(no subject)

I've been puddling my way through the next bit of my taxes. I must be making progress, but I'm at that space where some sets of numbers go on forever and others are very mysterious. This is one of the years I was rather ill, so my records aren't as complete as they should be. Since these taxes are being done in another year when...yes, they're running late.

I was all sorted to blitz them in a few days, months ago. I announced it with far too much hubris, here. Life happened. Of course life happened. Life and taxes and hubris don't mesh well. Anyhow, if you know why I was paid $440 not long before my 2010 birthday, feel free to explain it. Otherwise I shall just plough through the papers until I have the information.

Taxes are a necessary evil, but at certain times of year the necessity and the evil both overwhelm.

Part of the problem is that I have to keep a modicum of decorum. I cannot play mild practical jokes in my taxes. it's so tempting. It's so very tempting. Vade retro! I shall prevail (with grand sobriety)! And I shall finish this one set of records before I sleep. The rest can wait until Sunday.

(no subject)

The problem with the first real cold snap of the year is that it ought to be a time for conviviality. Mulled wine and friends around a fire. Roast chestnuts. Instead it's (this year) first week of term, last chance to do taxes, the time when all those articles are almost due and, of course, one of my deadline-periods for my PhD (not the major deadlines, but the small ones leading up to them). Also, my place has to be in order for tomorrow morning because the curtains guy is coming to measure up.

I've reached the stage with my papers where I'm putting all the paper I don't need for six months into the one drawer. This is a bad thing and I swore I would never do it again. But it will give me the time to get everything done. It will also enable to see what I haven't done of all my lists of things.

The good thing about the paper sort is that I find things. Day two of my blogversary, therefore, is two postcards, to be sent on Wednesday to the first two people who provide me with addresses by then (by email, IM, etc). They're from the Handwritten exhibition at the National Library. One is Handel's Salve Regina and the other is of a page from a c1500 Book of Hours.

I'm only going to give things away until I get to the post office. After then I will find other ways of celebrating.


PS I keep reading printouts that say 'draft time travel novel' as 'daft time travel novel.' All my fiction has an element of daftness, so this works far too well.

(no subject)

Taxes took the whole day (taxes and paper sorting, really) and they're done.

The burglation moved more paper from place to place than I believed possible even having said it before. I still haven't exhausted the changes rung on my flat. I found a pouch that once contained jewellery underneath everything, so it was all disturbed. Which I knew. Which is why the taxes have taken forever. The bad side of this is that my other tasks are still be finished (none of the deadlines have shifted) and the good news is that I've done a lot of clearing in obscure places. Again.

First thing tomorrow I have several trips to the rubbish bins, as I have a lot of recycling and garbage from all this amazing effort. Maybe my flat will look tidier then. It certainly doesn't now. Nor am I doing any of the work I really ought to do tonight. I have an excuse. Tax gave me an allergic asthma attack. Seriously it did! OK, so it was the accumulated dust that provoked it, but the dust was in my tax papers and so I am antishistamined and very sleepy. It's a good night for lolling around in my PJs and drinking tea, in fact.