Harper’s Weekly - February 11, 1865

Yesterday, we learned how much we’re going to have to cough up for taxes this year.

We knew it was going to be bad.

We were hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as we thought it might be.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. It was even worse.

Fortunately, though, being retired now and normally on a relatively fixed income, the taxes for 2007, our transition year to retirement, should be the worst and future years should be relatively painless.

We had an certified public accountant do the taxes for us this year. It was expensive, but worth not having to deal with the tax return anxiety.

This was the first year I haven’t done my taxes myself. There were just too many variables and potential expensive pitfalls.

I’ll probably be back to doing my own taxes next year.

All that stuff in the middle of the radar image below is heading straight towards us. It’s about an hour and a half out.

Tornado warnings, flash flood warnings, and severe thunder storm warnings.

The weather service is calling for the really heavy stuff to come in tomorrow during the daylight hours.

Update: April 10th, 6 A.M. — we had heavy rain during the night — bad news for the areas prone to flooding with all the precipitation we’ve had lately.

This radar image shows the front edge of the next round of storms.

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On my Askimet spam page for Daily Chronicles of the American Civil War blog, the message today reads, “Akismet has caught 258,378 spam for you since you first installed it.”

That’s a lot of comment spam.

I really, really hate spam of any kind.

I really, really like Askimet. I just moderated 10 spam comment that got past it — out of 4000 since the last time I checked the comment moderation page. If I had to go through each and every one, I’d have comments turned off to that blog. There is just too many.

I’ve not started back to work on the contract job yet. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll probably be out there sometime next week — perhaps.

The real surprise is that it’s occurring at all.

Three years ago, I was in a situation where I really needed help to get everything done that needed to be done. One of the options that was attempted was to bring back another instructor who had retired a couple of years earlier. He would be a contract instructor, much like what I will be doing.

It never happened.

A couple of years later, I happened to run into the man they had wanted to come back as a contractor. He said he had been willing to do it, but after they had initially talked to him, he hadn’t heard anything from them. I subsequently found out that they had not been able to get approval for hiring a contractor.

My contract manager — the guy used to be my boss — called me today about documentation on some of my qualifications, so things are apparently still moving ahead. It appears part of the problem is that recent restructuring has reduced the number of people in the corporate office that looks at contracts from eight people down to one part-time employee who only works three afternoons a week. I’ve heard that other departments are having similar problems.

Maybe Monday. However, I’m planning on going to the bi-weekly retiree breakfast. (They’ll get a kick out of this run-around.)

I’ll have my cell phone with me.

……Previous posts on this (most recent on top):

• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it’s….
• BIG BUMP in the road for my online plans…. perhaps.
• The BIG BUMP revealed

Today, I was about ten minutes into thirty on the elliptical trainer, when the guy on the one next to me had a small mishap.

The gym has holders for books and magazines for use on some of the machines that don’t have them built in. Often people use the holders for more than books and magazines — just as this guy was.

I don’t know this guy very well. We’ve talked a bit, and I carpooled with his uncle for a time more than 25 years ago. We’ve interfaced enough for me to get a bit of a perception of him.

I was pushing it pretty good and was focused on what I was trying to do (or maybe I was thinking about things I might write about) when all of a sudden there was a crash and a clatter next to me and he was flailing around to catch his stuff and the holder. Amazingly, it appeared that he had succeeded as he tried to get the holder set back up on the machine as well as his large sports drink and his keys.

Another ten minutes or so went by and I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was craning his body and neck around as though he was trying to find someone in the room. He kept that up for a a couple of minutes more and then I could see that he was beckoning to someone, but I couldn’t see who it was.

When she got over to us, I saw it was one of the fitness center workers. What he did next sealed my perception.

“Would you hand me my cell phone,” he asked, pointing down to the floor where it had landed over ten minutes before, as he continued to exercise at his less than vigorous pace.

She did. He did say, “Thank you,” very nicely.

You’ve got to be kidding!

Perception is important… even if I don’t know you.