Taxes Suck

I'm not going into that whole "taxes are voluntary" thing... voluntary my ass!
I just hate doing them.
For three years we had a CPA do them. Owning a business, doing the personal stuff, and the complicated life we lead really makes doing them suck, so what a relief to find an honest to god CPA that would do them (for an outrageous fee).

In the past we'd do them ourselves. Our anniversary is on tax day (how sweet), so invariably we'd be in front of the computer, screaming and cursing at each other. We would stop for a moment to say "happy anniversary, I love you" then proceed with the cursing and screaming.

Every year we did our taxes, we'd have a catastrophic equipment problem.

One year our monitor just up and died. Poof, dead. That was before we hoarded all of our computer equipment, so we didn't have a spare laying around. Out at O'Dark gawd-awful to find a store that was not only open, but had a stupid monitor.

Another year our printer died. Once again, before the hoarding phase of our lives (now we have a zillion monitors and printers and everything else laying around), so out we went (once again) at O'dark gawd-awful to find a store that was open and had a printer.

Things always seemed to die at about the time that all stores close, the day BEFORE taxes were due. Ok, so we usually procrastinated, but still it got ridiculous.

What a relief it was to find a CPA. he did our taxes for three years. Glorious bliss. We pile up the paperwork and plop it on his desk and amazingly enough, everything was done by the due date. No stress, no screaming, no nothing, and we would go out to dinner on our anniversary.

Last year, our CPA apparently had a nervous breakdown that he neglected to tell us about when we dropped off our paperwork. As April 15th closed in on us, no amount of e-mailing, irate phone calls, frantic phone calls, or screaming would get him to respond to us. He came up with some lame "I got very sick" excuse when he finally called us. He promised to meet us at his office, but when we got there... no CPA. We called and he told us he left them with the receptionist. Nice... whatever.

We mailed them on the way home (since it was the due date), but noticed that he didn't do the paperwork for the MD personal property tax thing. Another irate call later and he said he filed for an extension and would do it when he got back from a business trip.

Three months later we get a nastygram from the State of MD asking where our personal property tax paperwork was. Excuse me?

Then there was the nastygram from the IRS that said we didn't file our special K-1 forms. EXCUSE ME????

600 phone calls later (that went from "hey, it's us... we seem to have a problem, call us" to "you fucking rat bastard, you better call or we'll get our lawyer to ream you a new..."

Never returned our calls, e-mails, etc. So I had to take care of it.

So this year I'm doing it on Turbo Tax. What a thrill. If I start having problems I'm taking it to H&R Block or someplace.

Hey Jerry, if you're out there, I hope your rotting in Hell!

Change Is Good... Right?

Being xenophobic (hates change, fears strangers), we're going through some stressful times right now. Hubby (after 7 years) has been offered a position at another company. This is a good thing since the job will be 7 miles from the house, as opposed to 65 miles from the house. After 10 years of commuting this far (he was at another far away company before this job), he really has no concept of what having a life is all about except that it includes sitting in DC metro traffic rush hour traffic for 3 hours a day or more.

The problem is that they aren't going to buy out his college commitment with the other company (which sucks), they are going to give him more money, and along with the 3 grand worth of gas he won't have to buy, that means even more money a year for us to blow on expensive computer gadgets that we don't use and don't need. Or we could get more huskies, but that's another post.

It also means that we will be able to "commute" together, since he'll eventually start working on the exact same street that I work on. Spending more time together, having a real life and possibly (heaven forbid) being able to take a vacation together.

Same benefits (generally), not the astounding amount of money he asked for, but more than what he was getting. Sounds too good to be true, which is what is totally freaking me out.

Using some assets, we can swing paying off the college thing, still have some money in savings in case his first check gets held (as some companies do), and we'll be saving a buttload by not having the truck in for oil changes every month, not paying a mint for high taxed gas, and having a life. But what if the job sucks, or what if the company sucks, or what if, what if, AAAAAHHHH!

I have no idea why I'm totally freaking about this. We both use to commute to Virginia to work. We made the mistake of moving to Maryland, finding and buying a house, then finding jobs. Unfortunately the house was in Maryland, the jobs were in Virginia. Should have planned that one out a tad bit better I think now.

For 4 years we commuted together, and had no life. Working 9 to 5 with an hour and a half commute means getting up at the butt crack of dawn and getting home late every night. You tend not to want to drive anywhere during the weekends (because your butt takes the shape of the car seat during the week, and the last thing you want to do is drive anywhere), and you didn't want to leave the house because you never spend any time there except to eat and sleep.

One day, while hubby was traveling on business, I drove to work in particularly crappy traffic. As I crossed into DC, I thought: "did I turn the oven off?" This meant that I spent an hour in traffic, had to turn around and spend another hour driving home (only to find that I did turn the oven off) and another hour driving BACK to the office (late)... or else trust that the oven was off and then feel really stupid when I got home from work (late) to find that our house was a pile of ash. I couldn't stand it anymore and found a job much closer to home.

Amazingly enough, I had no clue how much time I had wasted in traffic those 4 years. I could actually go to the grocery store after work since it was still open. I could stop at the mall on the way home because it was still open. I could do all the laundry and housework after work and not use my weekends to do the huge pile of laundry and vacuum 5 layers of husky hair from the carpet that had accumulated over the week.

I had TIME and it was amazing the things I could do with it.

I did feel guilty that hubby was still making the daily trek to Virginia every day, this time alone. I encouraged him to try to find gainful employment closer, but he loved his job, liked the people he worked with, etc. Besides, he hates change worse than I do. So it was a complete shock when he casually announced that he had submitted his resume to this company.

Now the offer is here. Not the greatest, not the best, but it's a good offer. It means so much more freedom and time for him, and it's what I've been trying to get him to do for years and years... and I'm freaking out.

Change is good? The unknown is good?

Oh hell, if it doesn't work out, we'll just declare bankruptcy and move back to Goshen, IN. I have an idea to start a coffee shop and doggie play area. I want to call it "Starbarks", but we'll probably get sued.

Technology Sucks Part 2: The attack of the used fax cartridge

So about 2 weeks ago our fax machine started complaining that its cartridge was almost empty, so we shlepped over to Office Depot and bought one, shoved it in the fax machine.

The day of the cell phone fiasco, I came home for puppy duty and the fax machine was beeping and saying that the cartridge was empty. How could it be empty, I just put a new one in there?



Checked it, and sure enough it was empty. Now either we had run through a bazillion faxes in a week, which is possible with all the spam faxes we've been getting lately, or there was a problem with the cartridge. I ripped it out and looked at it. There were faxes from a large company to a large government agency on this thing. The cartridge is actually just rolled up carbon paper, so I could read everything that had been faxed. Gee, wonder if anyone knows this is out floating around.



Doesn't matter though, because my fax machine won't stop beeping until you put a stupid cartridge in, my nerves are frayed enough from dealing with the cell phone people, and now I have to run out to Office Depot and yell at them.



Off to Office Depot I go, all pissed off because I'm wasting my lunch hour, and plop the cartridge on the counter. I have to admit that they were very nice and apologetic about the whole thing, although they did look at me like I was trying to rip them off for a $35.00 cartridge. I assured them that I wasn't with this big company, or the government agency, and frankly I would think that either of them would be a little disturbed to have their business floating around where everyone can read it, and they gave me a new cartridge.



After I got home from work I was able to shut up the insane beeping of the fax machine, which promptly burped out a fax telling me that railroad ties were a great investment.

Technology sucks, Part 1

So, the husband and I went out last weekend and bought new cell phones. Actually, he wanted the new Motorola V400, and I was just going to let him get it, but the salesguy convinced me that with the "new technology" out, my phone was doomed to become a paperweight, so why not blow $500 on cell phones, and gizmos and pouches and holders. Besides, the phone has a camera, and what idiot nowadays has a phone without a camera.

So we get them, and proudly drag them home, clueless how to do anything with them other than dial a phone number. We play with them for a day or two before we realize (on a sunday), that hey... nothing works. No voicemail, no internet access, no text messaging, nothing.

This has happened to us before with this cell carrier (whose name I won't divulge). Every time we've changed our plan or got new phones, they mess up our account and we lose something (like the ability to dial the damn phone), and have to make several calls to clear up the problem. While they're clearing up the problem, typically they try to stick us on the latest plan, which means we lose all of our freebies from our previous plan.

Of course the cell company customer service department doesn't work on weekends, so I have to wait until Monday morning to call. Bright and early, I'm on the phone for a 10 minute run through of their voicemail system (since none of the options seem remotely what I need, nor do they offer up a human sacrifice to my wrath). Then a 15 minute wait once I do find the "summon the human sacrifice" button, listening to really bad music and cell phone commercials (one of which is touting all the cool things you can do with a Motorola V400... WHICH I HAVE AND IS USELESS!). So after 25 minutes on "hold" do they actually wonder why people are in a foul mood?

My first call (yes, it took more than one call, is this a surprise to anyone), netted a very perky (way too perky for 8am) woman, who looked at our account and said "oh", in that "something pooped on my shoe" type way. After 15 minutes of clicking noises (which I'm convinced is a recording, she's sitting there reading a magazine), she announced that the problem must be escalated to the tech support branch. I hate being "escalated" because that means you'll never hear back from anyone ever again, and it still won't work.

She informed me that she would call and leave a voicemail on my cell phone when it was fixed. I was smarter than she (having drank 2 cups of coffee before the call) and told her that if my voicemail was broke and not set up, how would I even begin to know that I had a message? She took my work number instead.

5 hours later (what a shock), and our phones still didn't work, and perky girl hadn't called.

Call #2, I just press "0" this time and bypass all the crap, and have a 2 minute wait for a human that actually took 5. This time, luckily, the woman that answered gave me the poop on the shoe "oh" when she looked at our account, but actually said that she would try to fix it... and she did. 45 minutes later, she did manage to give us back all the stuff we had paid for, and explained that whoever put in the new service told it to start on the 27th (we bought the phones on the 21st), and cancel the old service immediately, which means we had nothing til the 27th. I don't know what she did, but it worked, we have all of our stuff and there was dancing in the streets... except for:

Technology sucks Part 2: the attack of the used fax cartridge

Technology sucks Part 3: HP and their Welchia virus bad memory expensive computer (and Steve)

Technology sucks Part 4: IR Palm keyboard goes whacky



Monday was not a good day.

I just started this, so I really have nothing to say at this time.