Winter Madness

Tax time is here again, and this year I've volunteered for VITA, despite my hectic schedule working full-time and working towards my master's degree in accountancy. Unfortunately, the instructor was either late or never showed up on the day of training, so I left after twenty minutes when discouraged volunteers started filtering out. With a writing obligation of around 3,000 words per week, my master's degree dictates that no spare time can be wasted.

To make matters worse, I had a broken-down dryer and two DNF complaints on my geocache to contend with. After leaving the instructor-less VITA class, I worked on my master's degree homework, then headed out to the first waypoint of my geocache to see if it had disappeared. It had not. I was able to get a more accurate signal through the naked winter branches above my cache, however, so I updated the coordinates so the less astute geocachers could find the first waypoint.

Given the cold temperatures and the paucity of free time I had over the weekend, I grumbled a bit over slow-witted cachers before moving on to the problem of the dryer. Long and boring story made short, it involved pulling our better one out of storage and likewise replacing the washing machine because my wife wanted our newer washing machine. Unfortunately, some water had remained in the pump, freezing and cracking the pump and rendering it inoperable. More time wasted swapping machines for no reason - sigh.

I fired off an email to the VITA site coordinator, inquiring as to whether he had made it to class Saturday and if not, if he had rescheduled training. Then I started work on the VITA study material at the IRS website on my lonesome. Even after taking a master's-level class in taxation, I ran across terms I was unfamiliar with. Given the nature of the people that qualify for VITA assistance (low income), I was baffled that so much training was necessary in the first place. The tax code continues to impress me with its illogic.

So . . . I've been busy. Next week I am supposed to take time off to help my uncle, a CPA, with the madness of tax season. All in all, it has been nearly impossible to write so much as a paragraph on my blog. The same goes for my (extremely) amateur photography.

No free time for fun lately, it seems. My life has never really been about more than trying to better myself, my family and my world, though, while others are more interested in expounding on why it is vastly immoral for rich people to be compelled to do so much as lift a finger for the desperately needy. Too many Americans would rather devote their energy to criticizing those that would try to alleviate suffering in the world than take a moment to denounce the likes of Madoff.

If you can't beat them, join them, right? I invite my more conservative friends to ignore the suffering in the world and worship with me at the altar of the almighty dollar - no use going to a real church and being a hypocrite! Jesus denounced them roundly (He also had a few choices words for rich people, come to think of it).

Now let us pray to the God of Derivatives, who has abandoned us of late . . .