Monday.

I need my morning walkies, especially after missing Friday morning (that whole fighting-off-a-virus thing).

But, come decision time, well, there's a clear patch passing over, but I don't at all trust the surrounding clouds.  So, best to stay home.

Which turns out to have been the right decision; smack dab in the middle of normal walkies time, we get heavy rain.  And wind.  And hail as big as barleycorns.  Lentils, even*!

The weather waxes and wanes, then comes a rumble.  The thunder we were promised?  Doesn't sound right.  Huckleberry being uncommonly rambunctious?  There's another rumble, and the house jerks.  Ah... a small earthquake, nearby, then.  This one, in fact.

Not having had my morning dose of fresh air and exercise, take a nap.  Maybe after that I can be productive?

Afternoon, post-nap task: finish up with the tax forms.  TurbotAx thinks I'm ready to e-file.  But!  I need to go back and apply my federal refund to estimated taxes.  This takes a while to figure out.  Seriously, guys: why isn't this prominently featured on all the getting-ready-to-file screens?  As was the case last year, I get an error message when I try to print (to PDF) the forms needed for filing; eventually, I figure out that the only thing I actually need to print (out of this particular mess) is California form 3582, which I can find in the saved PDF-for-the-records.

Then I also need a California form 540-ES.  The real one, not the Intuit auto-generated, already-filled-in-based-on-last-year version.  So, off the the FTB web site.  There's no link to "Forms" from the main page.  No obvious way to get to it.  There's a search box; a search for "540-es" gets this year's form second, after last year's form, which somehow I don't think many people need at this point.  Bonus: as it was last year, so this year, I can't fill out the 540-ES using the old version of Acrobat available on Linux; I have to launch the Windows VM again to use the latest Acrobat to fill out the dang form (I seem to recall that one of the alternative PDF viewers on Linux could fill out last year's form but not print it usefully).

Anyway: here it is midafternoon.  Federal and state returns are e-filed.  Payment forms (state tax due, and federal and state estimated payments) are filled out, checks written, and all ready to pop in tomorrow's mail.

 

Eep.  And, as I was writing the above, a client called to let me know that a dormant project has just awakened.  Another thing to do, in among trying to de-clutter the house and prepare for Operation Bug Out (plus the various stuff I'm already supposed to be doing for various clients).  At least it's paying work.

 

* Midwesterners may sneer at lentil-sized hail, but that's what we get around here.