I finally got the last of the tax documents that I had been waiting for yesterday, so I decided to file my taxes today. I e-filed using TurboTax for free (I did last year too). I’m glad I did, too. If I hadn’t, I would have missed a tax credit.

I was wondering why the refund estimate that TurboTax was showing me was higher than what I estimated when I went through things before (based on paystubs since I was still waiting for tax docs). At one point, TurboTax told me about the Making Work Pay Tax Credit. ‘Scuse me … WTF is that? I didn’t see anything on the forms when I did my estimate. So I did some searching on the IRS website and found this information. I was still confused after reading it. I did some searching online, but that didn’t really clear anything up either. But I trusted TurboTax, so I forged ahead. If TurboTax was telling me I was getting a refund that was $400 more than I expected, I wasn’t going to question it. TurboTax is supposed to be accurate, so they must be right.

I did go back and look at the form I did my estimate on, and it turns out it was on there … line 40 of the 1040A. I usually skim over the section on credits since I never have any. I don’t have any kids or own any property or anything like that. That’ll teach me to skim over the tax forms based on how previous years have been. But then again, it was just an estimate. And that’s why I use a site like TurboTax so I can find out about things I might miss or not know about.

I don’t remember ever hearing about the “Making Work Pay Credit”. Where the hell have I been? But in my defense, I was more concerned with finding a permanent job around the time that this credit was announced. For a good part of the year, my career was in limbo since I was working contract jobs. Now that I have a permanent job again, I can pay more attention to stuff like that.

So … what am I going to do with that extra refund money? I was already planning on getting a monitor and a Windows 7 upgrade. I’ve been thinking about getting more memory for my laptop too (since I’m getting the Win7 upgrade). I was gonna go with 2GB of memory to keep the costs down, but now that I’m getting that extra money back, I might ramp it up to 4GB. I’m not convinced that I need that much memory though. The rest of the refund … well, that will go towards a down payment on a car that I’m planning to shop for in the spring. The more I can put down at the beginning, the lower the payments will be (and I doubt I’ll get much money for trading in my current car).

I had made plans to leave work today at 3pm, come home and finish packing, load up my car, fill up with gas, and head down to Mom & Dad’s for Christmas. I was hoping we’d make a trip to Wahpeton on Christmas Day or Saturday to see my Grandma. It’s only an hour drive, and I don’t think it would have taken more than 45 min to finish packing and load my car so I could head out of town. It’s now almost 5:30pm. I left work about 1½ hours ago. So … where am I? I’m sitting in front of my computer at my desk in my living room in my apartment in Fargo. Needless to say, my holiday plans fell through.

“Why” you ask? Well …

click to enlarge

The Christmas 2009 winter storm will continue to impact the area through Saturday morning. For the remainder of Christmas Eve…there will be periods of light snow. Snow rates will increase from late tonight through early Saturday morning…and north winds will increase to 25 to 35 mph…causing considerable blowing and drifting snow with blizzard conditions. Widespread whiteouts can be expected across much of Eastern North Dakota into adjacent Minnesota counties. Travel Christmas Day will be extremely hazardous. The map represents additional snowfall accumulation expected from noontime Christmas Eve through midday Saturday. On Saturday…the snow will wind down slowly but winds will still be high and visibility poor. Sunday will be better with no snow in the forecast and winds diminishing. Please stay tuned for further updates.

As you can see, Mother Nature had other ideas. Well, her Christmas present is going back. LOL

We got about 6 inches of snow overnite here in Fargo. It didn’t snow all that much during the day, and it wasn’t all that windy. I did consider leaving work early to head to Mom & Dad’s before it started snowing again. I obviously decided against going. The road reports for my route home was “snow covered” then “continuous ice/compacted snow” then “scattered ice frost” and back to “continuous ice/compacted snow”. I decided to use my better judgement and stay in Fargo. If the roads are travelable on Sunday, I’ll head to Mom & Dad’s (unless they decide to come up to Fargo). And if the roads are still shitty, there’s always next weekend.

Robin ended up staying in Fargo too. If the roads in town are passable, maybe I’ll venture over to her place to hang out. Otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do. I plan on making some chili cheese dip tonite to munch on (I was going to make it and take it to Mom & Dad’s). I bought the ingredients yesterday to make lasagna. I might make that tonite so I can pop it in the oven tomorrow for dinner (with leftovers for supper). And I have beer in the fridge and vanilla vodka chilled out in the freezer.

It definitely sucks being stuck here in Fargo (alone) for Christmas. It’s the first time that I haven’t made it home for Christmas. But I’d rather be stuck here than in some ditch or worse. I guess the Christmas presents and baked goodies will just have to wait. I just wish Mom hadn’t said that she had some krumkaka for me (I love those). Maybe I can hitch a ride with Santa.

I finally wrote out my Christmas cards the other nite. I was later that in previous years. Not really sure why I procrastinated so much, but I got ‘em out … that’s all that matters.

I sent out a Christmas letter with my cards. I thought I would post it here for my friends that I don’t have addresses for.

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It’s that time of year again. The calendar has turned to December, and there is snow in the forecast (ewwwwww). I’m not even remotely ready for Christmas this year. I haven’t even decided what baked goodies I’m going to make this year let alone buy the ingredients I need for them. I’d better get my butt in gear. I need to make sure I have some cookies and tassies and chocolate covered cherries to leave out for you.

This past year has been trying. I lost my job last October but then found 2 short term contract jobs. The short term-ness and uncertainty really wore on me. But I found a full time, permanent job a month ago (so thanks for that early Christmas present. ) I’m hoping that the tide has turned and things will start going “up” for me rather than how they have been.

I thought that I should get you a list of things that I wouldn’t mind getting under the Christmas tree this year. These are just suggestions. I don’t expect to get everything on my list. It would be nice to get one or two things though.

• Wii games & accessories
  • Wii remote
  • Wii steering wheel
  • Endless Ocean
  • Mario Cart
  • NASCAR Kart Racing
  • Wii Fit Plus (with Balance Board)
  • Wii Sports Resort
  • Wii Game Party/Wii Game Party 2 or similar games
• DVDs
  • Cars
  • Gabriel Iglesias: I’m Not Fat I’m Fluffy
  • Moonlight – The Complete Series
• CDs
  • Chris Young – The Man I Want to Be
  • Luke Bryan – Doin’ My Thing
  • Lady Antebellum – Lady Antebellum
  • Love and Theft – World Wide Open
• NASCAR Stuff
  • anything Dale Earnhardt Jr
  • anything Martin Truex Jr (his new team for 2010 [NAPA])
• Misc
  • iTunes gift card (for music and/or iPod Touch apps)
  • gift card for clothes (I need to try ‘em on to know they fit)
  • my “man” candles (The Midsummer’s Night scent by Yankee Candle – they smell like men’s cologne.)
  • dark (dark, dark, dark) chocolate
  • Windows 7 upgrade
  • Flip camcorder
  • anything else that’s techie/geeky
  • a cowboy

You should be able to find something doable on that list. As you can see, I put the cowboy back on the list this year after leaving him off last year. There aren’t any country bars left in Fargo, so if I’m gonna get a cowboy, it’ll have to be from you.

Watch out for birds on your journey around the globe this year. I’d hate to hear that you crashed after hitting a stray snow goose or something. I’m too old to stay up and wait for you … I need my sleep. But I’ll leave out some baked goodies (if I ever get my ass moving and make ‘em). Tell Mrs. Claus I say “hi”.

Becky

P.S. I just thought of a few more items for my list:

• office toys for my new desk at work [or my desk at home]
• programming books [on subjects like: CodeIgniter, php, MySQL, jQuery]
• pictures for my bare walls [both in the living room and the bedroom]
• LCD computer monitor (preferably larger than 19″ and widescreen)

Tomorrow will end my first week of work at my new job. Things have been going good and the people are nice. I don’t feel like an outsider like I have at other jobs. I’ve finished up one project and have started another.

It feels soooooo good to be working with php again. For the past year, (at the 2 contract jobs I had) I was working strictly with html and css, mainly html emails. While I don’t mind working with css, I enjoy working with php and sql so much more. And not only am I working with php again, I’m even learning a new framework, CodeIgniter. It’s what they use at work.

I had my first taste of it today when I started on a new project. I think I’ll pick it up pretty quickly. While I haven’t used a framework before, I have worked with a “layer” concept at a previous job. We had separate directories for database, presentation, and domain layers. CodeIgniter has model, view, and controller “layers”. What I really like about CodeIgniter is the fact that you can put together an array of data in the controller layer to send to the view layer, and in the view layer, you have variables that have the names of the keys from the array that was passed to it. Or at least as far as I can tell, that’s how it is.

I’ve even been in a good, upbeat mood the past couple days. I really noticed it today. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m out of my apartment or it’s because I’m back working (with something I really enjoy even) or it’s just things turning back around in my favor. I’m not going to analyze it, and I’m definitely not going to take it for granted (or at least I’m going to try my damnedest).

Hopefully this means I’ll have a good birthday this year (it’s next Saturday). Now I just need to figure out what I’m gonna do to celebrate it.