Truth in advertising?

I was in Wal-Mart the other day (only because I had an unspent gift card from Christmas and no razor refills), and I wandered through the hair product aisle, looking for a possible new product to try, when I reached for a product that had "organic," "natural," and other such adjectives on the front, so I turned it over and saw the first two ingredients were isobutane and propane. So much for a natural hair product from Wal-Mart.

Good party

I'm recovering today from a night of gluttony. Last night a good friend of mine got married, and I sang at her wedding. She and her fiance had a pretty long ceremony (she's Episcopalian and he's Catholic, so they got married in the Episcopalian church, but with a marriage ceremony complete with communion) and they really did it up with the reception.

Since we had an hour and a half between the wedding and the reception, Ray and I went to the local dive bar with a few friends to have what we thought would be cheap drinks. I actually just wanted to go because I hadn't had lunch and was hoping to get some fries or something to tide me over until dinner. Turns out two pints of Guinness cost us $13! At a dive bar???? What a waste of money, considering we were going to a party with an open bar. Oh well.

When we did get to the reception, cocktail hour hadn't officially started yet, so we were ushered into another cocktail room where they had drinks, an antipasto bar, a crepe station, and some sort of carving station. Couldn't get much better than that, I thought, as I loaded my plate up with shrimp scampi crepes (yum!) and an assortment of olives and marinated eggplant. When the official cocktail room was opened, however, we were stunned to find a veritable cornucopia awaiting us.

To our left entering the room was a stir-fry station, where you could pick vegetables and sauces to be stir-fried together on a wok as you watch, Ã la Mongolian BBQ. To our right was a guy playing piano and electric piano, alternately, in a sort of lounge lizard style (I guess the electric piano had different instruments programmed in). Straight ahead was a huge circular antipasto display, the same as in the other room only more varied, including fruit and some incredibly tasty cheese and crackers. Along the left wall were all the cold things one could ask for: regular bar, martini bar, oyster bar. Along the right wall were all the hot things one could ask for: carving station, mussels in marinara, shrimp fra diavolo, and many more things I can't possibly remember.

All around the stations were spectacularly carved melons, displaying a scene of a fisherman sitting under a tree, a swan, hearts, and many more. The wedding itself didn't have a theme, per se, but it was just beautifully decorated.

I almost gorged myself during cocktail hour, especially since I heard someone say this was all we were going to get. But I stopped myself, and it's a good thing, too, because once they let us all into dinner (announcing it by having one of the wait staff wander around banging on a mini xylophone, very clever), I realized that what we had eaten was just the appetizer.

We started off with a salad, very tasty blend of sour and sweet with some sort of lemony vinaigrette paired with sugared walnuts. Next came a peach sorbet (to cleanse the palate), and then they brought out the main course: Chateaubriand or shrimp (or both). Obviously I had no beef, but the shrimp was smothered in butter and garlic, just the way I like it. We were served coffee before the cake cutting, and then after the cake was cut, we were ushered back out into the cocktail room where they had set up stations for waffles, more crepes, wedding cake (of course), a chocolate fountain, fruit, cannoli, etc. There were more drinks, too: a sambuca station was set up as well as some sort of hot chocolate type drink, ostensibly with alcohol in it (I wasn't drinking at that point in the evening, so I can only guess).

All during dinner we were entertained with a live band who were absolutely fantastic. Very energetic and very tight. They had their routine down, and it was excellent. I didn't dance at this party, mostly because I was having issues with my dress and Ray kept reminding me that every time I dance at weddings I complain about my knee and my ankles afterwards. I had a blast watching the guys go crazy, pulling out The Lawn Mower, The Sprinkler and even The Shopping Cart all over the dance floor.

So now I am home, trying to keep it easy and finish digesting all I ate last night. I didn't even drink that much, so I'm not too hung over, but it was a long night, and having to get up early for church didn't help things.

It is finished

Yes, ladies and gents, I have finished and sent in my taxes! And all before the midnight deadline! I did not have to file an extension, since Ray has kindly managed to Band-Aid my computer together enough so that it can limp with me to the finish line. I had to pay more money than I was hoping, but hey, that's my own fault for not paying enough estimated taxes during the year, and I know it.

I decided to send in my taxes rather than e-file because TurboTax actually charges $30 for the service of e-filing for you, and frankly, I'm already paying too much to the government right now. Give me a stamp and let me go to the post office, I say.

This year was even trickier than last year: TurboTax asked me more questions, different questions, and I got all confused and had to start reading tax code, which, of course, got me even more confused. After a very long talk with Ray, I decided that next year I'm letting his accountant do my taxes for me. There's only one more year of filing single before we get married anyway, and since we own a house together, figuring out who will claim what on whose return gets very complicated and frustrating. What with the amount of time I spent poring over my finances and the amount of money I spent buying TurboTax (plus the extra state of NY...I get NJ for free), paying some guy $150 and not having to worry about it isn't too bad a deal.

But I don't have to worry about that at least until next January. In the meantime, I'm off to my TiVo to catch up on all the crack TV I've missed for the past week.

Tax Blues

So I was working on my taxes all weekend, and being a self-employed singer, I actually have pretty complicated taxes with various deductions and mileage and things that need to be calculated. I could have been keeping a record of all these things daily, and I do actually keep pretty good daily records, but of course, I was waiting until the last minute to cobble everything together so I can enter it all into TurboTax.

I should have done all this in January when I was thinking, "Gee, maybe I should do my taxes now so I can get them out of the way." But did I? No, instead, I wait until right before EASTER, one of the busiest times of the year, to try to get everything done.

Still, I thought, it'll only take a few hours of intense work. Not too bad, right? I can do it.

Not bad thinking, except that the little hamster inside my computer decided that now was the time to give up the ghost. I was greeted on Monday morning by the blue screen of death, and although Ray has worked on it for two days, all I can do on my computer now is check my email and post this little blog. I tried doing three tasks at once about five minutes ago, and Windows told me there was a runtime error, so I quickly closed the third window and am frantically typing this so that I can get it sent off before my computer dies again.

In the meantime, I think I need to get an extension from the IRS, because I'm sure I won't get my taxes done in time. Argh.

Why did it take me so long to catch this?

After watching Ray watch The Incredibles for the umpteenth time, I realized that there is a MAJOR grammar blooper in a movie that will probably be influencing the way kids speak. When Mr. Incredible gets his first assignment from Mirage, she says, "We have something in common. According to the government, neither of us exist." I think it bugged me when I first saw it and maybe the second time, but I must have tuned it out the next 15 or 16 times it's been on the TV.

Yo, Disney/Pixar people!!! Your verb must agree with its subject. "Neither" is singular, and therefore the correct wording is "neither of us exists." Why did no one over there catch that? Is it in the script and Elizabeth Peña just didn't speak English too well and nobody bothered to correct her? I'm also a little shocked that there aren't any forums or blogs or any kind of commentary out in the great wide world of cyberspace about it either. Well, if no one else will speak up about it, I suppose I must.

Okay, I think I've seen this movie one too many times. I'm going to go do my taxes now...that should calm me down.

Purgatory

Most of the time, I'm very happy with my transcription job. I get flexible hours, it's close to home (sometimes I even get to work from home), and although I wish I was getting paid more, I'm not starving to death on my salary. There are the occasional inaudible meetings that get me frustrated, but then again, there are all sorts of interesting things I learn about when I'm transcribing meetings with doctors who are trying to cure cancer, meetings with bankers trying to make more money, interviews with crack and heroine addicts on the streets, and auto insurance claims. And between the oncologists and the crackheads, I have added a plethora of new words to my vocabulary.

But sometimes there are some seriously tedious jobs, and I happen to be taking a quick break from one of them right now. Sometimes we get medical or technical writers who have to interview an expert (doctor, computer guy, whatever) in order to write a white paper or a research grant, and they have to ask some pretty stupid questions if they want the whole story. I have a new respect for interviewers now, because it's a tough job, and if you're bad at making somebody open up, you're screwed. This guy I'm doing right now is actually a pretty good interviewer, but the subject matter (which is confidential, of course), is about the most BORING thing ever. I'm literally falling asleep while typing. Do you know how embarrassing it is to wake up to find that you've misspelled almost an entire paragraph?

It doesn't help that the sound quality is poor and they've got the window open, so I can hear the traffic and the wind and the occasional siren better than I can hear the interviewee. But I'm thinking that even if the sound quality were better, I still would fall asleep. It's obvious he's interested in this topic, but I can't see why. Typing this job reminds me of the reason why I was never any good in chemistry in high school: it was right after lunch, the teacher had a very slow, quiet voice, and he'd always turn the lights off and show us slides.

The sad thing is, I think there are three more hours left to transcribe...wake me up when I'm done.