Gillian Polack's Blog, page 187
May 8, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-05-08T21:09:00
I'm afraid I started my Latin class by writing on the whiteboard a saying my aunt taught me ("Latin is a language, dead as dead can be. It killed the Ancient Romans and now it's killing me.") and punctuated the session by asking "Are you scared yet?" and by offering explanations using English words with Latin origins, which I told the students was how they were going to grow their vocabulary.
Despite my abominable behaviour, the class is good (and very bright - which is always handy) and we got through everything we had to in comfort. They're very nice people, and I think I'm going to cook them something Catonic the week after next, as a 'thank you.' This is the class that had to be rearranged because of my life going so very curious, you see, and whose textbooks didn't arrive.
Despite my abominable behaviour, the class is good (and very bright - which is always handy) and we got through everything we had to in comfort. They're very nice people, and I think I'm going to cook them something Catonic the week after next, as a 'thank you.' This is the class that had to be rearranged because of my life going so very curious, you see, and whose textbooks didn't arrive.
May 7, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-05-08T14:31:00
I am 3/4 through the article I need to finish today. Actually, it was the one I wanted to finish yesterday, but that was undermined by taxes. There was another big thing for today (besides the new course I'm teaching) and it's 3,000 words and I haven't yet finished the reading. This is because it's something that needs lots of thinking, but mostly because I keep getting distracted. I shall pack it in with my teaching notes and go into university a bit early and occupy the classroom and beaver away at it. It's one of those things that should have been easy and somehow isn't.
All of this is terribly crucial, isn't it? Well, it is. For when I've done these two things, plus one more, I shall be caught up on all the big stuff. I shall be free to develop a whole new backlog. And I shall be past the crises caused by the events of the last two months. Just two more articles, one of which is 3/4 done and the other two of which are becalmed.
This is when I haul out my dogged determination.
I have a reward waiting for me, in any case. The insurance has approved of the replacement of my teaching equipment. Lots of new set-up to be done! That means getting all three of these things out of the way, plus the next three, so that I can get back to my pre-thief style of working.
All of this is terribly crucial, isn't it? Well, it is. For when I've done these two things, plus one more, I shall be caught up on all the big stuff. I shall be free to develop a whole new backlog. And I shall be past the crises caused by the events of the last two months. Just two more articles, one of which is 3/4 done and the other two of which are becalmed.
This is when I haul out my dogged determination.
I have a reward waiting for me, in any case. The insurance has approved of the replacement of my teaching equipment. Lots of new set-up to be done! That means getting all three of these things out of the way, plus the next three, so that I can get back to my pre-thief style of working.
2006, bis
2nd March, 2006. 11:49 am.
Just call me Dr Grump. I am having a bad week. No, you don't want to know the details.
I am going to tell you the family story I *always* tell in bad weeks when asked for family stories. It fits Women's History Month, as it is about Linda Phillips, who was a composer and music critic and judge. If you have heard it before, too bad. (now you have the measure of my grumptitude)
Linda was also my father's first cousin, which is why she was always "Linda" to me. Despite being my father's first cousin and us calling her by her first name, she was sixty years my senior. She trained as a pianist and had the beginnings of an amazing career, then she married, and her husband said "You may play for guests in the parlour, dear."
Linda was a wonderful wife, but her husband had the ill sense to die very young, leaving her with a daughter but no income and with no career as a pianist as a consequence of "you may play in the parlour".
Linda was tiny, but indomitable. She could silence a whole room by looking across it. Most of our family was in awe of her. She used this inner whatever-it-was to get a job on the Herald-Sun. There were not many women who were journos back then. By not many, I mean hardly any. Before World War II. Before Second Wave feminism.
She became the Sun's music critic. She worked hard, but most of her articles didn't make it to print. She asked the editor immediately above her "What's wrong with my pieces. Tell me and I will fix them"
He showed her a drawer filled with her typewritten articles.
"Women can't write," he said. "You got the job because you have a child and your husband died and the editor wanted to give you sympathy-money."
Linda furious was a sight. She was tiny to begin with, but when she was angry, her eyes would look huge and luminous. Everyone around her would feel flea-sized. She never raised her voice. She never needed to raise her voice.
Linda, furious, went to see the senior editor. Before she went, she raided the drawer where her editor kept those rejected manuscripts.
She dumped the sheets of paper on the senior editor's desk, saying "Tell me what's wrong with these. If they are irredeemable, I will find another job. If they can be fixed, then I will fix them. If there is nothing wrong with them, I want to know why they are not being printed."
Nothing was wrong with them.
Linda's work was never hidden in a desk again. That is not the end of the story, however.
The end of the story is the day Linda's editor walked up to her in the corridor and, looming over her, said "Congratulate me, this is my last day. it's D-day. I'm leaving."
"D-day?" Linda asked. "I don't think so." She smiled sweetly up at him and made a sign with her right hand. "You're going, and I'm staying. That makes it V-Day."
Linda was given an OBE, eventually, for her services to music, and died at the age of 104. I wish I had inherited her temper - it would be handy on grump-days.
Just call me Dr Grump. I am having a bad week. No, you don't want to know the details.
I am going to tell you the family story I *always* tell in bad weeks when asked for family stories. It fits Women's History Month, as it is about Linda Phillips, who was a composer and music critic and judge. If you have heard it before, too bad. (now you have the measure of my grumptitude)
Linda was also my father's first cousin, which is why she was always "Linda" to me. Despite being my father's first cousin and us calling her by her first name, she was sixty years my senior. She trained as a pianist and had the beginnings of an amazing career, then she married, and her husband said "You may play for guests in the parlour, dear."
Linda was a wonderful wife, but her husband had the ill sense to die very young, leaving her with a daughter but no income and with no career as a pianist as a consequence of "you may play in the parlour".
Linda was tiny, but indomitable. She could silence a whole room by looking across it. Most of our family was in awe of her. She used this inner whatever-it-was to get a job on the Herald-Sun. There were not many women who were journos back then. By not many, I mean hardly any. Before World War II. Before Second Wave feminism.
She became the Sun's music critic. She worked hard, but most of her articles didn't make it to print. She asked the editor immediately above her "What's wrong with my pieces. Tell me and I will fix them"
He showed her a drawer filled with her typewritten articles.
"Women can't write," he said. "You got the job because you have a child and your husband died and the editor wanted to give you sympathy-money."
Linda furious was a sight. She was tiny to begin with, but when she was angry, her eyes would look huge and luminous. Everyone around her would feel flea-sized. She never raised her voice. She never needed to raise her voice.
Linda, furious, went to see the senior editor. Before she went, she raided the drawer where her editor kept those rejected manuscripts.
She dumped the sheets of paper on the senior editor's desk, saying "Tell me what's wrong with these. If they are irredeemable, I will find another job. If they can be fixed, then I will fix them. If there is nothing wrong with them, I want to know why they are not being printed."
Nothing was wrong with them.
Linda's work was never hidden in a desk again. That is not the end of the story, however.
The end of the story is the day Linda's editor walked up to her in the corridor and, looming over her, said "Congratulate me, this is my last day. it's D-day. I'm leaving."
"D-day?" Linda asked. "I don't think so." She smiled sweetly up at him and made a sign with her right hand. "You're going, and I'm staying. That makes it V-Day."
Linda was given an OBE, eventually, for her services to music, and died at the age of 104. I wish I had inherited her temper - it would be handy on grump-days.
2006, first post
2006 was the year I did a series on openings to Medieval texts (thinking about how they were handy to modern writers), went to Varuna for the first time, edited my first anthology, ran out of money and much more. I'm giving you two posts for 2006, because I couldn't decide between a sample one about openings and one I did on a bad mood day.
17th January, 2006. 10:28 pm. Roll up, roll up
You want to get an audience for an entertainment, you promise them the earth.
You tell them you have a tale to tell. You remind them of other tales like the one they are about to hear. You give them a chance to settle down and pay attention before you tell the story, so they won't miss anything. And that is the formula for many chansons de geste. Jehan de Lanson, for instance, says (in disrespectful Gillian-translation), "Shut up sirs if you want to hear a good story with an awesome subject and some really nice poetry." Not to mention battle and betrayal and other juicy goodies.
Like a car chase at the beginning of an action movie. The scene is set.
For chansons de geste with a bit of love in them, the formula is modified. At its most extreme it becomes something more like the opening to a romance (logical) or a chronicle (also logical - chansons de geste were very much a form of popular history). This again is the author trying to communicate what to expect.
For instance, Berte as grans pies (Bertha Big Foot - all classic love stories should be so named) has no calls to lords to sit down or to listen. No cries of valour and warnings of betrayal. Instead we get a pretty piece about how lovely things are in early April and how a monk has revealed the true story of Bertha and Pippin. The call to nature suggests a love story and the call to written authority suggests a history. All the chansons de geste were history told again, but most of them didn't need to rely on a hidden written tradition. Adenet needed to back his telling to have it accepted - making a call to authority.
This is another way of handling cross-genre, and not an effective one, because the audience has to take the manuscript referred to on trust and know it might be a lie. It is not nearly as powerful as using familiar words and distorting them (see previous post). Readers seldom want to have to think and assess before they get into a romantic story
There is no rule. Each writer of a chanson de geste makes his or her own decision based on their subject matter and their feelings about it and their audience. What is important is the first formula I described is the successful one. You see it over and over and over again. Using a variant of something accepted is not a writing failure: it may just be the way into gaining the audience's attention.
17th January, 2006. 10:28 pm. Roll up, roll up
You want to get an audience for an entertainment, you promise them the earth.
You tell them you have a tale to tell. You remind them of other tales like the one they are about to hear. You give them a chance to settle down and pay attention before you tell the story, so they won't miss anything. And that is the formula for many chansons de geste. Jehan de Lanson, for instance, says (in disrespectful Gillian-translation), "Shut up sirs if you want to hear a good story with an awesome subject and some really nice poetry." Not to mention battle and betrayal and other juicy goodies.
Like a car chase at the beginning of an action movie. The scene is set.
For chansons de geste with a bit of love in them, the formula is modified. At its most extreme it becomes something more like the opening to a romance (logical) or a chronicle (also logical - chansons de geste were very much a form of popular history). This again is the author trying to communicate what to expect.
For instance, Berte as grans pies (Bertha Big Foot - all classic love stories should be so named) has no calls to lords to sit down or to listen. No cries of valour and warnings of betrayal. Instead we get a pretty piece about how lovely things are in early April and how a monk has revealed the true story of Bertha and Pippin. The call to nature suggests a love story and the call to written authority suggests a history. All the chansons de geste were history told again, but most of them didn't need to rely on a hidden written tradition. Adenet needed to back his telling to have it accepted - making a call to authority.
This is another way of handling cross-genre, and not an effective one, because the audience has to take the manuscript referred to on trust and know it might be a lie. It is not nearly as powerful as using familiar words and distorting them (see previous post). Readers seldom want to have to think and assess before they get into a romantic story
There is no rule. Each writer of a chanson de geste makes his or her own decision based on their subject matter and their feelings about it and their audience. What is important is the first formula I described is the successful one. You see it over and over and over again. Using a variant of something accepted is not a writing failure: it may just be the way into gaining the audience's attention.
gillpolack @ 2012-05-07T19:56:00
I haven't done the things I wanted to do today, but I've done a heck of a lot of other stuff. My amazing accountant has sorted my tax (I gave her the information last night she gave me the stuff to check this morning), and my equally amazing supervisor found me a form that needs filling in (and now it's partly done). My curtains are fixed and my laundry is done and my dishes are washed and more. Also, I'm financial. This despite the massive medical and dental bills. I can't afford the high life yet, but I can afford to do normal things for the next little while. Happy little vegemiteness ensues.
I'm going to take some intentional time off shortly, because (thanks to a friend who I am reluctant to call very old, since I am older) I now have a craft that I can do despite the RSI and despite the vision. I get to play with my new toy until 9.30 and then I shall look Doom in the face. Or take notes from Connie Willis' Doomsday Book. It all depends on what tea I'm drinking at the time. This means more happy little vegemiteness. I've loved my lacemaking and even embroidery and macrame and, oh, lots of stuff, for so very long and I've missed it this last little while. My new toy makes braids. If I can work out how to make lanyards of the right length, I could be guilty of making lanyards with a difference for cons. Watch this space.
I'm going to take some intentional time off shortly, because (thanks to a friend who I am reluctant to call very old, since I am older) I now have a craft that I can do despite the RSI and despite the vision. I get to play with my new toy until 9.30 and then I shall look Doom in the face. Or take notes from Connie Willis' Doomsday Book. It all depends on what tea I'm drinking at the time. This means more happy little vegemiteness. I've loved my lacemaking and even embroidery and macrame and, oh, lots of stuff, for so very long and I've missed it this last little while. My new toy makes braids. If I can work out how to make lanyards of the right length, I could be guilty of making lanyards with a difference for cons. Watch this space.
May 6, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-05-07T10:38:00
It's day 3 of my blogversary celebration and it's about time you had a sense of blogging past. I would do blogging future as well, but my predictive powers are on the blink. Instead I will do a meme that I was given a couple of weeks back and had completely forgotten about. Not yet, though. I will sneakily slip the meme in between other posts.
Over the next few days, I shall post posts from years gone by. I want to declaim, "You will laugh - you will cry." The probability is quite high that you will only cry. Read at your peril!
To get you started, here is one from my very first month of blogging.
26th May, 2005. 1:24 pm. Not sure about the value of epiphanies
Last night contained an important moment for me. It was born of an overactive brain and a touch of physical pain. It was also born of an invitation in the mail.
In just under three weeks I attend a farewell function for members of an advisory council. When that's done, I'll only have one policy committee left. I've been reconciling myself gradually to life without NGO stuff and without the frenzy of Women's History Month and without advisory roles. This is not a sudden decision. It's just a decision I didn’t care to face until now.
I care so intensely about fighting racism and about gender issues that it hurts to admit that my health limits me. I've already stepped back from a range of groups I've worked with in the past. In the process, I'm losing touch with some of the most amazing people you will ever meet. But I have to. There are other people who can run tight meetings, give a cogent briefing, give speeches, develop policy, train people. No-one else can take care of my health.
If I had kept on at the pace I set myself a while back, I would have followed my late mentor, Helen. I miss Helen so much. I think I wrote Secret Jewish Women's Business for her and I think that's why I so much want to see it in print. But while I miss her and while I realise that Australia is hugely worse off than when I started doing all these things twenty years ago, I'm tired. Not ordinary-tired. I'm beyond exhaustion.
I realised last night that there's a moment when selfishness becomes essential. I still feel guilty at reaching this moment.
I've been joking for months to my writing friends about my Secret Other Self and about my Mystery Life, while I sorted all this out. I was amused that my writing friends never seemed to work out that it was no secret at all. Maybe they're just very polite and were pretending not to know. While I joked though, I started retiring that secret self. Right now there are only two sets of meetings and phone calls, so many fewer functions and almost no dreadful deadlines. So much less hurting when the world is cruel.
I am lying about that last - how can I stop hurting when the world is cruel? This is why I can’t entirely let go. I'll still run my email lists for the Australian Virtual Centre for Women and the Law. And I have two more years to run on a particular national board.
What does twenty years add up to? I don't know yet. I'm too close to it. Ask me when I'm fifty.
A Canadian politician, though, told me twenty years ago that my writing could be as powerful as the work of a committee. She said that fiction can teach one to share a complex world. She said it could change things. She said this in a London pub and I listened, but not with my heart. In my heart I was writing for me, and anything that would change the world needed to be for others.
This was followed by a year from hell. I lost my father and I lost confidence in my writing and I fell back on my family's values. And my family is strong on good committee work as a way of helping a sad world.
Now I've come full circle. I've also discovered I can write. To be honest, I didn’t discover it - I still think I'm not much chop. Trivium Publishing (and especially Tamara Mazzei) did the hard work and published my first novel. And I love writing. Writing and editing a novel is the nearest thing to pure joy I've ever known.
Right now, I'm reminding myself of my answer in that Bloomsbury pub.
"It's a Fabian thing to change the world gently."
"It still does the job."
Committees are easier to hide behind when you lack self-esteem. I'm a bit short on self-esteem most of the time. I'm still going to gradually retire my Secret Other Self, though. I know that writing a novel about fractured lives and a rather strange mirror is not terribly important. I know it's selfish. But drabbit, if this is my mid-life crisis I intend to get some joy from it. I also intend to live for a long time to come. I've accepted the invitation to that final function: it's time now to fracture fictional lives for a bit.
Over the next few days, I shall post posts from years gone by. I want to declaim, "You will laugh - you will cry." The probability is quite high that you will only cry. Read at your peril!
To get you started, here is one from my very first month of blogging.
26th May, 2005. 1:24 pm. Not sure about the value of epiphanies
Last night contained an important moment for me. It was born of an overactive brain and a touch of physical pain. It was also born of an invitation in the mail.
In just under three weeks I attend a farewell function for members of an advisory council. When that's done, I'll only have one policy committee left. I've been reconciling myself gradually to life without NGO stuff and without the frenzy of Women's History Month and without advisory roles. This is not a sudden decision. It's just a decision I didn’t care to face until now.
I care so intensely about fighting racism and about gender issues that it hurts to admit that my health limits me. I've already stepped back from a range of groups I've worked with in the past. In the process, I'm losing touch with some of the most amazing people you will ever meet. But I have to. There are other people who can run tight meetings, give a cogent briefing, give speeches, develop policy, train people. No-one else can take care of my health.
If I had kept on at the pace I set myself a while back, I would have followed my late mentor, Helen. I miss Helen so much. I think I wrote Secret Jewish Women's Business for her and I think that's why I so much want to see it in print. But while I miss her and while I realise that Australia is hugely worse off than when I started doing all these things twenty years ago, I'm tired. Not ordinary-tired. I'm beyond exhaustion.
I realised last night that there's a moment when selfishness becomes essential. I still feel guilty at reaching this moment.
I've been joking for months to my writing friends about my Secret Other Self and about my Mystery Life, while I sorted all this out. I was amused that my writing friends never seemed to work out that it was no secret at all. Maybe they're just very polite and were pretending not to know. While I joked though, I started retiring that secret self. Right now there are only two sets of meetings and phone calls, so many fewer functions and almost no dreadful deadlines. So much less hurting when the world is cruel.
I am lying about that last - how can I stop hurting when the world is cruel? This is why I can’t entirely let go. I'll still run my email lists for the Australian Virtual Centre for Women and the Law. And I have two more years to run on a particular national board.
What does twenty years add up to? I don't know yet. I'm too close to it. Ask me when I'm fifty.
A Canadian politician, though, told me twenty years ago that my writing could be as powerful as the work of a committee. She said that fiction can teach one to share a complex world. She said it could change things. She said this in a London pub and I listened, but not with my heart. In my heart I was writing for me, and anything that would change the world needed to be for others.
This was followed by a year from hell. I lost my father and I lost confidence in my writing and I fell back on my family's values. And my family is strong on good committee work as a way of helping a sad world.
Now I've come full circle. I've also discovered I can write. To be honest, I didn’t discover it - I still think I'm not much chop. Trivium Publishing (and especially Tamara Mazzei) did the hard work and published my first novel. And I love writing. Writing and editing a novel is the nearest thing to pure joy I've ever known.
Right now, I'm reminding myself of my answer in that Bloomsbury pub.
"It's a Fabian thing to change the world gently."
"It still does the job."
Committees are easier to hide behind when you lack self-esteem. I'm a bit short on self-esteem most of the time. I'm still going to gradually retire my Secret Other Self, though. I know that writing a novel about fractured lives and a rather strange mirror is not terribly important. I know it's selfish. But drabbit, if this is my mid-life crisis I intend to get some joy from it. I also intend to live for a long time to come. I've accepted the invitation to that final function: it's time now to fracture fictional lives for a bit.
gillpolack @ 2012-05-07T09:06:00
I've been awake for two hours and am without coffee. This will soon be fixed. I was getting some of the undone things completed, because I am to be curtained shortly and those windows have to be accessible. During the process, I realised that it doesn't matter how much housework I do, my place is still a mess. Something in me* spawns piles of strange things that need sorting. Anyhow, it's less of a mess, and the curtains are almost able to be reached without danger of tripping over interesting things.
The advantage of doing tidying early is that I start the day in a state of conscious virtue. If I make enough coffee, I shall continue this way and shall do so much stuff today that it will feel like Monday. Except...wait... it *is* Monday.
On that note I need coffee. Much coffee.
*my internal rabid monster?
The advantage of doing tidying early is that I start the day in a state of conscious virtue. If I make enough coffee, I shall continue this way and shall do so much stuff today that it will feel like Monday. Except...wait... it *is* Monday.
On that note I need coffee. Much coffee.
*my internal rabid monster?
gillpolack @ 2012-05-06T20:50:00
Taxes took the whole day (taxes and paper sorting, really) and they're done.
The burglation moved more paper from place to place than I believed possible even having said it before. I still haven't exhausted the changes rung on my flat. I found a pouch that once contained jewellery underneath everything, so it was all disturbed. Which I knew. Which is why the taxes have taken forever. The bad side of this is that my other tasks are still be finished (none of the deadlines have shifted) and the good news is that I've done a lot of clearing in obscure places. Again.
First thing tomorrow I have several trips to the rubbish bins, as I have a lot of recycling and garbage from all this amazing effort. Maybe my flat will look tidier then. It certainly doesn't now. Nor am I doing any of the work I really ought to do tonight. I have an excuse. Tax gave me an allergic asthma attack. Seriously it did! OK, so it was the accumulated dust that provoked it, but the dust was in my tax papers and so I am antishistamined and very sleepy. It's a good night for lolling around in my PJs and drinking tea, in fact.
The burglation moved more paper from place to place than I believed possible even having said it before. I still haven't exhausted the changes rung on my flat. I found a pouch that once contained jewellery underneath everything, so it was all disturbed. Which I knew. Which is why the taxes have taken forever. The bad side of this is that my other tasks are still be finished (none of the deadlines have shifted) and the good news is that I've done a lot of clearing in obscure places. Again.
First thing tomorrow I have several trips to the rubbish bins, as I have a lot of recycling and garbage from all this amazing effort. Maybe my flat will look tidier then. It certainly doesn't now. Nor am I doing any of the work I really ought to do tonight. I have an excuse. Tax gave me an allergic asthma attack. Seriously it did! OK, so it was the accumulated dust that provoked it, but the dust was in my tax papers and so I am antishistamined and very sleepy. It's a good night for lolling around in my PJs and drinking tea, in fact.
May 5, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-05-06T11:39:00
The problem with the first real cold snap of the year is that it ought to be a time for conviviality. Mulled wine and friends around a fire. Roast chestnuts. Instead it's (this year) first week of term, last chance to do taxes, the time when all those articles are almost due and, of course, one of my deadline-periods for my PhD (not the major deadlines, but the small ones leading up to them). Also, my place has to be in order for tomorrow morning because the curtains guy is coming to measure up.
I've reached the stage with my papers where I'm putting all the paper I don't need for six months into the one drawer. This is a bad thing and I swore I would never do it again. But it will give me the time to get everything done. It will also enable to see what I haven't done of all my lists of things.
The good thing about the paper sort is that I find things. Day two of my blogversary, therefore, is two postcards, to be sent on Wednesday to the first two people who provide me with addresses by then (by email, IM, etc). They're from the Handwritten exhibition at the National Library. One is Handel's Salve Regina and the other is of a page from a c1500 Book of Hours.
I'm only going to give things away until I get to the post office. After then I will find other ways of celebrating.
PS I keep reading printouts that say 'draft time travel novel' as 'daft time travel novel.' All my fiction has an element of daftness, so this works far to well.
I've reached the stage with my papers where I'm putting all the paper I don't need for six months into the one drawer. This is a bad thing and I swore I would never do it again. But it will give me the time to get everything done. It will also enable to see what I haven't done of all my lists of things.
The good thing about the paper sort is that I find things. Day two of my blogversary, therefore, is two postcards, to be sent on Wednesday to the first two people who provide me with addresses by then (by email, IM, etc). They're from the Handwritten exhibition at the National Library. One is Handel's Salve Regina and the other is of a page from a c1500 Book of Hours.
I'm only going to give things away until I get to the post office. After then I will find other ways of celebrating.
PS I keep reading printouts that say 'draft time travel novel' as 'daft time travel novel.' All my fiction has an element of daftness, so this works far to well.
gillpolack @ 2012-05-06T00:05:00
I've been puddling my way through the next bit of my taxes. I must be making progress, but I'm at that space where some sets of numbers go on forever and others are very mysterious. This is one of the years I was rather ill, so my records aren't as complete as they should be. Since these taxes are being done in another year when...yes, they're running late.
I was all sorted to blitz them in a few days, months ago. I announced it with far too much hubris, here. Life happened. Of course life happened. Life and taxes and hubris don't mesh well. Anyhow, if you know why I was paid $440 not long before my 2010 birthday, feel free to explain it. Otherwise I shall just plough through the papers until I have the information.
Taxes are a necessary evil, but at certain times of year the necessity and the evil both overwhelm.
Part of the problem is that I have to keep a modicum of decorum. I cannot play mild practical jokes in my taxes. it's so tempting. It's so very tempting. Vade retro! I shall prevail (with grand sobriety)! And I shall finish this one set of records before I sleep. The rest can wait until Sunday.
I was all sorted to blitz them in a few days, months ago. I announced it with far too much hubris, here. Life happened. Of course life happened. Life and taxes and hubris don't mesh well. Anyhow, if you know why I was paid $440 not long before my 2010 birthday, feel free to explain it. Otherwise I shall just plough through the papers until I have the information.
Taxes are a necessary evil, but at certain times of year the necessity and the evil both overwhelm.
Part of the problem is that I have to keep a modicum of decorum. I cannot play mild practical jokes in my taxes. it's so tempting. It's so very tempting. Vade retro! I shall prevail (with grand sobriety)! And I shall finish this one set of records before I sleep. The rest can wait until Sunday.
