Fan Girl Wannabe

Attempted to go to bed at a reasonable hour - 10ish last night, what with the lack of sleep on Mon night and the early start to the day. However, as we were heading that way, the girl comes home and announces her mini tire blew out just down the street. Le sigh. La drama. Whatev. She's a big girl, she's made her choices this month, she's going to have to figure something out for herself before I shell out anymore cash.

Get in bed. What's that noise? Apparently M, the neighbor is doing something in his garage. From the banging around, he's looking for something. I'm sure it will quit soon (he finds it or gives up, right?) Wrong. Now there is the distinct sound of a grinder on metal. This goes on for awhile. A long while. I try meditating it out of my awareness. DH is working on his own issue (tooth pain) so the noise is worse for him, with the added bonus of sounding like a dentist's drill. (He did call the dentist yesterday, only to learn that the office is closed for vacation this week.)

Around 11:30, DH says, "I'm so glad M has nothing better to do than grind metal at this time of night," which is followed sometime after by blessed silence. Woah, my ears are ringing. Okay, we can do this thing. We both readjust position for maximum comfort. It's about 11:55. Then, I don't know what, but it sounded like a CHAIN SAW started up next door. "OH. MY. GOD!" DH jumps out of bed, puts on his slippers, and stomps out into our driveway.

"HEY! DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S PAST MIDNIGHT?! GET A !##$!#!!**% CLUE AND QUIET DOWN! Then he stomps back into the house still yelling about people thinking building a FRAKKIN BOAT in their garage in the middle of the night is a good idea.

Blessed silence again. I'm thinking the neighbors in at least the 3 closest houses to ours are quietly cheering for DH.  Of course, sleep does not come easily to the justifiably riled.

Should be doing morning yoga, would rather be sleeping.

Finally!  Therefore, I give you Sting!

I got back from MN on Thursday afternoon, and passed out in deference to the hangover I'd had to ignore since 6:22 am. (MB is not allowed to buy me anymore beer, especially not Alpha King!)

Friday I went to the office and the box was on my desk.  Spent half the day getting stuff reloaded and making sure the email would work and transferring files and favorites since I'll be back on the road to Joliet (via Waukesha) come Monday morning.  Mostly the process went well, except for the fact that while trying to load Quicken on his laptop, DH encountered a fatal error that somehow also managed to wipe the active and backup files that I had put on my flashdrive for transfer.  No, we don't know how it happened.  I was seriously pissed though.  


Now that I'm reconnected to the web, I can catch up - spent a lot of time last night reading stuff I couldn't read at work, and I've got to beta a story that's been waiting for a month, and finish writing the story I'd revived from the dead right before disaster struck.  I've got a new list of "posts I haven't made" which includes restaurant, movie and book reviews, Mavis's head shots, a conversation with a soldier, and my mid-life crisis.  MB recommended "The Art of War" as a business read, and I'm seriously considering some continuing ed to get a couple of certifications.  So, there's a lot of stuff in my brain right now, and I wouldn't mind letting it leak out all over my journal :)  But not today.  

Today's plan is to make a shopping list, get groceries, make sure the boy gets to his various appointments, make sure DH has all the stuff and support he needs to make his contribution to the "Food on Fire" themed ABDC tonight, prep my "Fire Extinguishers" beverage (a fancy cucumber martini), spend the afternoon catching up with friends, spend the evening eating and drinking (but only to excess), and find out if my haircut renders me less kissable. Tomorrow will be brunch, laundry, housework, work work (just a little) and early to bed.  There might be some time for journaling.

Man! I totally dragged my feet on this one, but tonight I just decided to gut it out and finish.  There were a few minutes of panic when TurboTax announced we owed WI $3800 (!!), but after careful review, I found where I had neglected to enter the state withholdings into my W-2 section.  Whew!  Once that was done, we had a substantial REFUND! woot.  It made sense too, because the state refund is always bigger than the federal for us.

The one thing that annoys me about TurboTax is that it calculates your refund or amount due on the upper corner of the screen so that every time you make a change, that number could also change.  When I thought I was finally done, and knew what my state return would be, I pressed one last button and it changed again!  I have no idea why, but it added $150 to my refund.  Weird.

So now comes the annual debate over what to do with the refunds.  I'd like to knock out some of the smaller medical balances and get them over with (ambulance, my mammogram, kl's physical), or we could use the money to pay down our line of equity balance.  Which actually makes more sense because there's no interest accruing against the medical balances.

But, we've been working on an investment plan, and the refund could get some things we want to do off the ground.  Which, if they go well, will allow us to pay all of the above.  So there's the conundrum.  I hate carrying debt.  But I'd like to generate some extra income.  What to do, what to do?  I suspect DH and I will be having heavy discussions about this for the next couple of weeks.