A little bit of everything

As birthdays go, this one was pretty uneventful. As previously mentioned, Adam’s mother and sisters took me out for dinner last Friday night. It was a good time and we all agreed we should ditch the men more often. Saturday morning I did the grocery shopping and picked up some bedding so I could clean the various critter cages. Then I tried to do some cleaning but managed to clog the vacuum cleaner. I looked in the hose, flipped it upside down, but I couldn’t figure out what its problem was so I just gave up. I continued going through the closet in the cat room and I’d say I’m about 2/3rds of the way done. I also watched a few episodes of “Dawson’s Creek” to pass the time. Adam’s flights were all on time going this direction and I picked him up at the airport around 4pm. We went home where he proceeded to unpack. He picked up a few things for me while at the Universal Studios gift shop. They included a replica of an Oscar for “Best Accountant”. He also got me a huge Spongebob mug. Both these items are currently on my desk at work. We caught up on this week’s “Project Runway” and then headed out to dinner. We had a good time over at The Ground Round and were even treated to some bagpipe serenading (if that’s not a strange concept, I don’t know what is…) from a troupe of bagpipers who were staying at the hotel. Then we went back home where we proceeded to fall asleep. So sad.

Anywho, Sunday morning I spent some more time cleaning, took care of all the cage cleaning, did some laundry. Adam went into work for a while and then stopped to get some wood for our bed. Yeah, so the cats had started climbing up into the boxspring and tearing out the lining between the springs. Since Ted had previously gotten himself stuck in it and we’d had to tear the fabric off in order to get him out it was readily accessible to them all. They were making a huge mess and there were little poofs of gray all over the floor. The solution? Staple wood to the bottom of the boxspring to keep them out of it. Works for me. So Adam borrowed his dad’s staple gun and air compressor and got it done. I supervised. After lunch we caught up on some more DVR shows. Adam figured out what was wrong with the vacuum and I finished up the cleaning I had started the day before while he vacuumed the rest of the house with the other vacuum cleaner. Then he mopped the floor. He mopped me into the bedroom area and he ended up out in the living room to catch up on some wrestling. Luckily the floor dried fast enough that I could feed the cats on time. They had been shut in their room whilst Adam mopped and were quick to express their displeasure. I made dinner, we both had some homemade frozen custard, and then headed to bed to watch some TV.

I find it interesting that while Adam was gone, JC completely ignored me at night. The first night I left the bedroom door open and he was nowhere to be found all night. The other nights he annoyed me so much with playing with cords and attacking things under the bed that I had to shut him out. Saturday night things were back to normal. He slept on the foot of the bed, crawled up in between us, chewed on my arm, bit me, and was generally obnoxious. I wonder why he was completely uninterested in chomping on me when Adam wasn’t here.

Anyway, another bit of nasty weather headed our direction and we got a good 6-8 inches of snow today. Woo. We all know how much I like snow.



No, seriously. It can stop now.

So today is Valentine's Day. We kind of did our celebration yesterday. We went to dinner before our PAC show. Tonight I made a carbonara frittata that was pretty good. I managed to burn my arm though... Speaking of Valentine’s Day and all things lovey and mushy, I got an email yesterday from Catherine (my former college roommate and the maid of honor at my wedding, not the sister) telling me that Tony and she are (finally!) engaged. Congratulations guys!

And with another abrupt non sequituresque subject change I bring you the news that Adam and I filed our federal taxes last night. I originally filled everything out on H&R Block’s taxcut software. I know the IRS has all these free file partners and they say the limits are $54,000 for individuals. I figured the limits would be higher for married filing jointly. Nope. So I got everything done and was told I couldn’t free file. (Apparently we make too much money. Our AGI surprised me, but also made me wonder where the hell it all went…) I could pay $14.95 and then they’d file it for me. Grrr. So I printed out the forms and had just finished re-doing our taxes by hand when Adam found a discount through his employer to file through Turbo Tax for free. So, after doing our taxes for a third time (luckily we got the same result each time. Yay!) we finally submitted them to the IRS. Geesh. I finished up our state return last night as well but I want to check it over once more before I submit it. That’s on my list for tomorrow night. We should be able to use the state’s free file service so that will be nice. Total refunds from both federal and state came out to just over $2,000. Add to that the $1,200 rebate we’ll supposedly have in a few months and we should be able to make some decent payments towards the lingering house-buying bills. Yes, I’m aware this is exactly the opposite of what this “economic stimulus package” is meant to do. Mr. Bush will just have to deal with it.