8 February 2001
Last year: And thus was born the Theory of Cheese and Music!
Matt's home! Yay! He came in at about 8:15 last night, then turned right back around and went to a basketball game. I guess we all know where I rank...
I'm kidding. I knew about the game in advance, and if he'd been gone longer than a couple of days, he probably would have skipped it to be with me. But as it was, I was fine with the game since I was working on a knotty Flash problem. Glad as I was to have him back, I really didn't want to lose the trail while it was still warm. (The manual for Flash, in case you're wondering, is terrible. And the "search" function of the online version doesn't work.)
He's going to take tomorrow off, so I'll probably use up the extra hours I worked on Monday and take a half day. Or a three-quarters day. Whatever you want to call it.
What's that? The Flash problem? Yeah, I think I got it, though it's the stupidest thing... The project itself? You'll see that when I'm done with it, darnit!
I'm about ready for my finger to be fixed. I woke up this morning and turned over, and pushing the blankets around made it hurt. I'm not sure the taping is helping at all; in fact I think it might even be getting worse. I guess I should call the doctor, but I'm getting pretty sick of going out there, waiting for forty-five minutes, and then having him breeze through in five minutes.
I forgot to tell you about the other good news I got the same day Dad got a job. Over the weekend, I decided I might as well do the taxes. They weren't going to go away just because I wanted them to.
So I did them, and after several hours of flipping through the instruction booklet and making changes to the spreadsheet I had (thank goodness for spreadsheets) I had reason to be grateful we'd bought a house. See, you get to list the interest paid on mortgage loans as part of your deduction if you itemize. That interest alone was more than the standard deduction, so of course it was to our advantage to itemize. By the time I'd finished Sunday afternoon, it looked like Matt and I would actually be getting a refund this year - and a not-insignificant one, at that.
During that time, I had called my dad to ask him a question, since I couldn't find the instructions for the itemization worksheet. He hadn't been home, so I went online, eventually found the answer to my question (simple confusion - what the bank calls "property tax" the IRS calls "real estate tax" and I could indeed list that in my deductions as well), and then forgot about it. But Dad called back later, and we talked about taxes a bit, and he said something about state income tax that made me blink. I can't remember what it was, now, but it made me fish out the booklet and flip through it carefully to find the itemization instructions again.
Here's the thing. The itemization sheet has a place for you to list state taxes paid. I didn't really think about it much; I had Matt fire up Quicken and tell me how much we had to pay the state last year. But what you're really supposed to enter is the number listed on your W-2s for state taxes which - as I'm sure you can guess - is much higher.
After re-calculating with the bigger deduction, it turned out that our refund - which was nice to begin with - had about doubled. It's not an enormous amount, really - we're not going to DisneyWorld on it or anything. But it's worth taking to the bank! And heck, any refund is better than having to pay!
(Whoever thought I'd be grateful for my mortgage?)
Word of the Day:
taphephobia - the fear of being buried alive
Currently Reading:
- Arthur by Stephen Lawhead
- The Macintosh Bible by Sharon Aker
Current Projects:
- Kris' afghan
- placemats