Started on income taxes Saturday afternoon. Every year I say it will be easier next year. This year it was mostly technical stuff involved in using software that made it harder. Got locked out of the old Cash App Taxes account. The only solution was to call an 800 number. I don't do 800 numbers unless I'm really desperate. Will get it straightened out by next year, so everything will be easier. Went to TurboTax (TT) instead. It is harder to use if you know what you want to do. There is some false information floating around the internet that you have to upgrade to their most expensive version to do some things. I ended up double-checking them by hand just to make sure that was not the case. Because I had to override one entry, it would not let you e-file, even if I wanted to. Which I don't. Discovered a hack to solve the problem of the bothersome oil/gas well royalty. Play dumb when it asks you questions. Never confirm you have royalties, and NEVER use the keyword "royalty", not even in a brief description typed on a form. If you do, TT will grab that number and put it somewhere way more complicated than necessary. In the long run the whole process took longer than if I had done the taxes with pencil, paper and hand calculator, but at least there will be no arithmetic errors. All the problems were solved eventually, except one. The repercussions from that won't be felt until they receive this year's return. I may grumble about that in another post. This one is already too long. . .
My daughter was complaining this year too. But she said if she makes a mistake, they generally just send her a note 'fixing' it. She said issues are with capital gains/loss forms. I think she will just skip some and have them correct it since they are loss this year.
Exactly! . Capital gains. That was my problem also. After I did all the checking by hand, to make sure the less expensive package handled it correctly, I found the worksheet on TurboTax. It wasn't easy to find. A lot of wasted time this year.
Back when I had to file taxes, I'd set stuff up in a spreadsheet and let it do the math. Mine were not real complicated, so it was easy enough to research the current formulas & such. I tag the cells with the place the number belonged on the forms, both Federal & State.
I learned how to do very basic spreadsheet programming one time, when I was a member of a health and weight loss forum. I was in charge of an exercise challenge with several components (hours of cardio, upper/lower body strength, core, etc), for several participants. I had to post weekly progress spreadsheets. It was fun to learn. Then my pc crashed and wiped out everything. I had prepared no backup for the software. Didn't have the energy or time to start over. Interest in exercise had waned by then anyway.
I got a rather curt text message from the Angi's List sod man Tuesday saying... No one could get any St. Augustine yet, and that I might try calling someone in Florida, and that it's too early to plant St. Augustine anyway. I sent him a message to clarify that I wasn't in a hurry to plant now, but he never replied. Then an email from the first sod man 12 miles away came last night saying he could deliver on April 24th if I was still interested. A coincidence? Sent the first sod man a polite message saying I found some. I hope I didn't make him angry. It was only a delivery, not like a big landscaping job. Anyway, it looks like it's finally going to work out. I had given up.
Contractors are a different breed. It's a rare find to have blue collar skills and the appearance of being quasi-businesslike. So are you gonna plant the sod when it arrives in 12 days, since you think it's too early now?
Yes. It was the sod man that said it was too early and that I should call Florida. Not me. (see edit) I don't think it will be too early when it arrives. I planned to get started today by spraying the ryegrass near the bare spot with Roundup. But they are predicting 20 mph winds, already 14 mph this morning. The rest of it has to either be mowed low or sprayed for sprigging. I'll go out in a few minutes and see how hard it will be to stick a shovel into the roots. This is exiting.
So are you just gonna lay the sod on top of the existing grass and hope that it takes root, or do you at least break it up with a rototiller or something? I've never laid sod, and have only seen it don on new construction.
One pallet will be laid out with rectangular pieces end to end the usual way, on top of a bare spot with no ryegrass. It is also the low spot in the yard. The other 2 pallets will be used for sprigs everywhere else. There is no video for commonsense grass sprigging. The closest is for planting pine tree seedlings. Click on link below. Substitute 1. Handful of grass for a pine seedling 2. A shovel for a dibbler (his tool) 2. One foot between instead of 6 feet A 23-year-old tree planter from Quebec made a new world record planting 23,060 trees in 24 hours (youtube.com)
Hey! Instead of doing all that work, you could spray your ground green like they do in some desert yards in AZ
OK, I heard sounds overhead BEFORE 10:00 this morning. Then on the stairs... Hubby came past the kitchen to the garage. Where was he going? To cut up the big arbor vitae that had fallen with that insane heavy snow. Uhmmmm Not only would he throw the pieces around the perimeter of the property (I know this because I have to clean it up and deal with all branches he has touched) This is a man who can't even walk as well as I can on my one leg and he almost falls over when he bends down and then gets up again. So I put on my mom voice and told him why that was a bad idea. He comes into the kitchen for coffee. I ask if he was going to use the electric saw. (I have used that after storms.) He said, yes. I asked if the batteries were charged. He said he didn't know (they are next to the refrigerator) I said, plug them in and I will cut the broken part off at the base and see about the rest. He said, Don't. You will hurt yourself. Awwwww...I think he was doing this to save me instead of just being a MAN. But, shoot! I can hurt myself while I am sleeping these days.
That's an idea. I need the exercise, but maybe not that much. We'll see. Just sitting around all winter, several body parts have decided to act up. My mother and I planted a few hundred pines like that one time. It's a lot easier with 2 people. One to dig and stomp, and the other to put the tree in the ground. The last job is the hardest. You have to bend over. You have to rotate jobs.