Tax time

I was prepared to begin my taxes, I thought, and was looking forward to an easy time of it - all I did in 2009 was work for Vanderbilt, and I keep my Bolivian tin mine investing under the table.* Then a form 1099-MISC came in the mail for some income I had forgotten. (Hey, I was paid in early 2009 - for work done in mid 2008. Was it any wonder it had receded into the mists of time?)

The form itself fascinates me. Some of the categories on it are straightforward, such as "1 Rents" and "4 Federal income tax withheld." Others are much more interesting: "5 Fishing boat proceeds" - "10 Crop insurance proceeds" - and (my favorite) "13 Excess golden parachute payments." Alas, I have nothing in any of these categories.

*Dear IRS: I don't actually invest in Bolivian tin mines. Please don't audit me.

Savings

I went to a thrift store in the neighborhood today, looking for retro Tupperware and random household goods, but instead found a book I should really read for my dissertation - at the low, low price of $1.49. Hooray for good deals.

Lesson learned

April is indeed the cruelest month, and I have learned that fiscal responsibility is not responsible. From now on, I'm going to be an impulse shopper, no matter what the cost.

Near the end of last month I found two things I wanted to buy. I had been looking for a fun summer purse for over a year - a year! - and I finally found a cute one at a boutique. It was only $45, which is within even my price range. My momma didn't raise no fool, so normally I would have purchased it on the spot. But I had just paid my taxes and gotten a new clutch, and on top of that I was about to leave town for a wedding. My bank account was running on empty. In fact, I was only in the store at all because I had lost my sunglasses, and for me sunglasses are an essential ranking right up there with, say, underwear. In fact, they're probably ahead. For the same reason I passed on buying a tube of "Rocking Chick" lipstick at M.A.C. It was from their Barbie line of all things and was a ludicrous plastic shade of hot pink that looked fabulous on me. It would have been great for those days when I wanted a little more panache or for evenings, because the typical deep red isn't really me. But I held off.

I went back to the boutique as soon as I got paid and the purse was sold. Being a boutique, they weren't going to have another one. I didn't make it back to the mall until today, and to my horror they told me the lipstick was available for a limited time, and that time was up. I was too despondent to even look for another fun color.

So here I am with no purse, with boring everyday lips, and a completely demolished shopping vibe.

Update: Thank goodness for eBay. I was able to find a tube for sale (for twice the M.A.C. price of course). A girl's gotta have priorities.

It'll knock you out

Taxes, my clutch - just when I'm tired of spending money on boring things, I had to go out and buy ... antivirus software. There aren't any viruses for the Mac OS, so I didn't have any. There are, however, Microsoft Word viruses that you can catch. Apparently I caught one that doesn't do much to Macs themselves but can spread to anyone you share Word docs with. If you have it, come Dec. 13 it tries to wipe your C drive. I only caught it when gmail would not email an attachment, saying it had a virus. So if I've sent you any Word documents recently, you might want to check your own status.

The software spent most of the evening running - I did the whole hard drive, because I wasn't sure that Word docs weren'e lurking in unlikely folders - and of course I didn't want to reopen Word until everything was disinfected, so there went my plans to get work done last night.

Still recovering from paying taxes and ...

48,000 miles on the car = time for the third clutch to be put in.