At the end of this past summer our long-term weather forecasts mentioned the possibility of an el Nino winter - wetter and more snow. It has been so long since we had a big winter, I've forgotten what it looks like. Today I realized that here we are, looking at 70 degree days that we shouldn't be seeing until mid-April, and el Nino never showed up.

Because I've been so busy with other things, I haven't been spending my usual regular hours per week keeping up with my bookkeeping, I let it all wait until the end of the month, or even skip a month and then get caught up in a 3 to 4 hour stint. That seems to work out just as well as all the time in little bits. That's my theory on doing the taxes this year. It's not procrastinating so much as not fretting about where are my online 1099s until after January 31. It probably saved me at least 30 minutes because I didn't go look in vain at the websites every few days.

Today I listened in on a state flood recovery call for the local governments - counties and municipalities. It was well worth the time spent because I found some things out that we have been wondering about.

Here. Let me bore you for a moment. Federal disaster recovery assistance is all based on helping people living in their primary residence, so all the homes in this area that are second homes don't qualify for assistance. We have been wondering what happens if there is HUD or FEMA money to repair a bridge or road (Home Access Program) but there is a mixture of permanent and summer residents behind that bridge, will anybody get help? Solution: the amount of the Federal payment will be prorated according to the number of permanent residents.

This means the county would either pick up the remainder on behalf of the second home owners, but why would it do that? I think they might form bridge districts and expect those landowners to foot at least some of the bill.

Another little nugget was that FEMA wants their trailers back by March 14, 2015, so those folks will have to make other arrangements. I don't know where there are any FEMA trailers around here, but there must be some somewhere. I wonder what happens to those used trailers, probably will be sold at auction, reconditioned and sold. Some of the house trailers that were badly flooded were salvaged, somewhat cleaned up, and sold to unsuspecting buyers. Mold and other problems developed, and there was a big scandal on the TV news.

Now you know how I spend my days: I gather these bits of news and post them on the flood recovery Facebook page and if there are documents of permanent interest, locate them on the Internet, download them and post to a website.

I finally got the colors tuned up to where I like them.