a little bit of RANTING

Whoopie! No rain for the next three days. AND the temperature is raising, might be 80 by Wednesday. That will make Bill happy. But more rain for the weekend. Second wettest April since record keeping began. Poor farmers can’t get their crops planted. Last summer most of the corn and soybeans were lost because of drought. Sure glad I’m not a farmer.

Right after breakfast I’m going out in Jennie and get the last of the stuff out of her. Just pots and pans, cleaning stuff, under the sink bathroom stuff and the bedding. Maybe we’ll even start cleaning her. So much of the stuff that was in her this year belongs in the Alfa (our other motorhome a 40’ diesel with slides) so it is just stacked in the garage waiting till we go pick up the diesel and bring it home for a while. Anything that is a duplicate is going right straight to Goodwill! I say now.

We got some good news bad news in the mail. The good part our house taxes are half of what they were last year. Yeah! The bad part – that means the assessed value of the house is half too. Oh well we’re not going to sell anyway so who cares. While on the house we are still waiting for an estimate on fixing the ceiling downstairs and the floor upstairs from the water leak. In the meantime can’t use the bathroom upstairs. And when they start fixing them probably won’t be able to use either one for a couple of days. Interesting thought.

My poor laptop – I wanted to use it last night and discovered my brand new mouse won’t work. What is it with mouses and that laptop? Maybe it is just batteries – hope so. This is the second mouse that has quit working in a couple of months. Speaking of quit working – got a new battery for my watch and it is keeping time fine now. Thank goodness. But that means the last battery lasted only six months – that is strange.

Worked on our web page some yesterday. All the necklaces etc I made during our trip had to be added. Got the bracelets completely added but still have to finish the necklaces. Got them on the page but still have to do the individual close up pages. Those take a while.  Necklace page if you want to check them out. Wonder how that new law that is being talked about – the one dealing with state taxes on on-line sales will effect little web pages like ours?

The next part is RANTING!

I am still trying to get the taxes the state wants for not selling any merchandise straightened out. What a joke. Took forever to get a real person on the phone. They explained what to do and it all has to be done on-line. Have to find the forms (they can’t send them) fill them out saying we didn’t sell anything and that should do it. And of course it has to be done before May 15^th. So I went on line. First I had to register. No problem. Whoops. Problem. After I registered I got a notice that to get to the forms to fill them in I need an access code. But they can’t email it to me. They have to send it by snail mail. WHAT? Everything that I have to do HAS to be done on-line but the one thing they have to do comes by USMail in 7 – 10 days. Maybe.

While we were gone I got a letter from the IRS. Saying I owe them money from last year. And of course interest and penalties. But the strange part is according to their letter I over paid them. Huh? Or maybe I can’t do math any more. Their letter says

Tax you owe                2211.00

Payments                -   2233.00

Failure to pay                  22.00

Penalty                            66.33                                  

Interest                            31.60

Amount due                     97.93   by November 2012    - so of course there is now more interest due. Have not been able to get through to their phone – hours of wait time. When we’re in town next we’ll go to their office.

If we’d been home all this would be taken care of a long time ago. Going to work on my web page now see if I can at least get it finished. Still too cool and damp to go out to the RV.