15 April 1998: Taxes Away!

15 April April 1998:

Taxes Away!

So did I mention that I had to re-do my taxes at the last minute? Well, "had to" is too strong a term, but it was a good thing I did. A friend of mine told me that I could include state income taxes in my deductions, which I hadn't known, and that suddenly made it advantageous for me to itemize my deductions (both of them), which also allowed me to use my charitable deduction (to Wisconsin Public Radio) on my state form (saving me a whole 18 bucks - woo-hoo!). So I did that and saved some money in doing so, but it was a pain.

Ah, well. But I got it all in the mail over lunch.

Work has been about as stressful this week as I'd expected. I'm actually making decent progress on my programming projects, but now I'm being pushed to prepare for some customer training that I'm helping out with (read: being drafted into) a week from Friday. I hadn't expected to have had to do anything for it until next week - especially since I haven't really had time even to think about it. I've gotten myself a reprieve until Monday, but it's Just One More Thing Weighing On My Mind.

I'm not quite a bundle of nerves tonight, but I am pretty on-edge. I think the rest of the week will go well, but boy I'm really looking forward to the weekend. Especially going to the Brewers game on Sunday.

However, I've decided that tomorrow's re-run of Babylon 5 will be the last one I'm going to tape for a while (it rounds out a tape, y'see). I'll catch the rest of season 4 the next go-round of re-runs. This will open up a whole bunch of free time and will hopefully keep my stress level down a little more. Plus, season 5 is off the air after tonight's episode so TNT can show the NBA playoffs (all together now: Yaaawwwwnnnn!).

Tonight's episode, "The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father", was a pretty decent one, a sort of darker play on "And Now For A Word" as we see part of the universe from a different perspective - that of the Psi Corps. It wasn't a great story, and I was a little disappointed in the acting, but I thought it was worthwhile. There was a cute visual gag in the opening credits - showing a Psi Corps logo and the words (I think) "Trust the Corps" instead of the B5 logo, but it would have been funnier if it had then said, "Starring Walter Koenig as Al Bester". Ah, well. Probably SAG rules prohibit such things.

Oh, and was that Gareth Thomas (the title character of Blake's Seven) playing a hood in Downbelow? It sure looked like him! Kind of a waste of the actor in that role, though.

Last night I finished Dark Water's Embrace. Yes, it's a very good book. I did guess the last two plot twists a little before they were revealed, which took a little of the shine off, but only a little. I highly recommend this book.

I also finished listening to Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes on tape at work today. A pretty good book. I was disappointed that it didn't have an afterward summarizing what happened to McCourt after he returned to America. The ending seemed a little bit empty without it.

Well, I think I'll sign off and spend the rest of the evening reading. I need to do more of that.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)