Holy Fucking Shit, I Just Realized I Made A Huge Fucking Mistake On My Taxes

Please forgive me, and please don't judge me: I didn't realize that the state of Minnesota gives a standard deduction on income.

I was making one final pass-through of all my returns because I plan on sending them later today.  And I was looking at my state tax return and I saw the words, in bold, standard deduction.  Wait, I said to myself -- states are allowed to give standard deductions, too?!

Holy shit, that changes everything.  I was going to pay $846 in state taxes (and then I was going to complain about it here).  With the amended calculation, I now owe only $28.

I swear this is the first time I realized that the state gives standard deductions.  That made my mind race back to last year's return; I didn't take my deduction then either, did I?  Thank Buddha I still have a copy of that, because I looked at my 2018 state return and nope, I totally overlooked the standard deduction I got then, too.  So now I need to file an amendment to claw back some of the money I gave to the state last year.  (Aside: I have made a mistake on my taxes before -- many years ago on the federal side.  I don't remember the details, but I was determined to go back to that past year and amend that return, but ... shit, I don't remember why I didn't do it.  Either I couldn't find my past return in storage so I couldn't find the details or I just got busy and/or lazy and I forgot.)

I pride myself on being able to do taxes on my own.  But a tax preparer sure as shit wouldn't miss out on something as obvious, and as important, as a standard deduction that means a savings of over $800.  The only thing I am glad of is that no one else knows -- well, besides all of you reading this.

Is It Because Of Pineapple In The Pizza?

I detected a bit of pissiness from My Fucking Father at dinner today.  We got -- well, I brought for us -- Pizza Hut.  In the morning, Mother blindsided me with the request, but at least she jotted down the three ingredients in both of the pizzas (they're going for ten bucks each) she decided we were going to eat.  One of them had pineapple, and it's probably the first time that I both have ordered a pizza with pineapple and seen Mother enthusiastically wanting that topping on a pizza we bought.

Pineapples on pizza are a fucking abomination.  I love pineapple.  I sure as shit don't love it on a pizza.  There are toppings, foods, flavors that are associated with pizza, and there are toppings, foods and flavors that definitely are not.  People who like pineapples on pizza are nihilists, and they probably are the ones you see on those goddamn videos screaming at people because they were told to wear a mask in public.  Those people are fucked-up, is what I'm saying.

I dug into that pizza, sure.  But first I went to the kitchen to grab a plastic container.  I took out a slice and then carefully yanked all the pieces of pineapple out and off of the slice and put it into the container.  I was not going to throw them away, but instead eat them later this evening as a midnight snack.  It's healthy for me, and it's tasty, for sure.  But they don't belong on a pizza.  If they did, God would have made it so.  Well, pineapples on pizza are already around ... you get what I mean.

I knew such a diva move might not go over so well with my parents.  Mother, if she got pissed, didn't show it.  Father?  Eh.  He instructed me on how to say "two million" in Chinese, and then while I was standing above the garbage trying to yank a second paper plate off the bottom of the one I used to eat the pizza (we use paper plates when eating pizza because it's smart), he actually felt like he needed to tell me, "Well, throw that plate into the trash!"  No shit, Sherlock.  I really think he was so perturbed by the principle I adhered to that he got triggered and wanted to lash out at me.  Whatever.

In the meantime, I think Mother will not ask for pineapple the next time we eat pizza.  It is for the best.

Six Months Down, Six Months To Go

So in the fall of last year I was, obviously, renewing my health insurance.  When I got it for 2019 (which I signed up for when I started work there in 2018) I got the Cadillac plan -- high premiums for high deductibles, but more than any of the other plans available I got everything covered.

Why did I get the gold plan?  I don't know.  Maybe I was in a rush.  Or, maybe I knew I was in a rush and wouldn't have time to think this over, and so I got the most expensive plan just to cover everything I didn't have time to mull over.

Nothing extraordinary happened last year.  I had my usually doctor's and dentist's visits, saw my therapist, and got my nasal allergy medicine, but that's what happens every year, and so, even though I had peace of mind, there was no catastrophic accident that would have made me count my blessings that I upgraded my health insurance.  Therefore, back in the fall, I decided I would get the bronze plan, the cheapest available (well, the cheapest available from the health insurance company my psychologist prefers), the one with the highest deductible but the lowest premiums.

But should I have?  I was scared that karma and bad luck would mean that I would get into a car accident, be felled by a heart attack, need to go on medication for a chronic condition that developed this year, or something else crappy.  And then I would rue all the out-of-pocket costs I would have to pay but would not have had to shell out had I stayed on the Cadillac plan.  In the end, though, I figured that I was healthy enough whereby that decline in my health would not happen.  Besides, the money I saved in premiums would more than offset any new medicines or surprise visits to the doctor I would have had to pay out this year.

Well, all of that thinking sure as shit didn't take into account a pandemic for a virus that could kill or at least maim people for many, many years.  Some states, including Minnesota, are bending over backwards to help defray the costs associated with COVID-19, from antigen tests to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for long-term ICU treatment.  But I still have to think that the out-of-pocket costs would, in the long run, save me more money had I stayed on the gold plan and not switched to the bronze plan.

My reticence never really faded away when I decided on getting the cheapest health insurance.  My anxiety was compounded exponentially once the coronavirus hit.  So besides the other reasons to be scared of this virus, I'm afraid that if I get this, it'll wipe me out financially.  And that is why I take so many precautions in order to say away from this evil thing.

In a sense, I am counting down the days.  With June 30 in the rear view mirror, I am halfway through living life on the edge/on a bronze plan.  I just need to make it six more months, and then I'll be a good boy and pay the highest premiums for the best health coverage from now on.  Wish me luck.

To Be Part Of A Rebellion, It Helps To Tell People About It

I migrated this mass e-mail list I had onto my Yahoo!  I tried e-mailing everyone about my plans, and after I hit send I got this massive wave of "MAILER-DAEMON" and "returned mail" notices.  I sent it out to, I think, 150 people and I got spammed back on, like, 90 of them.

Is Yahoo! Mail not able to send out the same e-mail to 150 people, or is 60% of my mailing list fake e-mail accounts??

Aggravated

I'm just so fucking aggravated right now.  Nothing in particular is getting to me.  I'm just "tirangry," and I need more sleep and I'm not getting it.  Plus I have to find out this voting question for Mother and I have taxes that need to be done, and then this college club thing hanging over my head ... put together they're pissing me off.  I need sleep and I need to be left alone, and I have neither right now.  I just hope I don't snap on someone at work today.

Maybe I should talk to my therapist about it when he phones me this afternoon.

Bad Day At Work

We were down a person, which is not the worst thing in the world given that it's a Monday and so there isn't a whole lot of work.  But it's the vet, and she knew what she was doing.  Of the two of us working today, I was the more tenured employee, and that should send shudders throughout the entire company.

It was not a good day at work, mostly because we missed deadline.  It is pretty damn hard to miss deadline on a Monday, but we did it.  Yes, a third person would have helped.  But frankly, the most important folders were given to us plenty of time before deadline.  We just ... well, I just kind of lost track of time and decided to do other things besides meeting deadline.  Missed it by five Minutes when I knew that if I had just focused on those important folders and forgot the rest (the ones I took time on before deadline), we would have been fine.  The vet would have set me straight, or even took care of all those important folders without either of us knowing.  But no excuses today; I was the vet, and I should have kept my eye on the ball.

I am also not happy with myself for losing my temper on my co-worker.  She is still relatively new, and as I learned working beside her for the first time, she can be a bit of a flibbertigibbet.  I spaced out around deadline, yet I was still cognizant of deadline when she began talking to herself in the afternoon and asked me one too many questions to my id's liking.  So, when I later asked her to do something and she was concentrating on other things, prompting her (of course) to say, "What's that?" I shout-repeated myself.  Man, it's not her fault I fucked up.  She's just as confused as I am, probably moreso, and people (including the vet) are being patient with me when I ask questions ... which I still do almost two years into this job.

Maybe because it was a Monday and it was just the two of us, we'll be cut some slack.  But the record and truth are there because I had to tell the truth, else my boss would know and know that I lied.

Uh ... must do better, I guess.

Thoughts On A Video Conference

• I'm so pissed off that I tried to get a word in edgewise at the tail end of our conference, but everybody was talking so there wasn't a good time, and then the host signed off and everybody was like, "See ya!" and all I could do to be a good guest was also say, "See ya!"  I feel like such a schmo.
• It was two hours long, like the last meeting, and I am scared that further meetings will also be two hours long.  I have a social meet-up on Sunday nights.  I had to miss that one because of this.  I think the topic at hand is serious enough that I should meet there next week, which is planned, but honestly, I don't know if I'm going to like that I'll have to miss my social meet-up for the time being.
• When you have a lot of people passionate about the same subject with the same goal of solving it, you will still have a lot of opinions on how to go about doing that.  It's inevitable.  But we got really, really bogged down on the edits of a letter that we are about to send out.  The navel-gazing really got to me, and by the looks of the screenshots it started to bore and frustrate the other participants.  That is why I hate meetings.
• And yet ... I feel as though some people feel that they were not heard.  The crux of it is one participant who called because ... well, I don't know we couldn't see her.  Anyway, she was droning on about what she didn't like about the letter.  Much of it made me roll my eyes, but she did stumble on a point I will twist into my own criticism that we should bring up in the letter: The current "zeitgeist" about racial injustice might be an issue we could raise in this letter, and knowing the shocking changes that have come in the wake of the "wokeness" over racial inequality, maybe could use that to our advantage, starting with this letter.  Now, I have no idea how racial inequity has anything to do with college clubs.  But if it gets us closer to our aims, hell yeah, I'd use it.
• But back to trying to say something and then shrinking down to not say anything instead.  How humiliating!

I Will Masturbate To The (Of-Age!) Daughter

So on Facebook I saw a photo of someone competing in a bodybuilding competition or a bikini competition or a competition hybridizing the two.  She looks hot -- firm, beefy, like she could choke me out while masturbating me!  I have decided to jerk off to her.

I am not Facebook friends with her.  I am Facebook friends with her mother.  She is, I believe, a former bodybuilding/bikini competitor.  She might be in her fifties, but she still works out, and mostly does so in skimpy clothing, showing her still-tight belly.  In fact, there are a couple photos of the two of them working out together, both midriffs bared.  The mom could still compete if she wanted to.

In replying to the daughter's photo I told the mom that she must be proud.  And she was.  And that got me fantasizing that I was fucking the both of them at the same time.  (Never mind the husband/father, who is also in many of these photos.)

I know that the daughter is of-age.  Is it weird that I'm going to rub one off to her just because I "know" her through the mother?

No.  Fuck it.  Cancel me.

And I Am Coronavirus-Negative As Of The Early Afternoon Of June 26

I was told by the person who swabbed my nose that the result could come in half a day.  I would be notified through e-mail; if it were negative, I would be told to go to my online chart, and if it were positive, I would get a call.  Got an e-mail at 12:03 this morning, and in my chart it said I tested negative.  Technically that's less than 12 Hours/half a day.  That is fast.

Now, of course, and like I said before, I hope I didn't get the virus while I was waiting at the hospital to get a test for which I tested negative.  Because that would be ironic ... and stupid.

Not Quite What I Planned

Thought going to a clinic to get tested for COVID-19 would be good.  But then the woman ahead of me said she was feeling chills and having coughs, and now I'm thinking that even though I might test negative, I could actually get the virus as I wait to get tested.  Wouldn't that be ironic ... and stupid?

And then for some damn reason I waited in the doctor's room for a half-hour -- after the attendant told me that someone would come in and swab my nose "in a second" -- to get tested.  I think someone forgot about me.

That ruined my plans to go walk at Lakewood.  I only had time to get donuts at Glam Doll.  There was a conference call with the alumni association I needed to take, and by the time I got to Glam Doll I was already late, so I took the call there.  And that was for half an hour and I got a whole ton of bad news there.  Plus, it was hot, hotter than I thought the meteorologists said it would be.

And tomorrow morning I'm helping my parents mow the yard of some property they are trying to renovate.  I could be there for hours if the lawn is large enough.  Man, this is too much ruckus for me.