it’s hard to cover this much time in this little box.

OH HELLO THERE.

I’m a little slow to start with the typing this year! How was your New Year’s? Bueno? Bueno.

So! Last Friday, Kaye beat me with a slivery 2×4 until I watched Harry Potter III: Revenge of the Sith with her. She also made puff pastry pot pie, as she is a huge fan of alliterative foods (but aren’t we all?). Afterwards, we went to the IMAX at the zoo to see Harry Potter IV: A New Hope. It was pretty awesome at the IMAX, especially the part where they blow up the Death Star. I want to go back and see some of those space movies, too. Evidence of the nonexistence of Martians, 100 feet tall! You can’t go wrong.

Saturday, I started cooking. I made a gigantic pot of black beans and rice (I even made the beans from scratch, just because I’d never done it before), and the filling for corn and cotija empanadas. Chris brought over pre-fried tostones, a garbanzo bean salad, and stuff to make fresh guacamole (the certified best thing ever). We assembled empanadas, and thin-sliced the rest of the plantains to fry them up.

So we had a ton of Cuban food, and I made mojitos with Splenda. So good!! The little dinner party was awesome; it was everybody I spend a lot of time with, all in one place. There were no brawls, no bottle fights, although Bertine did get made-fun-of a lot. But she’d worry if she didn’t.

Round about 10pm, I decided we needed to go outside and make a snowman. Even though the perfect snow from the previous day was now totally useless for snowmen. Like that could stop us.

awesome snowfall last week
chris and kaye both made cosmopolitans
flaming puckschlager
bertine and i starting the snowman
bertine and i being drunk on colfax ave
bertine NOT drinking a grain belt
snow angels
don’t ever say we’re not good at making snowmen
chloe celebrates
kaye, bertine, and stephanie prepare for snowmen
bertine, wendy, chris, me
kaye and wendy getting cozy with the snowman
conehead
does anyone have a hacksaw? (movie, 22mb)
drunk people at the park (movie, 31mb)

Sunday morning, we were awake way too early. I declared my intention to bake scones that day, but it took me forever to actually start moving. I had purchased a coffee press at IKEA so I could make coffee at home sometimes (gasp!), but I didn’t have the grinder or actual coffee yet. Going to get coffee would require showering, and even that took a huge effort. I finally showered, took some painkillers, and went to get coffee and groceries. I baked two kinds of scones: white-chocolate-cranberry, and cinnamon chip. My scones kind of rule, btw.

In the afternoon, I attended the obligatory family event at my parents’, and dozed off on the couch. Stephanie and I went to see Memoirs of a Geisha. We came back and hung out with my cousins and their daughter, who is painfully cute, and a lot older than I remember her being. Funny how that works.

Monday was a certified day off, so I make a list of the unpleasantness I hoped to accomplish. Foremost on the list was taxes. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know of my tax-joys. Last year was particularly nightmarish, and I didn’t intend to send the government $15,000 again this year, thank you. So, in reviewing my final pay statement, I realized that there was a substantial difference between the numbers on there and the final numbers I had in Quicken, as regards income.

In March, I went from a 1099 to a W2 contract. This means that work sends the taxes to the government for me, which is an infinitely less stressful arrangement (go ahead, you try setting aside $2,000 from every monthly check). I had them take out the maximum amount in taxes on my W2, figuring that would cover my Jan-Feb checks. Well, I sort of forgot that I also got paid for Nov-Dec after the first of the year, due to the fun invoicing lag time. So I had four months of untaxed income. OUCH. I panicked and had the payroll lady take another $1,000 out of my last check of the year, just to help lessen the pain of what I might owe.

So I figured I’d estimate my taxes to have an idea of how bad it might be in April. I don’t have anywhere near the deductions I used to. I found out along the way that I can’t deduct my traditional IRA anymore (there are income limits). Because of the weird switch between W2 and 1099, I might not be able to deduct much of my SEP-IRA, either. Having W2 income makes it look like you’re not self-employed, apparently? I dunno. But here’s what I discovered:

– I’m actually getting a refund of a few thousand bucks. WHEW.
– I’m having an accountant do my taxes this year. I’ll be damned if I’m submitting 14 forms without having a professional review them.

In all the financial madness, I upgraded Quicken to the sexy 2006 version, and did new budgets and plans and such. Man, I love that stuff. I also did exciting things like spend a few hours at the laundromat, fight my way to a machine at the gym, clean my house, buy two sets of shelves, assemble them, and pull out the contents of my closets to rearrange, and started making a charity-garage-sale-pile. And I bought a coffee grinder at Target, but still no coffee.

I was feeling a little cooped-up when my door beeped around 9. It was Chris, with coffee beans.

He’s so awesome.

Tuesday morning, I was running late for work, and just like magic, I could make coffee at home. I got here and spent most of the day in a strategic planning meeting regarding the future of the company. I started having terrible flashbacks to the Orion Consulting days, except that was totally ominous and this is very positive. I’m just not great with tech-industry buzzwords, I think.

I left work crabby as hell, mostly due to a PMS-tsunami. I went to the gym and lifted until my arms wouldn’t move anymore. I realized I had a bottle of ketchup, some old pita bread, and a bottle of Grain Belt I’ll never touch in my fridge, so I took off to go adventurous-grocery-shopping in St Paul with Chris.

On the way there, I was going around that curve on 35W and hit a pothole. I have previously noted that this pothole was the size of the crater on the moon that’s visible with the naked eye, but it was actually more like the size of the moon itself. I was sure I had to at least have blown a tire, but Chico was driving OK. I checked at Chris’ house; it looked a little low, but not bad. However, the wheel was vibrating. I knew I’d fucked up the alignment, at least.

As we turned into the parking lot at the store, he started making a horrible noise. The tire was flat. I called AAA and we went in to shop.

I love AAA. I will never, ever question that that yearly membership is worth it, since they do things like bring me gasoline when I’m stupid and run out of it in the parking ramp. And they tow Chico for free when he’s being a bitch. Also, they have cool maps. So, anyway, the towtruck guy showed up, we ditched our cart and ran out to sign the paper, then went back in to finish shopping. Chico was sporting the sexy red donut tire yet again, and we had 2 metric tons of food to survive on in case we got stranded somewhere along the way.

On the way back to his house, something was clearly wrong with Chico. He was making horrible grinding noises. I figured the brakes were messed up and scraping. We inflated the tire just to be sure it wasn’t going flat, too. He made us really good pizzas and coffee, and I rolled home slowly in the loudmobile.

This morning, the loudmobile and I drove up the street to Tires Plus, where I left him in the care of GoooooodMorningIt’sAGreatDayAtTiresPlusThisIsJeff!! and walked over to the transit station in Uptown. Holy crap, riding the bus is expensive now. It’s $2 each way during rush hour. Remember how public transportation was supposed to be accessible to people who can’t afford to drive a car? Not anymore. I caught the train and rode the 8 blocks to the government center, although I could’ve walked them faster. I guess it’d be useful if it was really cold out.

I hear Chico’s wheel is bent, and of course he thinks needs the ultrasexy Saab wheel, not just any regular wheel. In a couple hours and $550 (plus $2 for the bus), I’ll have him back, good as new. Well, except for his headlight and window. Man, Chico is being a jerk lately.

OK! I should maybe write more often so this isn’t so long. See you soon!

Jenni