My Record Tax Return!

Was doing a little account balancing and notice my checking account was due for a deposit tomorrow. Well, tomororw is payday, so no suprise there...but the amount was all wrong. Cha-ching! It's my Georgia state tax return!! Holy cow, I just completed that Monday night and by Friday I'll have my return. Ain't it amazing what computers can do for ya now-a-days?

Pau!

My taxes are PAU! That'd be Hawaiian for done, finished, kaput! I came home from work Monday and my W2 was in the mail. I had everything else I needed to get my taxes done, so I sat down and worked start to finish on Federal, and two partial state returns (lived half the year in NC and half in GA). Managed to finish around 10:30 last nite. I've used TaxAct software for several years and it speeds things up a bit since it has last year's info to save a bit of typing. The ugly part of tax software is the little $$ counter it has in the upper right. It tells you what you owe or what your return would be at that point. Well, when you start off, you enter your salaries...so that 'owe' amount is pretty high until you start entering your taxes paid and other deductions. I do get returns from all, but not huge amounts...which is exactly what I prefer. I'd rather have my money in my pocket thru the year than give the government a free loan by overpaying!

Nope, not spending any of it...gonna get my Roth IRA started rather than blow it.

Cheesy Chit-Chat

Picked up another electronic toy for my Geocaching hobby...a PDA. Not one of the real expensive ones, but good enough for me to get going with 'paperless caching'. Snagged 5 caches on my shopping & paperless test-run on Monday! If you don't Geocache, you'd be suprised how many of these little treasure boxes you pass by every day. I'd been to the same shopping area many times and just wasn't aware what was lurking there.

Oh, and while I was out shopping, I walk into Target and the first things I see on this freezing day are racks and racks of bathing suits! Okay, in this cold weather I'm sure dreaming of the beach...but I'm not wearing a bikini in the dream, body just ain't bikini-ready yet.

My mouse problem is still a problem - I'm hearing him in the darned kitchen wall! Now I have no idea how to trap this sucker. He'll probably die in the wall and stink up the whole house! I probably need to search the Internet for mouse killin' mercenaries.

Cold Hard Cacher

Geo-cacher that is....my sister, Karen (that's her in the photo), came to visit Saturday night and we enjoyed a dinner out at Sticky Fingers with over 50 fellow geocachers! Karen stayed over and we headed out in the morning in search of some local caches. My outdoor thermometer read 29 degrees when I got up...sheesh, I didn't think it got that cold in Georgia! So, we donned our long-johns, and piled on the warm layers to do some cold hard caching. Karen's been recovering from a nasty cold and had attempted to clear her ears 'scuba diver' style. You know, pinch your nose and blow, force air into your ear canal and 'poppin' your ears. Well, caused her some bit of pain, but that doesn't stop a serious cacher! We snagged 5 caches and I hid my first caches, three of them! Karen head home, but her ear was still hurting. Later that night she finally decided she couldn't take it anymore and headed to the urgent clinic. Sure enough, she'd busted her ear drum!! Now how many folks get out in freezing weather with a busted ear drum and still cache!?!? Only the crazy ones!

I buried the ghost of Christmas past!

Okay, middle of January and I finally put away all my Christmas decorations. On New Year's weekend I'd removed and packed all the tree decorations, then last weekend I finally took down my tree. Now today I packed up all the other decorations...wreath, candles, that kinda stuff. I know there are folks that still have up Christmas decorations or leave lights up all year 'round, so I know I'm faster at getting this chore done than some of you out there!

Poodle Walk

Almost forgot to update ya'll on my Poodle Walk. No, I didn't walk like a Poodle! I took 'The Girls", Bubbles and Trixie, with me on a walk with my hiking group on Sunday. It certainly was 'dog day' with the hiking group. We had five people and 5 dogs! Ended up keeping a pretty good pace, so I had to give little Trixie a rest every now 'n then - that means I had to carry her! Hey, she was taking 20 steps for every one of mine, so I had to help her a bit. Folks recommended I bring one of those doggie carriages next time, or get a doggie snugglie or purse! Utterly embarrassing! Ah well, the girls sure were beat and passed out once we made it back to the car! A tired dog is a good dog!

Can I get a break?

So, I get home to find a notice from my homeowner's insurance to update my records. Thought I'd done all of my change of address notifications, but I've had them trickle in over the past few months from old credit cards and now my insurance. Chat with my insurance folks, State Farm, to give them my new address and I get the bad news. Seems they don't insure vacant homes (mine is vacant while I attempt to sell it in this sluggish market) and will promptly drop me in March when my policy ends!!! I'd sold my Virginia home while it was vacant for months and a Virginia State Farm agent had kept me insured. Not so with these folks in North Carolina. So I do a little googling and then give a call to another insurance company and get the really bad news! My annual insurance was around $700, but the first 3 months of insuring my vacant home was over the annual cost! My biggest hope is I'll get an offer and sell before my current insurance ends.





And now, another irritating situation. If you've been enjoying the saga of my Battle of the Mice, you'll be chuckling at the latest update. Yup, even though I sent six of those suckers to the Great Beyond (there had better not be a Heaven for mice!), there is fresh evidence of the flea-bitten varmints! And even worse, I spied this evidence in the guest bedroom and I'm expecting a guest this weekend! Even worse than that, my guest reads this blog! Ack! If anyone has advice on dispatching these mice, please post a comment. In the meantime, I'll be heading out for more sticky traps!

Hiking, brothers and chaos

My brother came to visit this past week, and I had a really enjoyable visit. I didn't have vacation time to use, so had to go off to work while he and the dogs enjoyed hanging out and watching TV. We managed to get out 'n about a little in the evenings, saw the new National Treasure movie. The weather was awesome all week (in the 70's!), so I made a couple of afternoon trips to the park to walk the dogs and get a bit of exercise. My brother, David, joined me ... but his idea of enjoying the weather & exercising was a good book and a spot on a bench at the park.

This weekend I've been busy with my friends in the hiking group. Saturday morning, wearing my new lightweight long-johns under my hiking attire, I did the 3 1/2 hour Mistletoe Park hike. A bit hilly, but we kept the pace easy enough that I didn't need to be hauled out on a stretcher! It's a real social group, so afterwards some of us went out for dinner and hit the $2 movie theater to see Dan in Real Life. Good movie...I'd put it in the 'chick flick' category. We decided on another hike for today, not as long though, and at least the weather isn't too bad for January - 60 degrees. Maybe I'll even take "The Poodles" with me on this hike. That should be interesting.

After getting grief from my brother for still having my Christmas tree up, I forced myself to take it down today. I'd taken all the decorations off on New Year's weekend, but the tree was still lighting up every night. It's a new tree, and of course it doesn't fit back into the box!

David helped me rearrange my living room furniture. My niece, Crystal, and her 1 year old son Skylar will be coming to stay with me awhile at the end of the month. So I thought I'd work on baby-proofing a bit. Needed to get the TV backed up flush to a wall so the little bugger can't pull on the cables. Lots more to do to make this place baby-proof! Oh, and not only will these two be joining me, but since my sister Karen (Crystal's Mom) is moving to Alabama...I asked my landlord for permission to pet sit Karen's two Shelties (those little small Lassie looking dogs that bark a lot). Surprisingly the landlord said yes! So, two more dogs will join my household for awhile as well. How do you spell CHAOS?