Oh taxes... You're so... taxing!

Growing up, I never had a job with a steady paycheck. I was involved in a number of extracurricular activities in high school and my parents never forced me to look for one. (It helped that I didn't own a car until a couple of years ago and didn't have any substantial expenses, particularly when I lived with my parents.) I've mentioned in previous blog entries that there were a couple summers that I "worked" at the local theater, but more often than not, that was volunteering or at most, a couple hundred dollars for a whole summer. During college, I had three jobs (food service, music office worker, CA/RA), but since my parents took care of managing all the financial aid stuff and since I was a dependent of theirs, they took care of my taxes.

I wanted to include that information as my way of saying that I still feel new to doing taxes. The first year I was here, my mom took care of taxes because it was working with both Minnesota and Missouri tax paperwork, but since then, I've taken care of it. Well, I take it to a tax place and they take care of it. I know there are plenty of software packages that include DIY tax preparation, but at this point, I'm okay with spending some money to have someone else look over my stuff, ask me pertinent questions, and file it all electronically. Based on previous experience, this would be me doing my own tax prep:

I got my taxes done today and I was in a panic this morning because I was worried I wouldn't find all of the forms I needed. Fortunately, I was able to print off new copies of things like my W-2 and 1098-T. I am very thankful for where I'm at right now because it makes filing taxes quite easy (since I don't have to worry about rent or mortgage payments, etc). Oh, and even with my morning panic, I was only at the tax place for about 15 minutes, which was very much appreciated. I think my federal refund even went up by a hundred bucks or so this year, so that's fun. Then again, I may just deposit the check and immediately turn around and write a check for a few months of car payments.

The two holidays that caught my eye today are Trading Cards for Grown-Ups Day and Buddha Day. Kyle is gungho about Magic: The Gathering and in college, he made sets of cards every year for the people he spent a lot of time around. He didn't just take a picture and slap it on an existing card - he literally created hundreds of cards (over 4 years) catered to specific people, events, or running gags. I don't really know much about MTG, but the cards actually seemed balanced and appropriate (not just making people a 12/12 creature with a whole bunch of attributes and no summoning cost). I think Kyle also used the cards to learn his residents' names the two years he was a CA.

As for Buddha Day, I went and read the section on Buddhist in my world religions I got for Christmas. The section on Buddhist was pretty fundamental, but still quite informative. After reading it, I had some different questions, so hopefully I can pursue those either online or with some of my students. (One of the questions was how the Buddhist faith would view the South Korean law that all male citizens must serve two years in the military.)

Well, I have some various things to attend to this afternoon. I know that Minnesota got hit with snow again recently, so if you're up north, stay warm! Have a great evening!