Donna's Diary

Life is a Balancing Act

Believe it or not, I spent last week in Telluride, CO snow skiing. I say believe it or not since I’m in public accounting. I skied about six days total in my youth and then never skied again until I was 40 because of the demands of tax season. The last year I was in Houston, I went skiing over Thanksgiving. A couple of years later when I moved back to Austin, I decided tax season or not, I was going skiing. So since 1994, I have not missed a year. We used to go at spring break when our kids were in school, but no one goes skiing at spring break unless they have to or because they love crowds! Lately, we’ve gone in January most years and usually for two weeks. This year, due to all the travel with TSCPA, we decided we’d better only go for a week. 

It was a glorious week – four days of powder skiing and two days of cruising. The only injury I sustained was knocking the $%&*#% out of one of my toes on a table while I was sitting on a couch. So apparently, I can ski eight black runs in a row with no problem, but sitting on the couch is dangerous. Oh well, a little ice and some tape and it was good to go. Black and blue, but good to go.

We all work hard, whether we’re in public accounting or industry, government, education, etc. CPAs tend to be dedicated, hard working folks. But we all need a break and one of my favorite ones is snow skiing. So, I make it happen. Now of course, I’m working double time to make up for it, but it’s worth it to me. I encourage you all, even when you’re busy, to find some time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

OK there were no trains, but I’ve been back on the road and you’ll see later why I picked this title. On January 31, I flew to Dallas to attend the Dallas CPA Society’s annual member meeting. It was really fun to look around the room and realize that I knew about half of the people there, even though I’ve never been a member of the Dallas Society. (I am a charter member of their dance team, but that’s another story that I won’t tell here.) John Sharbaugh and I caught up with Jim Smith who represented TSCPA at the FAF roundtable on Private Company Financial Reporting standards earlier in the month. The long and short of Jim’s recap was that the conversation was not about whether there would be an independent board, as it seems that decision has been made. So the conversations revolved mostly around the new council that FAF has proposed – its structure, how many people would serve on it, whether FASB could just vote yes or no on their proposals or have the authority to make changes to them.

At the meeting, the Dallas Society also did awards presentations. The highlight of this for me was the presentation of the CPA of the Year award to Richard Bowen. Bowen was presented the award for his courage in calling attention to problems with mortgage backed securities being issued by his employer (a large bank). He subsequently lost his job over this and was interviewed on 60 Minutes about the entire experience after the market meltdown.

Now for the Planes, Trains & Automobiles reference. Last year when Jeff Gregg, immediate past chair, went to Corpus Christi to speak at their annual tax conference, his flight was cancelled due to ice. Now it’s not that easy to get from Corpus Christi to Seymour where Jeff lives in any event. But throw in an ice storm, and it turned into a one-week adventure. Well, mine wasn’t a week long, and it wasn’t ice, but I think next year’s chairman, Fred Timmons, should go ahead and book a few extra days in Corpus as I see a pattern emerging. Steve and I got to Corpus Christi on Thursday night and attended the tax conference all day, including me doing the Professional Issues Update at lunch. It was a crowd of about 150 folks and fun for me to be presenting back in my home town. My mom lives in Corpus Christi, so we had planned to stay over one more night to see her and head home on Saturday. Unfortunately, my mom was not feeling well, and I decided I should stay and take care of some things for her. So Steve left on Saturday; I stayed until Tuesday when poor Steve came back to retrieve me. (The one-way airfare would have been over $200 and take almost twice as long as the drive round trip.) Anyway, I did what I needed to do, with help from my husband as usual, and hopefully mom is on her way to feeling like herself again, playing dominoes and keeping everyone at her apartment complex and church in line! She’s pretty amazing for an 88-year old, as many of you know from meeting her at the annual meeting last year.

I have a couple more chapter visits in February, then two more in April. Just enjoying the experience…