Oh yeah, taxes. After a fearsomely long pinball tournament Saturday ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger asked if I knew what other burden would eat her time up this weekend. I said yes, and she was not satisfied that I knew what it was. I had refrained from saying taxes, mostly out of the small nagging fear that she was thinking of some other burden and then I'd just be ratcheting up the schedule pressure. But no, it was the taxes she was thinking of.
After getting the last form needed --- my student loan tax information --- she started work on whatever web site it is she punches these things into and then spent a couple hours ready to punch the computer. Mostly over things like somewhere in there one of my mutual funds has some investment in some foreign country and the dollar in capital gains there demands some new form be filled out.
And at the end of this we got ... the result that we owed four thousand in federal taxes. Ah, but at least we ... also owed five thousand in state taxes? The federal thing was alarming enough but at least we could track down why that happened: from a quick check with income tax estimators I wasn't getting nearly enough withheld for federal tax. State, though? That made no sense; our income was nearly the same as last year and we got a modest refund from the state of Michigan last time around. An angry review of things found the problem, entering the state tax withheld on the wrong line of the form. With that fix we were left ... still owing the federal regime a lot, but at least the state was back to owing us a couple hundred bucks.
Today I got in touch with my employer to get a W-4 revision in, and sat back to ponder how many people are just having ChatGPT fill in a tax form that looks plausible enough. And how many of Stretch Muskrat's whiz kids are replacing actual audits with ChatGPT reviews. Better to not ponder such things, I suppose.
Some much happier things to look at right now, instead. Indiana Beach on our anniversary trip last year and something special ...
A surprise and delight! bunnyhugger had bought a boardwalk brick for us, a couple years ago, and had waited anxiously for word that it had actually been installed. Well, it was, and she used the cover of looking at the funny bricks people had sent in --- ``Lance Young: Better than a Disney Brick'' or ``Levi Busch, Roller Coaster Tycoon'' for example --- to draw me over to ours.
OK, now this is the Flying Bobs ride formerly of Coney Island of C-town, Ohio. The thing I identified as it earlier was the Musik Express and I'm a little surprised bunnyhugger didn't correct me beforehand.
Nice view of the lake. There's a couple rides that project out over the water so you can get a view of the shoreline like this.
And here's the shoreline from a little higher up. This must have been from the swings ride, although I wouldn't have been photographing while the ride was in motion.
From the swings ride looking back at the Crow's Nest, a gift shop and a food stand.
That gorgeous late-afternoon light leaks into my camera.
Trivia: From 1934 to 1992, some 2,015 FDIC-insured banks failed. 1,260 of the failures were from 1985 on. Source: History of Money, Glyn Davies.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Sundays Supplement Volume 15: 1953, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
PS: Were you wondering What's Going On In Flash Gordon? So are you covering Flash Gordon again? Yes. In the linked essay I cover December 2024 through February 2025 on Mongo. Why that date range, and when will I bring things up to the present (April 2025)? ... You'll see.
