Expect the unexpected

Today, I had unexpected greetings in the mail. They were not of the friendly sort. In fact, the letter I received was down right ugly, demanding, and just plain not nice. A while back, we had a client who was past due on some invoices. Things got bad, and they filed bankruptcy/reorganization. I filed a claim with the bankruptcy court for the outstanding amount. Shortly after this, I received a check for the invoices that were outstanding. Yipee! Was a little surprised, and I didn't think twice about it.

According to the letter I got today, the client paid direct, not through the courts. Apparently, when they paid us, they shouldn't have (not because the invoices weren't valid, but because of the reorganization.) So now I am being told that I must return the money to the bankruptcy administrator. More than TWO YEARS LATER. Apparently this is legal, and bankruptcy laws actually include provisions that require that funds paid out within 90 days of the date bankruptcy is filed basically be returned. Federal law.

Now, for a small company like ours, this was a significant amount of money. Several thousand dollars, that was for work performed over the course of about 9 or 10 months. The lack of payment put us in a bad situation back then, and now, I am being told I have to RETURN the funds. It is absolutely ludicrous. And yes, the sweet letter from an alphabet law firm threatens court action if demand is not met in 2 weeks. TWO WEEKS.

So, to summarize: client was TEN months behind when they paid, in arrears, for work that had already been performed. TWO YEARS later, they say "oops", we made a mistake, and now I am supposed to correct their mistake in TWO WEEKS. There is something wrong with this picture!

This made for a bad start to my Monday morning, as you can imagine. I know I am not doing a good job of explaining this, because I don't totally understand it. This is a bad blog. I dislike it almost as much as I dislike the situation.

M is on the countdown to school being out. She said her class watched movies all day today. Thank goodness I paid tuition. Wouldn't want her to miss that. (Seriously -- I am so glad not to be facing homework, it's OK.)

B totally bombed a major test today. I asked her about it at least 50 times this weekend. I knew she did not give it the attention it deserved, but she said she had it. I hope it was a learning experience. It made her grade in the class drop several points, and changed her from a comfortable A to a high B. She can get it back to an A with a strong grade on her EQT. I hope she has it in her to really pull it together the last week of school.

Tomorrow night is B's band concert. I am really looking forward to it. She has been working on something a little extra, and we get to hear it tomorrow.

Thats all for tonights bad blog.