Got my taxes done and filed tonight!

H&R was running a discount for online filing that expired tonight, so it was time to finish up my spreadsheet and get it done.

I was very paranoid that the changes would hit us hard, but we did pretty good. The thing that kind of shocked me was that I/we drove over EIGHTY-FIVE HUNDRED MILES for medical transport last year! That's almost entirely back and forth to Las Cruces for all of those sinus infections, the sinus surgery and follow-up, plus the cancer scare.

Theoretically it would be deductible at the mileage rate, but since we can't itemize, it doesn't do me any good. Still, it's quite a number! I could drive to England and half the way back, but my car would get kind of soggy.

And I discovered a rather interesting and scary thing about my medical/pharmacy insurance, but I'll save that for another day...

Uncappy Hamper

I'm a little unhappy this morning. I packed away my 3 TB backup drive when we left for Phoenix 3 weeks ago, put it in my firebox. Dug it out this morning and it appears to be dead. *sigh* Gotta dig out my multimeter and confirm it's the drive and not the power supply. Well, I usually replace one of my external HD's every year, and it's been 2-3 years since the last replacement, so it's overdue. Gives me an excuse to get a 4-5 TB and actually get something that holds more than 1 month of backups. Since I replaced my iMac, it has just a 3 TB drive that only has 200 GB free, so my backup drive is maxxed and holds little more than 1 month of backups.

I hate nights like last night

Woke up in the very early morning hours by the dogs going nuts. Clearly our downstairs neighbors, i.e. raccoon(s), were being rambunctious, I could actually hear them scampering and some chirping. But that wasn't all. I realized they weren't the sole source of chirping, and that's when I opened my eyes.

It was completely black in the house.

We keep a light on in the back half, so if it's completely black, either the light burned out - possible, but unlikely - or the power is out. And since I could two uninterruptible power supplies complaining along with a smoke alarm about the lack of juice, I knew it was power.

The dogs continued their insanity regardless.

So I slipped into my Birks, turned on the flashlight on my cell, and trundled out to turn off the living room UPS and shut down my iMac so I could turn off its UPS. Then stumble back to bed after closing the gate to the kitchen, something my wife forgot to do when she came to bed which would also cut off one rampage area for the pooches, she was now awake.

Two chirp sources eliminated, one could not be cancelled, still insane dogs.

The house stayed warm enough, it was down to 65, I went back to bed, but the chirp kept me awake. I mentioned something to Russet, she said she couldn't hear me: she'd gone back to her ear plugs because of the noise maker. AHA! I sleep on my left side, so I put one ear plug in my right ear - problem solved! Pillow masks my left ear, which by itself has enough tinnitus to ignore the chirp.

By now it was 6am, got a bit more sleep and ended getting up at 7 when the power came back on - had to get up to turn on the living room UPS which has the wireless router so Russet could sign on to the observatory and find out if anything bad had happened there, apparently all was fine - they have good UPS protection plus a huge monster generator. Had breakfast, got a nap for another hour or so. Still feeling kinda wrecked.

Wheeeee.