TAXES AWAY!

I didn't wait until the last minute to do my taxes this year.  In fact I had just over 120 minutes to spare when I finally submitted my e-file forms.  We actually qualified for a refund from the federal withholdings which was fortunate since we have to pay the state yet again! 

I didn't want to prepare our taxes, I tried and failed miserably two years ago and we ended up having to pay H&R Block to redo two years of returns.  I can still recall the accountant's goofy grin and info-mercial enthusiasm  as he told us that he had just saved us $300 in deductions, and then informed us that his fee was $400, all in the same breath.  Then he asked what we were going to do with the money we saved on. 

Say what?

Did I miss something?  There is no money to spend.  He may have shaved $300 off of what we already owed but then he went and added it all back in the form of a $400 prep fee.  If we had just done it ourselves, even without the hidden deductions,  we still would have been $100 richer! 

Well Goober, being as we are now $100 deeper in debt than we were when we walked into your office, I guess we'll use that 'money we saved' to pay your outrageous fee!  The real question is what are YOU going to do with the money you saved us?  May I suggest you start with buying a new tie and chucking that one away!  I've just had to stare at it for the past 4 hours... Its ugly and I hate it!

Okay, I didn't really say all that to him but I wanted to!  I thought it best not to say anything at that point and settled with a laugh laced very heavily with sarcasm.  Yeah, he was a real comedian! 

Anyhow, Dickidoo had this great idea to do our taxes online this year.  Sure, if HE does it, because I tried once and I wasn't going to do it again, and I told him in no uncertain terms...

"I tried once, and I'm not going to do it again!"

So there I was last night at 8 o'clock sorting through various tax forms and typing in numbers.  (I don't know why they call them 'laptops', those buggers get too hot to set on your lap for long), pausing only long enough to cuss about how I couldn't believe I got suckered into doing the taxes again.   I got hung up on one area, when I left a blank instead of inserting $0, and I kept getting an error message without clear definition on what or where the error was.  Took 30 minutes to figure that one out, and by that time Dickidoo had taken over.

Let me tell you a little about Dickidoo... that guy reads EVERYTHING!  And he reads v..e..r..y  s..l..o..w..l..y!  Agh!  There could be a whole page of writing, and a little 'check yes or no' at the bottom, and he would read it ALL before checking the appropriate box.  And then he would double check it to make sure it was the right choice before finally clicking [NEXT], where once again he would slowly read the entire page before deciding it didn't pertain to us and tentatively click [NEXT].  I don't know if he was really that slow or if he was just doing that to irritate me, but I was about ready to slam the top down on his fingers and take over when he finally reached the end.

At any rate, our taxes are in, we got enough of a refund from the feds to pay the state, AND.... Dickidoo bought me a bottle of Bacardi Gold for 'services rendered'!  Kind of ironic isn't it, getting paid  with booze to prepare taxes with the Internal 'Revenue' Service!  I almost wished the rum had come in a jug with XXX painted on the side.

I have so much fun playing around with image generators.  The Generator Blog is constantly adding new sites and links to explore.  This image was done at the  Movie Marquee Generator.