State of the Yard

I’m looking out the window into the back yard. Yesterday’s warm rains have wiped out any residue of recent snows. The neighbor’s home-made skating rink looks more like a swimming pool. The thaw has encouraged a distinct greening of the lawn and patches of bright new growth can be seen in the clay pots of chives and parsley.

Spring is in play.

The WSJ reports that there were 193,000 new American jobs in January. Today’s editorial touts the “lowest employment rate” in four years as clear evidence that the 2003 tax cuts are working. I’ll let you know whether I agree or not after I am finished doing my taxes.

I use Turbo-Tax so the hardest part is gathering all the pertinent documents.
I know what you organized people are thinking: Why not just keep all the tax-related papers in one folder so you can find everything you need easily? Yes, that might be an efficient way of doing things, but it is not my way.

My way is to keep every bill, receipt, statement, form, notice, credit card offers, correspondence, acknowledgement, confirmation, insert, fax, note, stub, check and any other document that is not an advertisement – in a big cardboard box.

Traditionally, during the NFL Wildcard weekend, usually in mid-January, while watching the games on TV, I sort through the box and toss the stuff that needs tossing and pile the stuff that needs shredding into a big brown grocery bag for later attention.

Usually this process is lubricated by repetitive ingestion of malt beverages. Now, I don’t know about you, but after a few frosty Sierra Nevada’s, my inclination to sort paper erodes very quickly and without warning. Thus, I typically end-up with a half-sorted box of papers, a bag of shred-able documents - which – like as not, will just get chucked into the trash along with the wet garbage (Go ahead, identity thieves, burrow through the rotten cantaloupe, eggshells, coffee grinds and banana skins. Bring it on !)

But it is good to know that the economy remains strong, with all that job growth. I was comforted the other night by Pres. Bush’s rosy picture of things, weren’t you?
He needs a new speech writer. He reminded me of a CEO at the annual Kickoff meeting. Rah-Rah, we are the greatest! We need to foster more Teamwork and we need to work harder to out-compete the competition! Empty feel good phrases.

Funny how companies give all the perks and rewards to the greedy egomaniacs who create dissention and distrust among the workforce instead of trying to get the people to work as teams.

Not that it matters to me anymore. I am officially back among the ranks of unemployed and NOT looking. At least not for the moment.

I do not have time for a regular job.

Stop sending me leads.