I know, I know, I know. I owe you some poems. And my blogging since I got back from Boston has been infrequent at best. The truth is, I've been busy busy busy. Yesterday, a day I was dreading, was great. I sat down for a marathon session with Current President to go over the books of GMSMA. Now, it's perfect. Well, sort of. I am reassured that the mistakes we found were mostly minor, so I'm not such a wash as a Treasurer as I've been thinking. But, the checkbook and our banks statements say our balance is $42k, but our spreadsheets say we have $47k. As I pointed out to Current President, a retired math teacher and math textbook author, this violates the Rule of Additive Inverse, that states that if a + b = c, then b + a = c. Because we've been over the books a bazillion times and gone over everything with a fine tooth comb, and it doesn't make sense that we're getting these wildly divergent numbers. I mean, accountancy is never perfect, but only asymptotically approaches perfection. But $4500 is not perfect.

(I swear, I didn't take that $4500 and put it towards floggers.)

But, after we had run several tests on nine months of GMSMA activity, I came to the conclusion that the opening balance on the spreadsheets couldn't be right. And, looking at the books from last year (when Current President was Treasurer) (*ahem*), the closing number didn't seem to have anything to do with the opening number.


What timing! Just got a call from Current President. He found the error. He had folded GMSMA's legal reserve fund into our general fund twice. So, the starting number was inflated by $4570. He was elated, although slightly delerious. (I left at 1:30 a.m., but I don't doubt that he's continued to work on it since then. My parting words to him were, "Remember: sleep! eat!")

So I'm not as big of a schlemiel as I thought I was. *sigh* I'm so relieved. No more of those long, long moments at Board meetings when the Current Chairman, an accountant by profession (I know, I know, a math teacher for a President, an accountant for Chairman, and let's let the non-profit manager be our Treasurer. No pressure there! And both of these guys are long time members, whose years of service testify to their love of the organization. It's like having a heart surgeon and an oncologist bring you their baby to you with a fever and asking what's wrong), turns to me and says, "And could we have a Treasurer's Report?" and I sit there and say, "Uh... I'm working on it. There are a few things I can't resolve." A few things like a five thousand dollar discrepancy in the books.

Ah well.

Thank God I didn't get hit by a bus a few weeks ago. My tenure as Treasurer and my untimely death would always be viewed as something of a puzzle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in a mystery. "How could someone who seemed so on top of the game be such a dolt?"

All is well with the books of GMSMA.

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