I have reached a point of repose right now, and am worried that I'm forgetting something I have to do. AJS and I made a date: at 12:00 he will return from his basement piano dungeon and help me paint the baseboards in the living room. Right now he's practicing Beethoven. It sounds good.

In my panic of returning home I made a looong list of things to do. One of them is to open a business account. I learned this summer from a very successful and organized private studio owner that keeping your business and personal expenses separate is very important. And I can see why. No longer will I have to pore over all of my credit card statements at tax time to separate business expenses from personal ones. Also, people can operate with the "Evergreen Academy of Talent Education", a rather professional sounding organization in my opinion, instead of "Miss Zoe". There are several ways to do this however, and unlike what I believed before, you cannot simply walk into a bank and get a business account. You either need to set up a DBA (Doing Business As), or become an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) before you walk into the bank. I was previously thinking of incorporating but that is probably a more complicated endeavor that I need at the moment. Both the DBA and the LLC involve registering my name, business name, address, SSN etc. with the government, but the LLC protects my personal assets in case anyone wants to sue me when their small child gets his head stuck in a tambourine. (which actually happened to a friend of mine) Needless to say, the LLC takes longer to set up, costs more, requires a yearly fee to the state of Maryland. I've put a call into the accountant who did my taxes last year but I want a second opinion. Of course, I also want all of this settled in a week...probably not possible but a girl can try..

We are back. On August 4th at 4:30 in the morning, AJS and I packed up the car and headed west and north. We reached Minnesota at about 9:30 CST and proceeded to enjoy 8 days of relaxing on the lake, board games, cooking and watching the dog splash in the water. Sadly, we did not think to charge the camera before we left so I was unable to document our beast discovering Lake Minnetonka. Somehow, she figured out how to leap into the water, come down splashing, then try to bite the splash. She would bounce along the shoreline looking like someone doing a butterfly stroke with terrible form.

Since arriving back on Saturday afternoon, I have been unpleasantly faced with a ton of work to catch up with. Its the kind of work with no real deadline, but since everything has been put off while I was trudging through Levine camp and then our trip, things have piled up to ridiculous heights. The 10 or so days I'm home with little to do other than teach the occasional guitar lesson out of the house are very stressful; as I am entirely responsible for scheduling my own activities and actually keeping track of everything. Today was re-organizing the office and filing the 20 pounds of mail I let pile up. Tomorrow is painting the front door and baseboard in the living room. And then there's the fact that I really need to practice the guitar. After my lessons today, I plan to settle into some scales and quartet music on the takemine with a diet coke. It actually sounds kind of fun at the moment.

P.S. Although the dog in the photo is out-dated, the photo is an accurate visual aid.