...taxes are done (not to mention that "Underdog" was here).

Was up late on chat last night—a varied assortment of topics including the examination questions I posted last night, John Bedford Lloyd's exploits during The Abyss, and Revolutionary War battles—and needed the sleep-in. Something odd happened before bed: it was as if my ears were plugged and all I could hear was a car or truck running. There wasn't one outside. I've had this happen before, but usually after I get into bed.

We went to BJs about 11:30 and bought this year's version of TurboTax, which was crammed into a corner between Kellogg's cereal and an HP printer. We would have bought it at Costco, but we had a coupon for it at BJs. Didn't need mandarin oranges, but also bought more of those with a coupon, along with some gravy mix and a big DVD pack of public domain Christmas movies and television shows, including A Christmas Without Snow and the infamous and goofy Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. (I saw this ages ago, back when WSBK-TV38 ran one of their "flop film festivals." It's a very strange film.)

Came home by Kroger and then past Jim Miller Park. There has been some sort of construction going on at the Austell Road side of the park for months. What used to be an empty expanse of grass that was used for overflow North Georgia Fair parking has been cleared, some diseased trees taken out, and they are completely plowing up that side of the park. Friday when I went through there I noticed they were bulldozing up the hill that heads toward County Farm Road (whoops, County Services Parkway...pardon moi). No word on their website on which's going on, but it's definitely some type of expansion. We're wondering if they're going to create a permanent venue for the Fair on that side so that the opposite side can be reserved for parking (or possibly vice versa, since they're not just flattening out the site).

When we got home I popped the TurboTax disk in the computer and did the taxes; we had gotten James' W-2 over a week ago and there was no use putting it off. We have done our taxes using TurboTax for years now, so we don't even have to bother putting in last year's figures—TT does it for us in seconds. As if to prove that our state taxes have gone up, we are getting a refund from the Feds but have to pay the state $88 (we got a $454 refund from the state last year, which shows you just how much our state taxes increased). So I e-filed for the Federal refund and just laughed at them asking me if I wanted to spend $20 to e-File the Georgia return. Hon, you'll get your return and your payment put in the mail on April 15, thank-you-very-much.

At least it's not like before we bought a house, in which we regularly owed the Feds $800 and the state $600. Spring was very expensive back then!

Before supper we watched Underdog, which I DVR'd off Encore a week or so ago. Keeping in mind that this was pretty much made for kids, my comment is "this was cute," of course with the obligatory lesson that every kids' movie has to have these days, although not banged into your head quite as obviously. Had it been meant for adults, my comment to Peter Dinklage and Jim Belushi would have been "Boy, you must be hard up for money." :-) No, really...the dog is cute, the other dog ("sweet Polly purebred") is cute, the kids aren't objectionable, and there aren't any farting jokes. Put your mind in neutral to watch this one.

Salad for supper. Yum!

Labels: movies, shopping, taxes

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 5:27:00 PM

Comments:

I've had tinnitus (noise in the ear) off and on for years. I even went to an ENT for it last fall when it became very bad just to confirm that's what it was. There is not, unfortunately, a lot that can be done for it.

# posted by  FiveAcres : 7:50:00 AM

 

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