I [heart] Craigslist

I just bought two SHORT bookshelves, to fit in a space under where my whiteboard will be. I saw the listing, made a phone call, dug out some cash, and within an hour I had the things in my house.

I've been to six different stores looking for shelving units short enough. I've been looking for more than two weeks. And here Craigslist solved the problem in an hour.

Yay :)

Death and Taxes

No, I'm not playing Fluxx, more's the pity. Fortunately, though, the death was only the thirty-pound lead-acid battery in my UPS.

This means I can't use the computer in the family room, which I suppose is a boon because there is no heat in there, so for the first time in quite a while I've been warm for a significant portion of the day. There's no longer any REASON to go into that room!

As a result of being exiled to the rest of the house, I actually opened my paper mail. This is always a bad idea. This is a particularly noxious type of bad idea in late January, when all the tax gobbledygook is showing up. Boy did it ever show up, too. Great steaming fetid piles of it. Here's one example. Apparently, according to my previous unlamented employer, I do in fact have income in 2003. W-2 income. There's rather a surprising amount of it, considering the fact that I departed that company's payroll on a joyous day in late 2002. Immediately I started grousing: one thing worse than having zero income for an entire year is paying a bunch of tax on it! If this mess weren't related to me, I'd find it laughable. I am guessing the IRS won't see the humor.

I spent more than an hour with a bunch of papers and folders. To the best of my knowledge, they are reporting gains from stock sales as W-2 income (wages and tips). I wish they'd gotten together with the broker, who has reported it as 1099-B income (capital gains). I'm ten percent calmer about it now that I know where the number must have come from. Now I am paranoid that it has been reported twice (once as wages and once as gains) and thus I won't be able to avoid getting it taxed twice.

So in an effort to relieve my frustration, I go shopping. Clicky clicky; there's a new UPS battery on the way. Shipping charges for a thirty-pound monstrosity are large. I wonder if I can deduct this charge on my tax return, somewhere near the little "paid for help with my taxes" box, because the death of the battery definitely did make me start doing my taxes.