25 Apr 05

There’s so much I’ve should’ve been writing about the past two weeks. For whatever reason it didn’t happen. I guess I’ll blame the dozen overtime hours I put in at work during that period. I already feel like I’ve been treading a fine line in terms of free time and when what little I have is cut, anything that requires effort suffers. I am an excuse maker.

I had dinner with my dad this evening at the Beltline Bar. He told a story about my cousin dousing tennis balls with gasoline, lighting them on fire, and playing tennis while his parents were gone on vacation. I was highly amused and jealous that I never thought of that as a kid.

About two weeks ago I received a letter from the IRS stating that I never payed my federal taxes last year. I was very much confused by this since I specifically remember driving to the post office about an hour before it closed on April 15 a year ago to mail out my forms and payment. I confirmed the IRS accusation though when I looked at some old bank statements and couldn’t find a record of any large check clearing around tax time. I suppose the USPS let me down, but I guess it’s also my fault for not confirming that my check actually arrived in Kansas City. You see, I have two checking acounts. One that I pay attention to, where our paychecks are deposited and where all of our bills are paid out of. And one that I had before I got married that I basically ignore, which has slowly been dwindling as I occasionally make withdrawals from it. It was from this second account that I wrote a thousand dollar check then promptly forgot about. Tomorrow I hope to make a stop at the local IRS office to see if I can straighten this mess out, but I expect that a “lost in the mail” story won’t fly and I’m going to end up paying some fat interest and penalties. This sucks, but I guess it could be worse. Of course the other bad thing is that I was in such a rush to get my taxes out last year that I never made backup copies. I guess I’ll just redo them if I have to.