Extensions

I got an extension on filing my tax return. Or, that is, I applied for one. I assume it’ll be granted and I won’t have to think about it until October. I owed, and I paid what I think I owed.

I also got (APPLIED FOR) an extension on a stupid mix-up involving the IRS and some stock options I sold. The IRS seems to think that I paid zero dollars (and zero cents) to buy the stock that I then sold. I didn’t feel like proving them wrong this week, so I’ve got another month or so before I have to mess with that.

But time and tide wait for no man, and neither does the revolution of the earth around its axis. That revolution occuring seven times in a row is known as a week. Which brings us to weeklyrob, supposedly written on a “more or less” weekly basis. I wanted that to mean that I’d post more than once a week.

But I’m swamped.

Renovation to my little home (inlvolving moving ENTIRELY), baby due on Easter (yes, the Easter that passed a few days ago, sans babyweeklyrob), and plenty of work that I actually get a salary for (such as it is). No, that’s not a complete sentence, but it’s all you get.

Before I go to bed, let me just complain that Kurt Vonnegut is dead. No extensions there, either, for us to enjoy him or him to prod us and make us laugh.

He hated semicolons, so remains my sworn enemy, but he sure could write. And he was funny and clever and generally made me think. I haven’t read his stuff for years and years, but I still occasionally toy with ideas that I first thought about while reading Slaughterhouse 5.

Here, stolen directly from the NYT obit, is a quote summing up the main point in most of his books, and giving a sense of his unique way of putting things:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”