The Props Department Delivers

Fall is in the air and my brother has been into the catalogs again. Our newest semi-audioanimatronic props arrived yesterday. The UPS person apparently came while we were out.

Henry

Four large cartons appeared in our foyer. There is a life-size vintage Victorian animated dead bride and three zombies: two partial upper bodies to be placed to appear as if crawling from the grave and one animated full-body undead walker.

Larry

The company which offers these characters has also, for some reason, named them. That's a fuzzy shot of Larry in the suit while Henry is the dapper one in the bow tie.

I'm assuming my brother intends to retire some of the less frightening inflatable Hallowe'en displays, like the pumpkins and giant Bart Simpson and such as, in favor of the more, shall we say, naturalistic presentations he's been acquiring over the past couple of years. Otherwise, our yard, especially the driveway approach used by the trick-or-treaters, is going to become very crowded indeed. The life-size inflatable illuminated horse-drawn hearse with re-animating corpse inside will definitely stay as will the 20 foot tall black cat but some of the others will just have to move off to the side yard where they will actually be easier for passing traffic to see.

Hair Apparent

I cheated on my barber today. I felt bad about it before going into the new place but now I'm mostly perfectly O.K. with it.

I try to support local businesses whenever possible and the barber I've been going to is a local guy (or person, at least. He's still undergoing some sort of transition as far as I can tell.) He has six chairs and when I first started with him a couple of years ago he had a few old-time actual barbers renting space from him but, recently, it's just been the owner and a woman who is only marginally competent. I don't know whether the others left because business is slow, or because of the owner's vocal Tea Partyish political views (I was present for a couple of "debates" among the staff) but the result has been the same.

The last time I was in there the owner was out and she was just standing around so I made the mistake of letting her work on me. By the time it was over, we were both frustrated, she had taken too much off the top and not enough off the sides (I ended up trimming that myself at home a couple days later when I couldn't stand it any longer) and I wondered if I should even bother to go back again.

I'd been debating that on and off for a while as my hair grew too long. My phlebotomist nurse at the blood center told me about another local shop in town but, when I went by, the outside was enough to scare me off.

Then I received a coupon for one of the chain salons.

I really didn't want to use it. I held onto it almost until it expired. Today, I gave in and went to the mall with the big box stores and found the place. They were busy and someone was out sick so my ten minute wait turned into twenty but, when I finally sat in the chair, my stylist was friendly, attentive and competent. When I told her it had been six months since my last "trim" she dug her hands in and pulled my hair out to the sides saying, "Wow! She must've really cut it short." Indeed. And then proceeded to do a great job on my head.

I know it's a great job because the pretty African-American lady at the gas station where I stopped immediately afterward and who was very perfunctory with the two gentlemen in front of me suddenly got all smiley and talkative when I got to the counter and the young woman checking out the soon-to-be-discarded sale books at the library turned and smiled at me as I walked past, things which do not normally happen to me.

So here's the dilemma: Do I give my weird, quirky, filled-with-strange-characters locally-owned shop one more try next time? Or do I just give up and go with the decent haircut?

Mammals v. Reptiles

The cats love to go "out." "Out" means the screened-in front foyer which is barely more than a meter square. The screen door doesn't always latch properly and they could easily push their way out into the real world but they're happy in the sunlight and humidity. They just sit and watch the birds and the squirrel and the occasional car traveling by. And the lizards.

Jasmine (aka "Fat Cat" due to packing it on because her metabolism slowed considerably after she was fixed but her appetite didn't) caught a lizard a few days ago. She has a habit of racing out the door into the corner of the foyer where she'd seen a lizard on her very first outing. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there's nothing there. This was the hundredth time. She ran out, snagged the lizard and turned just as the kids raced out to join her. She actually half-growled, half-hissed at her own daughters as if to say, "My lizard. Mine. Back off." She'd never done that before and the kids were shocked. But the best part was, in trying to express her claim, she had to open her mouth slightly and the lizard took full advantage skittering off into the inaccessible crease between the foundation and the screen.

She caught another one last evening. Or possibly the same one. Could be a slow learner. My brother let them all out and almost immediately I heard him yelling, "Bad cat! Put that down!" Jasmine ran back into the house with her mouth full and it took both of us to trap her under the bar chairs. My brother took the lizard from her and put it outside in back.

Jasmine was pissed and sulked for a while. The kids had no idea what was happening. They play with bugs and spiders they find but they've never killed anything and never eaten anything that didn't come from a can or bag. Mom, on the other hand, despite being half-again as large as when she first came to us, obviously still remembers her foraging days.

The Recession Must Be Over

I found a notice from the city hung on our front door knob this morning. They're planning on installing sidewalks on both sides of the main road past our house.

The road, when originally built, was two lanes in each direction with a large median separating oncoming traffic. The lane widths, however and in keeping with the typical cheap design of the entire town by the original developers*, were too narrow, although technically legal (the best kind of legal) which meant cars traveling in the same direction, if one tried to overtake the other, would literally come within inches of each other in the process. And this was before SUVs. Forget about trucks.

In the case of our road, a decision was made** to make the next-over parallel through road into the major thoroughfare and to remove a lane in each direction from our now-secondary street. The remaining lane was widened and the leftover paved right-of-way was turned into bike lanes.

Now they're going to put in sidewalks, although the few people I see out walking around use the bike lanes without any conflict from the (just as few) bicyclists. Still, considering the amount of rain we've had recently and the soggy condition of the ground, a hard surface to walk on further removed from traffic might be a good idea.

In fact, the major problem I see is the continuing rain. We had a couple of glorious sunny, low humidity days right at the equinox. Since then it has been continuous overcast and downpour without sight of the sun. The ground is mush and our swale is a fully qualified moat. Any digging the road crew does is going to have to be between the swale and the road and is still going to be all mud. I can't imagine any concrete they pour is ever going to set properly before mid-winter.

In any event, it will keep the city workers busy and our driveway doesn't open on to that street. Also, I think the palm on the corner is far enough back (our side of the swale/moat) to not be affected by the construction. So have at it!

*Many of the major roads have since been widened but the bridges over the canals, being much more expensive to upgrade, are still the original width and can cause quite the adrenaline rush when multiple vehicles attempt to use them at the same time.

**This happened when the powers finally admitted the entire city's transportation infrastructure was completely inadequate for the population and bulldozed a limited access crosstown boulevard clear through the city about a 1/4 mile south of us. The next street over got the full intersection and traffic signal, we got a westbound only entrance/exit and no light.

In Which I Respond to the Bureaucracy

I have received, collated and sent off to the State of Utah, with my attached explanation of why I do not owe any taxes to the State of Utah, the income records I requested from my former employer.

I will now sit back and expect to hear nothing from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division regarding the information I have just sent them. On the assumption that, at least when dealing with government tax authorities, no news is good news, this silence will be a welcome thing.

Best wishes to them and may our paths never cross again.

Know Your Market

Facebook doesn't know I have not been in Utah for some time now, and I am fine with that. There are a lot of things I prefer Facebook not know. But what that means is the random ads appearing on the right side of my page are often, when they are not national or Internet-based, still geared to Utah. (And while I suppose it is nice to know a couple of my friends claim to "like" Walmart, that is not sufficient reason for me to ever set foot in there.)

A few days ago an ad appeared for a local (Utah) mortuary.

Irrelevant aside: "Mortuary," the preferred term of art in Utah, always struck me as being exceptionally cold and clinical, perhaps because I hail originally from New England where we had funeral homes and funeral parlors, phraseology going back to before the Civil War when it was customary to set up the casket for viewing in the parlor at home. Professional funeral homes generally didn't appear until after the war when the  practice of embalming (originally becoming more widely used in order to be able to transport soldiers' remains long distances from the battlefield to home) gained acceptance.

Anyway, aside from the fact I have no need for, or interest in, their services their pitch otherwise seemed exceedingly well-placed.

They were offering a seminar on their plans and options, to be held at the local Golden Corral. I simply can't imagine better demographics than a herd of retirees loading up on all-you-can eat cholesterol. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some business right there before the evening was over.

I hope they appreciate their marketing guy's genius.

Bureaucracy Blues

A couple of months ago I received from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department a very polite letter claiming they had no information regarding an old state income tax filing of mine and suggesting that I probably owed them money because, hey, they had no evidence that I didn't and, by the way, they had destroyed all the old documents going back including from the year they were now interested in.

Unfortunately, because half my paperwork was left behind when I moved to Florida, I also had no evidence that I didn't. And I don't.

I contacted my former employer back in Utah and, after some searching around, they were kind enough* to send a copy of my W2 from the relevant year with which I was able to cobble together an ersatz return I hoped would complete the records held by the state that they could then destroy since they were beyond the official "keep until" date. As long as they made themselves happy first.

Unfortunately, I never noticed (because I didn't think such a thing was even possible) the replacement W2 the old employer sent me, although having the right year on it, had the (substantially different) income numbers from the previous year. How is that possible? They swear they simply pulled it from my file**.

The State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department has now contacted me a second time to inform me that the numbers I submitted with my ersatz return don't even come close to the numbers on my Federal return. They want to adjust the numbers up to match, which is reasonable. And they're still being extraordinarily polite.

Unfortunately, the Federal return doesn't show the amount of tax withheld by the state and adjusting the income numbers up without also adjusting the state withholding will result in a very large (and not at all reasonable) tax liability for me.

I have now requested my former employer to send me copies of all my W2s so I can figure out what happened and how to build an argument acceptable to the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division. Politely, of course.

*Technically, they're legally obligated to provide it but they were very nice about it all considering it's not really their problem.
** O.K., now it is at least partially their problem.