Quickies

1. Is anyone else as stupid as I am at tax time? I made up a spreadsheet of our gross income and expenses (both husband and I are gainfully employed but do freelance writing as well, makes for lots 'o' fun at this time of year) as a way of making life easier for our accountant, and hopefully earning a few brownie points with the guy (we're both scared of him, I don't know why). Anyway, I was looking at the income totals and thinking Sweet Merciful Crap, What Did We Do With All Of That? and got all depressed about how useless we are and how screwed we are as there's no way we'll have enough expenses to offset our freelance income, blah blah blah.

Until the husband reminded me that I was looking at the gross income, not net, and that the government takes a good chunk from us to pay for all sorts of services in this socialized nation of ours.

Am an idiot. But at least not quite as spendthrifty an idiot as I thought a few hours ago.

Update 4/30/09: The government owes me $520. Huzzah!

2. Kate e-mailed the other day that her husband's purchased a camper/trailer type thing. This heralds the dawn of a whole new world of blog posts as my extremely soignee friend (I've never seen her with less than perfect nails, and rarely with a hair out of place) who's often joked that she "may cottage but never camp", takes her husband and brood of 4 kids all under the age of 9 out into the wilds, such as they are here in Southern Ontario. I may submit a grant request to the Canada Council for funding to allow me to film Kate camping.

3. Susan Boyle has a pretty enough voice but not an extraordinary one and I think the "voice of an angel" type comments are going a bit far. Let me put it this way, I don't think she'd survive a university opera program. However, I am happy that something nice is happening to a woman who seems to have had a bit of a dull life and I do hope that she doesn't get taken advantage of or end up living in her vehicle as per some other televised talent show winners have. J. D. Fortune, I'm looking at you.

Kara