shsilver left tonight's Cubs game after the seventh inning stretch. Absent his conversation, I only made it to the end of the inning before heading home. I didn't miss much.

daisy_knotwise had asked me to pick up some Tilex on the way home, so I ran by the Jewel. I also picked up a few containers of yogurt and some rice pudding that was on sale. And since soda was still on sale and the sales tax rate goes from the food rate to the general merchandise rate tomorrow, I decided it was an opportune time to fill 'er up.

I went to the self-checkout. The woman next to the register suggested that I should use the other self-checkout lane with the belt, because it would be "easier". I pointed out that it would not be easier, because I intended to scan one carton of soda five times, rather than removing each of the identical cartons from the cart and replacing them. She said, "But then I have to press a button."

I said, "Yes, that's correct," and proceeded to use the self-checkout lane that I'd intended to use in the way that I'd intended to use it. And she did press the button in reasonably good time.

Easier for who, I wonder. Well, no, I don't actually.

Anyway, I carefully studied the receipt and the amount of sales tax on it was way too large for what I'd just bought. So off I went to the Service Desk, where I mentioned to the nice lady there that the amount of tax was clearly wrong, because the sales tax rate doesn't go up until tomorrow, She agreed that was true and we spent five minutes futzing around with it before she finally decided to just scan a pack of soda and see what came up for tax.

It was clearly ten percent, which was clearly wrong. Apparently someone had decided to enter the new rate and go home.

They finally ended up giving me all of the tax on the purchase back.

Which was nice of them. I would have settled for what I didn't owe the State of Illinois.

Of course, right now, it's the ISFiC Press financials that Tom needs to do ISFiC's taxes that I'm trying to pull together. And I've now found a bunch more things that I need to get from shsilver in order to finish it up.

So I've sent him a number of e-mails. I'm sure he's delighted. :)

(Actually, I'm sure he will be delighted when this is done.)

Personal taxes and the stuff for my dad's trust are off to the accountant. Dodeka taxes have been dropped in the mail.

That's a relief.

Ok, that's all the info I have for my dad's taxes on his trust assembled. Some of it looks bogus, but I'll call Ameriprise tomorrow and see what they have to say.

Now, back to our taxes.

I hate getting the taxes in order. *sigh*

Katie's got a small problem with the letter "s" in some words. As a result, "disk" comes out "dick". And when Katie asked to see the doggie dick tonight, we knew -- from experience -- that what she really wanted was to watch a DVD.

"Gromit?" asked daisy_knotwise

"No! With kitty."

Hmm. Ah! The new Bolt DVD that I bought for her and showed her over the weekend.

So Gretchen and Katie watched Bolt while I continued to work on taxes.

The end is near, somewhere.

We spent most of the night on the warm side of the rain / snow line, with the result that we only got about an inch of snow. I scraped the top section of the driveway after lunch. The rest of it is completely melted now.

The taxes are progressing and if I can just figure out what I shipped to everybody last year, I should be able to clean up the Dodeka taxes. Then there's a bit of touch up work on our tax organizer for the accountant, plus pulling together the tax info for my dad's trust so I can send that along to the accountant too. But I see an end to this.

Meanwhile, it appears that one of the reasons that Julie has been a little grumpy is that she's started to cut bicuspids. That'll improve the chewing situation.

The Dodeka taxes are due tomorrow. Accordingly, I've printed out and filled out the extension request.

I've also collected all of the credit card statements and entered them into the spreadsheet, so progress is being made. Slowly.

Kids help with that. :)

The near death experience belonged to our nice relatively new HP Color LaserJet all-in-one, which decided to stubbornly refuse to feed paper as I attempted to print out the tax returns. I was not pleased. After a certain amount of shouting, swearing, fiddling, and some threats of defenestration -- for the printer -- the printer finally got the idea that it was ok to print the tax returns.

The K-1s have been e-mailed to the accountant, so our personal returns should be able to proceed now.

This means that all I have left to do are the ISFiC Press financials so that our treasurer can file the ISFiC taxes. Maybe tomorrow night...

We decided we wanted to get out and do something after lunch today. After discarding Frys and Gurnee Mills as too far away and somewhat problematic in terms of why we'd be going there, we decided to go to Woodfield Mall.

I don't remember the last time that I went into Woodfield Mall other than to one of the perimeter restaurants. But I marched around the mall with Katie with her monkey on her back, while daisy_knotwise took a somewhat easier course with Julie in the stroller. Katie was a bit nonplussed by the escalators and after a trip down and up, she decided that she had had enough of these new-fangled contraptions, so I had to carry her on them after that.

We hadn't really intended to buy anything, but Gamers Workshop was having a 40-50% off sale (which I take as a bad sign for them). I picked up three games (one for Katie and Julie's later use, one to replace a copy of Acquire that was missing a piece, and one as a gift), along with a plush kitty and a bubble bazooka for Katie. Katie was happy to see the kitty and delighted to chase the streams of bubbles around the yard this evening.

In the afternoon while the girls were asleep, I assembled what I think are the last of the numbers to finish the Dodeka taxes. Now I just have to fill out the forms and our long national nightmare will be finally be over.

Death and taxes so often travel together verbally and -- given a choice! -- I'd generally pick the taxes, although there are moments...

Anyway, months after we filed our extensions, daisy_knotwise and I sat down today to try to enter the remaining bits of data that need to go into the computer so that I can fill out the Dodeka tax return. Once that's done, I can forward it on to our accountant who will finish our personal taxes.

Unfortunately, one of the files that I need is on the old computer, which is now under strict orders to start up properly after dinner. But first, I'll need to connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the beast, since the new computer is incompatible with my old KVM switch and, thus, I didn't bother to route any cables through the switch to the old computer.

The good news is that this shouldn't be hard, just tedious.

The bad news will come if the poor old box just refuses to boot up.

We'll see what happens.

Today is tax day in the U.S. We've filed for an extension, as we're still working on the Dodeka taxes, but I've sent a nice check to the government for what I'm going to owe.

It's also exactly two weeks until the due date for Katie's prospective sibling, so we're on alert. Keep your fingers crossed!

(And this means the naming discussion has now moved into high gear, as we'd like to avoid calling the kid "Baby Roper".)

Today, daisy_knotwise and Katie have gone out shopping, leaving me to hack on the ISFiC Press financials so I can forward them to Tom so he can file the ISFiC tax return -- which will, no doubt, need to have an extension filed! So far, I've found that I can't find the financials from last year that Tom helped with the reconstruction of. I called him and he'll be sending those along shortly.

But I also need a bunch of sales and expense figures that shsilver has. And I suddenly recall that he went out of town this weekend, having just left a message on his answering machine.

Ok, I obviously won't be finishing this today.

Well, I've got the requests for extensions for Dodeka and my dad's trust ready to mail in the morning. The trust taxes and our taxes are ready to go to the accountant and if I could just manage to finish the Dodeka taxes, I'd be feeling pretty good about it.

Sadly, several required numbers are still eluding me. I'll resume chasing them down later this week.

The Dodeka taxes are finally done, including the Minnesota S-corporation return that I have to file because we sold CDs at Minicon in 2006. We don't owe them any money; I just have to spend several hours proving it every year.

It's getting to the point where not selling CDs at Minicon looks better and better.

Edit: It's not the people of Minnesota that I hate, it's the crazy government there.

I finished the Dodeka taxes last night, along with the stuff for my father's trust and dropped them with the accountant after lunch. One more thing off the plate of things to do.

Last night, Sam came by after work and we took home a number of things from my old office, preparatory for the move in two weeks. I'll be out of the office (and working on the laptop some) for at least the first part of next week due to daisy_knotwise's surgery. The net result is that I'm starting to feel detached from the place.

I've been working out of this space for around twenty years, so it's a bit strange. But I got to visit the new space out in Westchester yesterday and that looks like it will be fine. Of course, almost everybody else in the group is going downtown, but I don't think that will actually impact our level of communication any.

It's just going to be different.

Got back from Minicon and opened the e-mail this morning to find that my accountant had -- as I expected I would need -- e-mailed me a PDF file containing a request to extend the filing time for my income tax and the amount of the check that I'd need to write. I printed them out, added the checks, and dropped by the Post Office over lunch to get them postmarked.

I'm just glad he didn't put this off until the last minute. :)

I won't quite be able to finish the income taxes this afternoon, as there's still some paperwork that I need to exchange with Firebird, but we're close enough to be able to get very close.

In a couple of hours, we're off to catch the first night game this season at Wrigley. I always like to go to the first night game of the season, but I like it better when it's in late April. On the other hand, the Cubs are playing the Cards and I'm going to miss one Cardinals series for Worldcon, so...

I just hope the Cardinals actually manage to win one game in this series. *sigh*

The chaos is at work. The as-yet-unfinished Dodeka taxes are at home.

Since I'm at home, I think I'll work on the latter.

And once I'm caught up on life, I'll start working on posting MP3s. :)