Serenity

Stats

" Do you find yourself noticing the time of day, or the exit number on the highway, and thinking, “that’s a great Code section!” 

Is your sense of humor limited to giggling uncontrollably at tax-themed double entendres like “hot assets” and “dynamic scoring?" . . .  

Below, I’ve put together a handy chart that will give you the necessary mix of football facts and socially-acceptable tax talking points to make you the life of the party. Memorize it, stuff it in your sock, tattoo its contents on your hand…whatever it takes, but whip it out on gameday, and you’ll show your significant other’s friends that you’re not the one-dimensional stereotype they accuse you of being behind your back. " "  

Handy Chart

Patent Application #12647208

An alarm clock that smells like coffee. The snooze alarm smells like bacon.

(Future models will feature corresponding sound effects.)

I Take It All Back!

After the lease was signed and we had moved into our present apartment, our landlords advised us that things might be a little loud for a while. They had some water damage which necessitated removal of some the tile in their upstairs residence (by jackhammer, apparently).

The week after, they decided to refinish their hardwood floors and let us know there would be some additional noise while workers sanded.

What they didn't tell us was, basically, it would be noisy every day thereafter for one reason or another: Mr. Landlord would be making a wooden boat in the shop next door to our bedroom, they do laundry every morning at 5 a.m., they never sleep, and they travel at odd times. Oh, and there's no insulation between the floors.

We've not complained much. (I mean, to them.) We've made polite requests from time to time to keep things quiet and only once did Hubby find it necessary to march upstairs (at 2 a.m.) to ask them to keep it down. Most of the complaining, however, has occurred right here.

And now I wonder: Do our landlords read this? Because last night (after yesterday's post) they hosted a circus. Yep, kids, animals, the whole works.

At least, that's what it sounded like. There were kids, definitely, running around, screaming and dropping things. I could hear that quite clearly. I think there might have been a pony in the living room and, quite possibly, an elephant in the dining room.

The good news is we are moving. The bad news is we might not get much sleep if my landlord sees this.

Could You Keep It Down, Please?

Bumped into our landlord recently and we updated him on our upcoming move.

(For those of you who have just tuned in, we are in the process of buying a condo in the Portland area. We only live there Monday through Friday while Hubby has a long-term, temporary work assignment. We are home, in our regularly scheduled house, on weekends.)

He told us how much he has enjoyed having us as tenants. In fact, we've been the best tenants ever.

I gushed at how nice it was to be staying in their mother-in-law apartment and how much we enjoyed the beautiful deck during nice weather months. Because, that was easier than saying You were the loudest neighbors we've had in over 25 years and we're moving to a place next to the airport because we think it'll be quieter there!

We won't close for another couple of weeks. Until then, ear plugs.

Songs of Accounting

Talk About Recycling!

Oregon Water Treatment Company Wants To Turn Sewer Water Into Beer - OPB News

One To Go

I'm on my third cup of coffee already. For all I pine for it, I don't usually drink more than a cup or two a day. But every once in a while - usually during tax season - I can't get enough. But, good news! Just one more cup and I can reduce the odds of getting skin cancer!

You would think Seattle would have one of  the lowest rates of skin cancer in the country considering all the coffee we drink here and relative lack of sunshine. But, in fact, Washingtonians have a relatively high incidence of melanoma.

Here's another myth dispelled: The fact that Seattleites purchase more sunglasses per capita than any U.S. city has nothing to do with the brief but brilliant summers that we strive to keep from public knowledge. It turns out we're just cheap, forgetful, and clumsy.

Maybe we should think about buying wide-brimmed hats instead.

If you wake up a little early some morning, just go back to bed. Otherwise, you'll just be late for work. Because, you will have the delusion that you've gained more time by getting up early. Such thinking might cause you to have an extra cup of coffee or, worse, exercise. You might get the notion that you might get something done. Something extra.

But this idea is false. You will spend the rest of the morning just catching up from thinking about what extra things could be done, altering your usual routine, and then trying to figure out just where all that time went.

Extra cup of coffee? That might be worth getting out of bed early. Maybe. But you're still going to be late for work.

That's what the snooze button is for.

Makes Sense To Me

Portland Now Generating Hydropower In Its Water Pipes | OPB News

" The Lucid system taps the power of gravity in the city’s water system. Water flowing through the Portland Water Bureau pipe at 147th and Powell will now flow through four small turbines as well, generating enough electricity to power 150 homes along the way. "

Last night I dreamed we were all in Columbus and we were all sitting around the family room which was furnished only with sofas against two walls. The walls were light colored, nearly white, and were not adorned with art. There were no lamps and no coffee table. My point of view was from the hallway leading to the bathroom, looking across the family room towards the kitchen table which was not that table. This one was almost colorless. Not steel, not glass, but gray with straight lines like a pencil drawing. It was washed out by a strong light that poured out from the kitchen which was to the left, but out of view. You couldn't see it but you knew it was there. No one was sitting around the table.

Everyone was sitting around in those sofas against the walls, happy, together, visiting. I was standing in the hallway when Russ and Marge emerged from the kitchen. Russ walked across the room towards me and I wanted to jump into his arms like a little kid but then I remembered he was old and I was too big for that. I jumped onto a nearby armchair instead and, somehow, I was just tall enough to hug him. He wore a white dress shirt that had little grey or silver threads running through the thin fabric and his hair was white and slicked back. He was unshaven and I could feel his white bristles against my face as we held each other tightly. We both cried, we missed each other so much.

Marge stood nearby, looking on. Her hair was done and she looked content. She wore a dark red, long-sleeved, collarless silk top. The placket and neck were accented with a deep blue. She was the only color in the room.

Here's the pun, what's the setup?

Use this in a sentence: unconfectional love.

Okay, how about a definition?

      Unconfectional love = a plastic wedding cake

I dreamed I met John Lennon's father. His name was Bright Johnson.

Go figure.

Like an inside joke . . .

" Oh, the repair regs. Newly effective for 2014, these dramatic alterations to the way we evaluate repair costs will represent the single biggest pain in the ass of the entire 2015 tax season. And courtesy of the reporting requirements necessary to adopt the regulations, the remaining portion of the planet’s rainforest will soon be mowed down to accommodate all of the Forms 3115, Change in Accounting Method, that will need to be filed over the next few months. It is not overstating the situation to say that the average tax preparer will complete more Forms 3115 this year than in all of his or her previous years combined; if you believe some of the doomsayers, every taxpayer with a depreciation schedule will need at least five Forms 3115 attached to their return. "

Four Things Sure To Destroy Your Tax Season | Forbes

. . . it kind of makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

In Case The Heretics Are Wondering

Bandwagon fan? How to talk Seahawks when you don't actually know what you're talking about 

So what do you do if you have a passing interest or just started following the team in recent weeks and don't want to sound like a complete idiot? 

MyNorthwest.com

(or recent hours as the case may be)

Just don't wash your lucky jersey. Or socks. Or anything.

Not for two weeks.

(I don't care what you smell like.)

Controversy in Portland

At the Super Bowl of Linguistics, May the Best Word Win | The New York Times

“What happens after this?” I whispered to a man next to me. 

“After we choose the Word of the Year?” he asked. “Pillaging. I expect downtown Portland to be wrecked.” He paused. “That’s rekt,” a shorthand spelling of the word. “R-E-K-T.” 

It was a bit of linguistic humor for the start of what is perhaps the year’s most anticipated lexicological event: the annual selection of the Word of the Year (also known as WOTY) by the American Dialect Society. If wordsmiths had a Super Bowl, this would be it, a place where the nation’s most well-regarded grammarians, etymologists and language enthusiasts gather to talk shop.

It's not all about football, you know.

(Read the article, btw. It's worth the time.)

Something To Look Forward To

Nightmare 2015 tax filing season predicted

The 2015 tax filing season is gearing up to be a nightmare -- the worst in more than a decade -- thanks to fewer and more poorly trained Internal Revenue Service employees. 

CBS News

Can't wait.

Iconic Carpet?

Pop quiz: What's the carpet look like at the airport closest to you? Or, any airport for that matter.

Forget airports, can you think of any carpet pattern in any public space anywhere? I can visualize the carpet pattern on the bulkhead of an Alaska Airlines flight quite clearly because I've stared at it for countless hours over the years. But that's on a wall, not the floor.

If you ever saw it, you could never forget the circles that were spray-painted onto the carpet in my childhood home. Sure, it was the 60's but the pattern was really just an elaborate scheme to cover up a spot in the rug.

But I couldn't tell you the pattern in the rug at the library, for instance. Or the color of the linoleum tile at the grocery store. Could you?

Jasper Fforde likes taking pictures of carpets. (You can see his photos by following him on Instagram or Twitter.) He even took one of the carpet at Portland International Airport. According to Oregon Live, the nearly-30-year-old carpet is iconic.

Iconic. (Spray-painted circles is iconic. Any carpet in Las Vegas is iconic. Maybe they meant ironic.)

If I don't update the carpet in my house for another 20 years with that be iconic too? (I should let Zillow know that's an architectural feature.)

Portland's airport carpet has it's own social media accounts and now you can buy clothing that sport the carpet's pattern. (It's like Gone With The Wind only with carpet.)

PDX's most famous feature is being replaced but don't despair! As the airport spends the next year replacing the 13 acres of carpet, you have the opportunity to buy some of the old carpet. It's only slightly used - by some 300,000,000 people. (Should I let Jasper know?)

Hey, we just bought a new condo. Maybe I can put some of the PDX carpet in the living room. What do you think?

My Mac is in one city and the power cord is in another. Time to get another power cord. 

Go Nuts

Well, I knew who was going to win but I wasn't about to say so. Not here, in Duck Country. A number of workers called in sick yesterday with Duck Fever and wherever you went you could find cars lining the street outside houses hosting viewing parties, the volume of which spilled into the neighborhood.

 

Props to the guy who came to the party with his top down even though he had evidently been skiing. That's awesome, dude. 

In other news, we made an offer on a condo yesterday which was immediately accepted. For those of you with programs, it's not the one we originally made an offer on. The seller of that condo let the offer expire thinking they would get other offers over the weekend. They didn't but what did happen was another condo in the same complex came on the market. A better unit, in our opinion, at a lower price and we snatched it up.  Scheduled closing is Feb 10 but could be earlier if all goes well. 

This, btw, is in Duck Country. We are not selling our other home. 

So, go a little nuts. Everybody wins. 

I just bought a toothbrush that was so complicated that I had to read the manual to use it.

My teeth feel really clean, though.

Bowl Games

Oregon v. Florida State

Clearly, I was more interested in the uniforms than the game itself. That's generally how I bet, too - based on their colors. If I were to bet yesterday, I would have bet on red but that would have been problematic for the second game.

Speaking of which, after the Ohio State victory, I received this text: "Do Ducks eat nuts?"

The answer to which can only be: "Only if they're quacked."

HNY2015

Dave Barry's Year in Review 2014 | Miami Herald

' In Washington scandal news, the Internal Revenue Service, responding to a subpoena, tells congressional investigators that it cannot produce 28 months of Lois Lerner’s emails because the hard drive they were stored on failed, and the hard drive was thrown away, and the backup tapes were erased, and no printed copies were saved — contrary to the IRS’s own record-keeping policy, which was eaten by the IRS’s dog. “It was just one crazy thing after another,” states the IRS, “and it got us to thinking: All these years we’ve been subjecting taxpayers to everything short of rectal probes if they can’t produce EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE WANT, and here we lose YEARS worth of official records! So from now on, if taxpayers tell us they lost something, or just plain forgot to make a tax payment, we’ll be like, ‘Hey, whatever! Stuff happens!’ Because who are we to judge?” 

But all kidding aside, you can bet that before this thing is over there will be a strongly worded report. '

That, and so much more.