Five years of institutional financial records... up in smoke.
Yep, the guidelines are: the branch should only keep the current years' financial records, plus the three previous years.
My predecessor had done a good job, and his predecessor(s) had done a good job, but somewhere along the line, someone had let some old records slip through the cracks, and I found five years worth of old records which should have been discarded years ago, but weren't.
I don't trust dumpsters, and I don't trust recylers. (I used to work for a paper company who did a boatload of recycling, and you'd be surprised what we came across in the recycle building!) So I brought them home to burn. Built a nice fire in the fireplace (applewood, from the apple tree that toppled last year -- see pictures on this blog a long time ago), and tossed the records in a handful at a time. Got burned, too.
The thick files weren't burning, so I needed to poke them with the poker. My hand got blistered holding the poker, so I went to the kitchen and got an oven mitt. Poked some more. I had just transferred the hot poker from my mitted right hand to my left hand when two things happened simultaneously. First, I instantly realized that the poker was way too hot to hold without an oven mitt on, because my left hand blistered in about a thousandth of a second. But simultaneously, a tiny cinder flew up and out of the fireplace and landed on my cheek, so I naturally flinched and reflexively took my hand to brush it away. Bad move. My left hand was already smarting fiercely from the blistering poker, which I hadn't even had time to drop yet, so by reflex, I used my right hand to brush away the cinder on my left cheek. What I didn't realize was, the coating on the oven mitt had actually begun melting from the heat, and when I brushed my cheek, some of the melting oven mitt melted onto my face, blistering a very nice, straight, streak down my left cheek.
Anyway, I'm now relaxing in my La-Z-Boy beside the toasty-warm fireplace, updating a blog, and remembering just how badly bad burns can hurt. But at least the four big boxes of old records are all empty. (Now, if only I can get all the paper smoke out of the house...)
We'll go to Lynchburg for Mr. G's funeral tomorrow.
Here's a picture of the Lint Monkey while she was here in the Valley. I think this is a good picture of her and captures her sparkle quite nicely.
Yep, the guidelines are: the branch should only keep the current years' financial records, plus the three previous years.
My predecessor had done a good job, and his predecessor(s) had done a good job, but somewhere along the line, someone had let some old records slip through the cracks, and I found five years worth of old records which should have been discarded years ago, but weren't.
I don't trust dumpsters, and I don't trust recylers. (I used to work for a paper company who did a boatload of recycling, and you'd be surprised what we came across in the recycle building!) So I brought them home to burn. Built a nice fire in the fireplace (applewood, from the apple tree that toppled last year -- see pictures on this blog a long time ago), and tossed the records in a handful at a time. Got burned, too.
The thick files weren't burning, so I needed to poke them with the poker. My hand got blistered holding the poker, so I went to the kitchen and got an oven mitt. Poked some more. I had just transferred the hot poker from my mitted right hand to my left hand when two things happened simultaneously. First, I instantly realized that the poker was way too hot to hold without an oven mitt on, because my left hand blistered in about a thousandth of a second. But simultaneously, a tiny cinder flew up and out of the fireplace and landed on my cheek, so I naturally flinched and reflexively took my hand to brush it away. Bad move. My left hand was already smarting fiercely from the blistering poker, which I hadn't even had time to drop yet, so by reflex, I used my right hand to brush away the cinder on my left cheek. What I didn't realize was, the coating on the oven mitt had actually begun melting from the heat, and when I brushed my cheek, some of the melting oven mitt melted onto my face, blistering a very nice, straight, streak down my left cheek.
Anyway, I'm now relaxing in my La-Z-Boy beside the toasty-warm fireplace, updating a blog, and remembering just how badly bad burns can hurt. But at least the four big boxes of old records are all empty. (Now, if only I can get all the paper smoke out of the house...)
We'll go to Lynchburg for Mr. G's funeral tomorrow.
Here's a picture of the Lint Monkey while she was here in the Valley. I think this is a good picture of her and captures her sparkle quite nicely.
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