Free File This, Biatch

I realize that, as lawyers, you are probably severely anal about your finances and already filed your taxes, received your refund, carefully researched the investment options, and tucked your refund away for retirement where it is earning 25% per year and you'll be able to retire on the interest alone by the time you're 35.

However, if you have not filed yet and you were thinking about either using H&R Block or buying TurboTax or something, you should know that a) H&R Block sucks total ass and I find more errors on returns they prepared than on the returns that are scrawled in crayon and covered with marijuana ash and sticky cookie crumb fingerprints and b) if you make less than $52,000 you can use TurboTax (and loads of other programs) for free through IRS Free File.

I think about work all the time, including when I am asleep, and I like getting things for free, so I thought I would share.

Things I Do When I'm Not Working

To escape from having to work on the house (and I mean sawing, lifting, nailing, sweating - not vacuuming, dusting, and other normal house activities) I decided back in October to take up some scheduled activities. I started playing my horn again in a community orchestra, I started taking Spanish classes, and during tax seasons I prepare returns for poor people (who, frankly, all make more than I do, which tends to dampen my warm fuzzy community service feeling.)

That was all great while I was unemployed, or worse still, when I was trying to be a real estate agent and did less than nothing all day. But now that I slave away for eight and a half hours a day, nearly half of which are pre-dawn, or might as well be, I've been kind of resenting having to come home and then leave again right away almost every day.

I know the alternative would be hauling boards and bags of trash up and down the stairs - clearly much more horrible - but I only know that in a vague theoretical way. My brain insists that if I quit band, I would get to come home from work, put on a sweatsuit, eat bonbons, and watch trashy tv.

Actually, now that I think of it, that's essentially what my job is like, except we can only watch tv on breaks and at lunch. (Today at lunch, for instance, we watched a "news" story captioned "Surpise...porn!") People seriously come in to work every day looking like they're wearing their pjs (or worse) and god knows we all consume our own weight in communal candy every week. It's your basic ideal situation.

Maybe what I actually want is to be at work all the time. Yes, that's right, I want to live at work. At work, I get free candy, subsidized meals that I don't have to cook myself, and endless supply of trashy gossip in the form of people's nasty-divorce-filled tax returns, free heat & hot water, someone else to clean the bathrooms, high security, and no responsibilities beyond the basic moral code, and even that is flexible. I don't even have a phone or internet access, so I'm completely unreachable to creditors, family, and the rest of the worst of humanity while I'm there. Plus after 8 hours you're on overtime, so I'd be raking in the cash.

Sick dream, non?

Down With Daylight Savings

I find it severely unfair that I had to get up at 4:45am this morning. And don't tell me that it was really 5:45 just because Congress decreed it so. It was 4:45, and I was so tired I thought I might vomit all morning. I spent the morning rounding down instead of rounding up in retaliation. Oh ok, not really, but I certainly fantasized about it. I'm going to bed at 9:30. I can't wait.

I got a voicemail from the Worthless HR Bitch this afternoon confirming that they have in fact revoked their offer back down to it's crappy original form. So no, WHRB, I am not still interested, but thanks so very much for all your gracious assistance. I'll just assume that blogging my answer is sufficient to inform them that I'm declining until I hear otherwise.

Their stupid crappy job does pay like $3000 more a year, but I think it's more worth it to stay at the IRS since if I ever were to get a law job, by some miracle, I would want to do tax law. I found a listing for a more interesting IRS job this morning too, so maybe that will turn into something.

My poor, innocent tv is trapped in the attic, which we can't get to because we're having the second floor floors finished this week. We gave serious consideration to setting up a ladder so we could climb through the third story windows to watch tv, but since we're in the suburbs now I was afraid the neighbors might call the cops or organize a petition against us or whatever angry suburban people do when they're not watching tv. We're listening to some cheerful thing about suicide on NPR right now. I miss my tv.

You Can't Make This Shit Up

So the gist of what's been going on is this:

DHS offered me a job about two months ago that sounded crappy and paid about the same as what I'm making now

I expressed disinterest in their crappy job at the rate they were offering

Last week they came back and offered me $5,000 more/year ($8k more than what I'm making now)

I immediately accepted the job

They revoked their offer in a voicemail in the middle of the night

I had my IRS union rep call the woman back

They reinstated their original offer with the low pay; the job still sounds crappy

I asked them to reinstate their second offer and explain what the problem was

The nasty woman from HR who left the voicemail sent me a series of emails suggesting that I find someone else to answer my HR-related questions

I contacted her supervisor this morning to determine to whom I should then be addressing my HR questions

The supervisor answered my questions

The nasty HR woman then emailed me answering the same questions

I just emailed the nasty HR woman suggesting that she not contact me again until she has new information to relay

And there we are.