Eileen and I managed to accomplish several onerous tasks yesterday. We had designated my Tuesday off as “bank day” (my coinage). We had an appointment at 11 with a investment banker. From him we learned that investing only $3,000 would end up costing us instead of making us money. Since the whole point of investing was to lower last year’s income, we decided to simply open an IRA savings account in Eileen’s name.

Which we did.

This inspired Eileen to come home and basically finish our taxes. On the way  home we stopped off at Mom’s bank to inquire whether the credit card they sent me in the mail incurred fees when it was used to debit her checking. It does not. Recently her Discover card didn’t work because she (I) was behind in paying the monthly minimum. I was pretty frustrated when this happened because the day it happened, I had received an email reminder of an upcoming minimum payment with no (!) mention of an outstanding over due amount. They just stopped the card. When I paid this, I emailed Discover that this inconvenience convinced me to consider not using my (Mom’s) Discover card. So having an alternate way to pay some of Mom’s out of pocket expenses with a card that draws on her checking is a very good thing.

While Eileen buried herself in our taxes, I had rising anxiety because we had an afternoon appointment with a tax consultant to begin work on my Mom’s taxes. Eileen finished in time to help me prepare for our meeting with Mom’s tax consultant.

By the time we had all this done, I only had energy to rehearse my latest version of my transcription of Holst’s “March” which I have been working on.  I have decided to wait and post copies of this transcription after I’m reasonably sure they are in the shape I want them.

I’ll probably do so tomorrow.

With Misattributed Constable Masterpiece, a Rare Look Into the Imprecise World of Art Identification

I love these stories. I also like Constable and decided to use his painting as my desktop background for a while.

Move Over Mao: Beloved ‘Papa Xi’ Awes China – NYTimes.com

After having read a bio of Mao and visited China a couple times I read a news story like this with interest.