a picture of the meter, and when he compared it to the reading they had for the beginning of the month, he got up from his desk without explaining anything, and went to talk to his supervisor. This conversation took about 20 minutes before the agent returned to Ramie. It turns out that the reading on the photo was very different from what they had reported on file. Our typical electric bill since we moved in was just over $200 per month (this is just basic household electric usage like lights, fans, the pool pump and the dehumidifier in the dry room, we don't even use our AC), and we were expecting our bill to be half that now that we were using solar. This month's bill hadn't changed at all.
It definitely seems as though there is something shady going on with our electrical usage reporting!
The agent opened a ticket and told Ramie not to pay the bill, but to wait until they looked into it more. Ramie was concerned that they would shut off our power, but the agent assured him that would not happen. Now all we can do is keep our fingers crossed that they figure something out, and wait to hear about what happens next.
After Ramie got home from that adventure, he had a phone call with Katie about selling their house, the Airbnb next door that Ramie manages. They had received an offer and the people buying it wanted to know if Ramie would still be interested in managing the house and had some questions about it that Katie didn't know how to answer. Ramie and I have both been expecting that after the sale he would no longer have control over the house and knowledge of when people would be coming and going from it, it was a bit worrisome to us. Plus, since the property is so close to ours, if it's poorly managed and their guests are obnoxious and we can’t deal with it ourselves, who would we complain to? Knowing that new owners are interested in keeping Ramie as the manager is a bit of relief.
As for me, all week pure chaos had ensued at my main job since we let our junior attorney go. It was now only me, the boss, and our new admin guy at the company, with me being the only one who really knows how to work most of the cases that we have.
I have been putting out fires left and right because of things left undone, things done incorrectly, or things completely disregarded by that attorney, and the week was utter and complete crap. I hardly had a chance to work on my own cases, let alone work at the tax prep job, but I guess I’ll catch up on that over the weekend.
Friday 2/14- Ramie got a message from Val and Marshall inviting us out to Mosaic for Valentine’s Day. While we definitely aren’t a couple that ever pays attention to, let alone celebrates Valentine's Day, after the week that I had, I was exhausted and in need of a distraction, not to mention a break from chores like cooking dinner. It was nice to get out of the house for a couple of hours, away from the computer, and talking about non-tax related things.
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| I have been craving scallops for a couple of years now and haven't been able to get them anywhere... until today. These did not cure the craving, however. |
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| Ramie got sushi tacos ... different |
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| At least the patacones are always good! |
Saturday 2/15- Yes it’s Saturday, but it is also tax season, and today both of us started working right away in the morning as soon as we had finished our first cup of coffee, and worked until about 12:30. I don't work my "main job" on Saturdays, only the tax season job, but there is still a whole lot of work to be done! Since we still have all of our regular chores to do on top of work, we then ran some errands, and worked on the blog until it was time to make dinner and our regular evening wind-down routine.
Sunday 2/16- Last year during tax season we made a rule of no tax work on Sundays and I was going to stand by that again this year. I would completely burn myself out if I worked 7 days a week plus had to do all of the regular life stuff, so Sundays would be saved for life stuff. Hopefully we would have a little bit of time for relaxation and recharging as well. The countdown begins – only 2 months of the non-stop grind, I think we can do this!
Tuesday 2/18- Karen & Dennis are here one last time before their big move with the goal of finalizing things on their house and with their residency. This afternoon they messaged us to see if we were open to a break from work and asked if they could stop by to chat about everything they have been doing and check in with us. It was a nice visit, as usual.
Wednesday 2/19 thru Friday 2/21- We’ve both been working hard all week, which means there isn’t a whole lot to write about. Once in a while when Ramie gets a “break in the action” he’ll run to the bank or cut the grass. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a “break” in any work-related action and don’t really expect one. I hate to say it but it's probably going to be a very boring blog coming up for the next 8 weeks or so.
Saturday 2/22- We both jumped online and started working this morning, just like any other work morning, but around 11:00 Ramie logged off and went up to Karen & Dennis’s house to go over things with them and help them out with the final details of the house. I kept working until he got home, and that evening we went out to dinner with Karen & Dennis to spend some non-house related time together.
Sunday 2/23- It’s only the very beginning, but we were so busy all week and were very much looking forward to our Sunday break from work. My brain is already so tired of thinking that I didn’t even open the computer to work on the blog today. I did do some batch-cooking, though, so I can just warm up food for dinners this week. I can already tell that this is going to be a rough season on me.
Monday 2/24 thru Friday 2/28- I truly think I have been glued to my computer the whole week. I don’t have any recollection of anything else that I did.
My typical tax-season Mon-Fri schedule looks something like this (Saturday is slightly different, even though it’s still a work day)- 4:30am-Wake up, work out, make a salad for lunch (because I know I won’t take a break long enough to prepare anything later on in the day)
- 5:45- Drink coffee and sign on to the work computer. Look at emails for the seasonal tax job to see if there is anything that needs immediate attention and to get an idea of what my afternoon may have in store.
- 6:00- Switch over to the “main job”, work on hard stuff until my brain is tired and I’m pretty much exhausted.
- Somewhere between noon and 1:00- eat my salad while sitting at the computer, and, depending on the work load, probably switch from the main job to the tax prep job. For the tax prep job, depending on the day, this will be a combination of reviewing the tax returns after the preparers (like Ramie) finish, and having live Zoom meetings with clients to go over their return. I work on this until my meetings are complete and/or my brain doesn’t function any more.
- Take a 30-45 minute break to recover a little bit and do my DuoLingo homework.
- 4:30ish- Make dinner, eat dinner, help with dishes
Go for a 20 minute walk because I haven’t gotten up from my chair since about 12 hours ago
Cool off in the pool for about 20 minutes
Take a shower - 5:40ish- Playtime with Skye
- 6:00-8:00- Let my brain rest until it’s time to go to bed, usually watching something on Netflix or sorting Lego sets.
- 8:00pm- go to bed so I can get up and do it all again tomorrow.
One day this week, I don’t remember which, Ramie was light on work, so he used that opportunity to work in the yard, prune some trees and hedges, and get away from his computer. If he doesn't stay up on the yard work, the jungle tries to overtake everything very quickly. On top of that, we’ve been getting an abnormal amount of rain this month instead of the typical dry season when everything goes somewhat dormant, so everything is still growing rather quickly.
Before we end this blog we wanted to update you on the electric situation. Ramie received an email from ICE one of the days this week with the new bill. As hesitant as he was to open it up and look, he did, mostly because he knew he had to pay it right away because we didn't want them to shut our power off now that the new bill had been sent. They don't wait long here and will do it within a week. To our shock and surprise, the bill was only $26 and some change! That's a huge difference from the $240ish bill we received a couple weeks ago!
If our bills continue to be like this, maybe this whole solar project was actually worth all the money and time we spent on it! It might actually make the ROI (return on investment) roughly about 3.5-4 years instead of pretty much "never" like we were half expecting. Either way, having the peace of mind that we will still have power during the outages, that is priceless! Especially since we will be coming into the green season soon, and that often makes for instability in the power system here!
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of February rainfall total was 11.02 inches
(which is really weird, because February is usually one of the hottest & driest months, often with no rain at all)
Pura Vida!
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