Pretty vacant

[randy_byers]

I've been feeling out-of-sorts since yesterday. Maybe a comedown from the vacation. Where'd that damn beach go? Why do I have to start thinking again? On the plus side, I did get friended on Facebook by one of the New York crew the other day. I guess it wasn't all a dream.

My big goal today is to do my taxes. I was thinking of doing it electronically at www.irs.gov. Anybody ever do it that way?

I went to Vanguard at Andy and Carrie's last night. It was good to see a finished copy of Slow Train to Immortality (the British fanthology I edited with the Fishlifters) and to hear Corflu and travel stories from Jerry and Suzle. Good to talk movies with Craig Smith and GPS with Victor. Got a kiss from Carrie for bringing her a bottle of St Bernadus Pater 6. That was rather nice of me, wasn't it? ("This beer tastes like unicorns and rainbows had sex in my glass," according to a review at Beer Advocate.) I still smell of wood smoke from the little fire we huddled around outside under the deck until it started to rain. The weather sure felt wintery yesterday. Where'd that goddamn beach go?

Urg. Taxes.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Beautiful day for a resurrection!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

He inquired:
"Please inform me, Sir,
By what system of thought
And what technique of meditation
I can apprehend Tao?
By what renunciation
Or what solitary retirement
May I rest in Tao?
Where must I start,
What road must I follow
To reach Tao?"

Such were his three questions.
Non-Doing, the Speechless One,
Made no reply.
Not only that,
He did not even know
How to reply!

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

If you constantly regard Tao as extraordinary, then it remains unknown and outside yourself -- a myth, a fantasy, an unnameable quantity. But once you know it, it is yours and part of your daily life.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Nice one!

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I will be so rude as to remind you that the damn beach is right where you left it. You're the one who came and went.

The good news is that you can do it again. To that beach, or to any number of other contenders.

I'm totally with you on the annoyance of required thinking, and taxes, too. I haven't filed directly at irs.gov, but I do use their fill-in form PDFs. I used TurboTax for the first couple of years after I moved here, and hated it every time. Well, every part except the ease of electronic filing and the speed of refunds when I had them coming. My problem with TurboTax is that all of my business accounting and prep work leaves me with numbers that go on specific lines on Schedule C and TurboTax never tells you where it's going to put the numbers you give it in response to its annoying questions.

Good luck.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I know other people who have used TurboTax and liked it, but they weren't filing business taxes. It's all Greek to me, so I'm feeling my way through. I still do a paper fanzine, so maybe I should just file paper taxes. On the beach! (Which I'm pretty sure abandoned me, and not the other way around.)

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Yes, on the beach! It's all attitude, don'cha know. Even if those bastards I call friends stopped publishing Attitude, and only ran the one convention, too.

(As for abandonment: Bad beach! No brewski!)

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I use TurboTax and like it. But I have relatively simple taxes (not owning a home or, this year, having any income). I used it online this year. It made me a little nervous to put that information online, but the process itself went smoothly.

And I'll get the refund in a few days, as opposed to a couple weeks.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Shock! Horror! Looks as though I owe money this year. Not sure how that happened.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

Am a bit surprised that the page advertising Slow Train To Immortality doesn't give any indication as to what the collection includes. Guess I'll have to wait until my copy turns up in the post.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

There are over thirty pieces in it, so it's probably hard to know where to start to give an overview. I'm going to guess that you've seen most of it before, but hopefully it will still be of interest as an assessment of the era.

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

It's more a matter of Mark asking me for suggestions about what to include. I'm curious to see if any of my suggestions are amongst the finalists.