Tag: Carol

The techno learning curve

The Wife DID come up with the solution for fixing our printer that said it was jammed.

100_0210I know I go kicking and screaming over learning new technologies. But, sometimes, my (somewhat younger) wife is as old-fashioned as I am. Possibly more so.

I am on Twitter and Facebook, albeit grudgingly; she is not, though she plans to start with the latter. She is one of the few people I know who still has an AOL account; actually, I do too, but I seldom use it.

She’s still using her bank register to check for charitable contributions at the end of the year. I just go to the bank online. I’m not even sure she uses her ATM card.

However, she DID come up with the solution for fixing our printer that said it was jammed; rebooting actually did the trick. She’s clearly more mechanically inclined than I, since, if there are four possible ways of doing something, I will have tried the other three first, while she intuits that stuff a WHOLE lot better.

Since she’s a teacher, she has the summer off. (“Off” being a relative term, since she’s got to get the contractor to finish the bathroom, and to watch The Daughter on the weeks she’s not at summer camp, and do SOMETHING with that former pool area in the back yard…) Plus she has to sort through all the stuff in the home office to decide what would make good lesson plans for the fall, and what has become outdated.

But she’s also pegged this summer as a time for discovery. Perhaps by the end of the summer, she’ll be reading on that Kindle she got a while back.

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

The Wife and the tax compromise

I wasn’t giving to charity because it was deductible, I was giving because I was called to do so.

1040sc_Page_1I’m playing cards (hearts) the day after my birthday, and someone mentioned preparing taxes. I noted that the Wife and I get someone else to do it for us. My friend did not understand. “It’s EASY with TurboTax” or some other software. I repeated that we outsource our tax prep because it was best for us to do so. My reaction was perceived as passionate, maybe even heated, although it did not feel that way to me. It was just what we do to ensure domestic tranquility.

For one thing, I don’t think doing the taxes is that simple, like this post I came across notes. By the time you’ve gathered all the papers necessary to plug into some tax software, most of the crappy work that needs to be calculated has already been done.

The first year we filed together was a nightmare for me and a real irritant for her. Here’s why: I had NEVER filled out an itemized tax form in my life. I had used Form 1040A, or, often Form 1040EZ, which is, as it suggests, easy.

The Wife, conversely, had a rental property that involved filling out a Schedule C for income gain or loss on a business.

She also calculated her charitable deductions, including the value of the non-cash donations. Not only could I not be bothered to do that in the past, but I also had a philosophical aversion to it. I wasn’t giving to charity because it was deductible, I was giving because I was called to do so. There are a couple of friends of mine who run a Catholic charity which is, pointedly, NOT a 501(c) tax-deductible charity under IRS law, and they expect people to donate based on their heart, not as a tax haven. NOW I do it because my spouse thinks it’s fiscally prudent, and despite my antipathy for doing so, we do.

Those first two years of filing taxes, which took FOREVER, we got slapped with penalties for underpaying somehow. After that, we got someone else to do the work. Actually at least one of THOSE years, we paid too little again, but we were only responsible for the amount, NOT the penalty and interest, which came out of the pockets of the accountant.

The Wife and I are celebrating 15 years of marriage today, and one of the reasons is that we found a way not to make ourselves crazy each April.

Romance redux (because I love the word redux)

“You were comfortable to be around, smart, funny, not bad looking and there was great chemistry.”

RomanceSo I answer New York Erratic’s question about romance, about me being a good listener. Yet I seem to have disappointed: “That wasn’t the answer I was expecting for the ‘getting girls’ question, but it makes tremendous sense when I think about it.” But I wasn’t some smooth talkin’ dude.

Still, I wrote, in an e-mail titled I’ll take another shot if you give me parameters: “Not sure what kind of answer I could give you about romance. Among other things, I hardly ever pursued a woman, because I’m painfully shy. So she had to be a friend at some level first…” (Indeed, Dustbury speaks well of the anxiety guys like me experienced all the time.)

The reply: “I think you gave a great answer, but I was thinking more like skills or knowledge. Music always thrills me, as does trivia and poetry. šŸ™‚ I know you don’t write poetry, but hasn’t any girl ever said ‘Wow, I love your ___________’ or ‘I think it’s so cool you know _________’?”

Well, not to my recollection. Although “OK. But the air guitar really did lead me to one girlfriend!”

“:-) Humor counts.”

So I asked my wife. She said it was because I was (and apparently still am) so expressive when I sing in the church choir, and that was what made her first notice me.

Then I asked an ex. She wrote: “You grew on me over time. Not very much time, it is true, but sometimes. You were comfortable to be around, smart, funny, not bad looking and there was great chemistry.” She later added: “It wasn’t really a conscious process. I just fell in love.”

I can guess another ex was taken by my love for the Academy Awards and the soap opera Another World. But maybe humor, too, although I cannot give you details. (I DO have some limits.)

I got nothing else, short of asking more exes, and I’m kind of disinclined to do that.
***
On a related topic, NYE: I overheard this conversation in the work cafeteria. The young woman broke up with her girlfriend, who had seemed to be devoted to her, perhaps overly so. She was telling her friend how unnerved by the fact that her ex was now seeing someone else. I restrained myself from telling her that I knew EXACTLY how she felt because I HAVE been there.

 

Dinosaurs, candy, kissing, travel

It was this red shoestring licorice we bought about two blocks from the school

T-Rex-The-SliderGot a bunch of questions, great questions. Gracias. I’ve been thinking about them, some of them A LOT, but some are going to require longer answers than others, and I’ll have more time in the next week or two (I hope).

In the meanwhilst, here’s a few from New York Erratic:

Were you ever into fossils or dinosaurs? What is your favorite dinosaur?

Not in any kind of systematic way. I mean they were collectively cool, but I didn’t study them very thoroughly. I got frustrated that several of the ones I knew as a child have totally different names, and theories as to their origins are different. Some are now birds that were thought to have been reptiles, etc. Rather like the planets of our solar system, where I once knew how many moons each planet had, but no longer. I’ll pick T-Rex; always liked Bang A Gong [LISTEN].

Have you ever had your IQ tested? When? What was your IQ?

Yeah, at least a couple of times, but they never told us. Once in fifth or sixth grade, some of my classmates discovered our scores but no names were attached. Someone was in the 140s, and we all figured it was friend Carol (not my wife Carol). There were three or four in the 130s, which we surmised were friends Karen, Bill, and me. But we really had no idea.

Did you ice skate as a kid?

I don’t believe so. I have no recollection of it. And not as an adult except once, and it involved wooing Carol (my now-wife).

How do you memorize skits for plays? (This one is fairly urgent… šŸ˜› )

Repetition, optimally with another person, or persons, reading the other parts. But I HATE doing long speeches, soliloquies because I have a hard time memorizing them. Unless they’re poetic, and I can make a song out of them.
***
SamuraiFrog wants to know:

At what age did you feel like you became an adult?

62. (Not entirely false.)

I suppose it was when I bought a house, and I was 47. Not sure I like this growing-up stuff.
***
Jaquandor, who is in the midst of answering MY questions to him, wants to know:

Youā€™re given enough money for a road trip someplace in the USā€¦not enough to fly anywhere in the world, but enough that you can pay for gas, food, and lodging someplace in this country. Where do you go?

I’d do a bunch of baseball parks by train. But if we’re talking a single location, I’ll pick Juneau, Alaska, because it’s the farthest state capital one can get to by land. If I’m limited to the continental US, then Seattle, WA, or Portland, OR, because I’ve never been to either of them, and they are in states as far from me as possible.

***
Tom the Mayor, my FantaCo colleague, asked:

What was the first comic you remember reading? And the first book?

The first comic I have no idea. It may have been Archie, or Richie Rich, or some other Harvey Comic. The first superhero comic was almost certainly DC, Legion, or maybe Justice League.

I had these Golden Books, but I don’t quite remember them individually. I also had the Golden Book Encyclopedias, and those I remember reading voraciously.

What was the first movie your parents took you to?

Not sure. Can’t remember seeing any movies with my father except for the drive-in. Maybe it was the 1960’s version of State Fair; or did I go without my mother? 101 Dalmatians? Early on, it was West Side Story.

What was your favorite candy as a kid?

It was this red shoestring licorice we bought about two blocks from the school, right across the street from friend Bill’s house.

Do you Kiss your wife and daughter in public? Did your parents kiss you in public?

Yes, and The Daughter still lets me! Not that I can recall, and I don’t know if they kissed my sisters either.
***
You can still Ask Roger Anything.

I blame Joe Biden

It’s interesting to me that a lot of people I know did not know that Joe Biden was even coming to town.

joebidenThe Wife was driving me to work last Tuesday afternoon when we were rear-ended by a car. We all were a little sore, and I, more than a little irritable about it.

My spouse blamed the other driver, very rational since that person, in fact, did drive into us, fortunately, not going very fast.

My daughter blames the superintendent of the Albany school district, for she had canceled school on a day no other district in the area had done so, though there had been delays elsewhere. If the Albany district were open, The Wife wouldn’t have been driving me at that hour.

However, I blame Vice-President Joe Biden, in Albany that day to meet with Governor Andrew Cuomo about disaster preparedness in the wake of climate change.

Just before we turned northbound on Everett Road, we see a low-flying helicopter, a tipoff that the VP was on the move. One could not actually travel across the Everett Road I-90 overpass, so the eastbound cars exiting I-90 at Everett could only turn right towards Albany, or go straight, right back onto I-90. We were stuck waiting for cars to reenter I-90 when we felt that familiar sound, and moreover, feeling of the vehicle you’re in being hit from behind.

This was The Daughter’s first car accident, and while a relatively minor event, I know *I* felt achy in my head and lower back for hours. The Wife was likewise affected, and the Daughter was mostly complaining about pain in her shoulders.

Ironically, by the time phone numbers had been exchanged, the Biden contingent had passed and Everett Road was clear again.

It’s interesting to me that a lot of people I know did not know that Biden was even coming to town. I was reminded by Megan Cruz of Channel 9 YNN Time Warner Cable News that morning, who was out doing a stand-up in the bitter cold, for no newsworthy reason, and one could tell she was freezing; it was about zero Fahrenheit, or below. She needed a hat.

The buses were rerouted several times that morning, apparently. The police had blocked I-787 for a time, by plows and when my colleague tried to come back to work after lunch, ended up taking city streets instead.

There’s lots of speculation that Biden and Cuomo are vying for the 2016 Democratic nomination for President, but its WAY too early for me to care.

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