It's April. What does that mean? It means it's time for me to bitch about taxes again.

It's amazing, that for twenty years now, I have made an effort every single year to make this as easy and painless on myself as possible.

I'm not talking about saving money, or getting the biggest deduction like most of the pathetic U.S. ... I'm just talking about making it easy to get the shit paid so I can get back to my life.

What's most amazing is that I have failed every single year for the past 20.

Well, we got another few inches of snow last night, but far less than the doomsayers were predicting. Anyone run out of toilet paper yet?

I came in to work early this morning. It was worth it. With the roads nearly empty, I was able to fly along in my Subaru ... skidding everywhere, snow flying ... with no worries that the other drivers would ruin my fun.

Got just a bit of snow over the weekend, and getting just a bit more now.

I'm sure lots of folks north of me are laughing at how inept Pittsburgh is in dealing with a paltry 20" of snow. But this is a 5 year storm (i.e. a storm that only happens, on average, every 5 years) and the city's infrastructure is really only designed for the average storm. Seems kind of stupid to me, but I only pay a small amount of taxes compared to everyone else, so nobody cares about my opinion.

Anyway, my house looks beautiful covered in snow. Looks like the cover of a christmas card:

This weeks Triangulation podcast revealed something that was surprising to me: most writers don't work anywhere near as hard on their stories as I do.

This wouldn't be surprising to me if the other writers I was talking to hadn't been considerably more successful than me.

I try desperately to put content on this site, and usually fail because I'm too busy with other things.

But there's one thing you can count on to rile me up enough to cause me to write, no matter how busy I am.

Yes, it's tax time again, and boy is my asshole sore.

Granted, I'm not getting raped nearly as bad as H&R Block raped my friends Paul and Jamie, but the IRS and their lackies are trying ... oh, they're trying.

I had pancakes for breakfast this morning. They were delicious.

To most people, this ordinary act wouldn't seem like much to write about, but it was important to me. Symbolic. It was the lifting of a curse.

See, last year when I invited a good friend to be my roommate, I started making pancakes for breakfast on weekends. I tried doing this a few times, and she seemed grateful but never ate much. Later, she admitted that she didn't really like pancakes.

It's odd to remember my personal battles as I grew up as I watch others fight with those same battles. It's interesting that many people who've known me only a little while don't believe me when I try to tell them what kind of person I once was.

... to be fated, to telling only lies.

There are times when I think of myself as just another person in the world, and there are other times when I wonder if there's something about me that's
inherently different, or at least unusual.

Haven't put anything up on this blog for a while. Bought a house, kayaked a lot, generally very busy. I plan to start remedying that, starting with this post.

Tripped across a fascinating quote the other day: