Turns out I'm not so smart after all

This weekend was not going to be about Easter, but about taxes. I have to file tax returns in two countries, being a USAian living and working in Canada. Not usually a big deal, except a) in my USA tax returns I have to do all this stuff with extra forms to exclude my Canadian earned income from income tax, leaving me with a paltry amount of taxable unearned income from my USA bank savings accounts, and b) Canadian tax forms are designed by or for (perhaps both) the deranged.

I never thought I would see something so simple as my taxes turn into the mishigas that it turns into with Canadian tax forms. First you have to calculate your income, which isn't that hard. Then you have to do all these weird deduction/exclusion things (none of which I qualify for, but you have to check them all off anyway), then you have to calculate your tax. You calculate your taxes four times on Canadian tax forms (which assumes you can do math--USA tax forms have tables you look stuff up on, so all you ahve to do mathwise is tell greater than and lesser than). Base tax, which is 22% (or something) of some arbitrary portion of your income (like the first $32,751 or something), then the tax on the rest of your income (which is adjusted to one of three income levels, like 8%, 15% or 22% of whatever your income is beyond whatever the base taxable income was). Then you do it again for the provincial taxes, which a) make use of different 'adjusted gross income' equivalent (AGI is the USA term for it, but it's the taxable portion of your income, once you've excluded everything excludable from it, and possibly deducted your deductable from it). Which comes from whatever your taxable federal income was less something else, like your property taxes or some other credit you have to exclude or something.

Very complicated.

My USA taxes would be very simple, except being a foreign resident, I can't use the EZ. Basically it's three lines on my 1040A--my earned income, my $20 of interest income, and then my foreign earned-income exclusion (requiring a separate 2225-EZ), which amounts to my entire earned income. Which means my total USA taxable income is basically my $20 of interest, and it's not worth anybody's time to calculate, let alone collect, taxes on just $20 of income. So I sign enter a zero on the amount I owe and send it back.

Someday (soon I hope) things will get complicated, because I will have a mortgage, and possibly unearned interest income from investments, and maybe even an RSP (Canadian analog of an IRA), which I'm pretty sure protects my income from Canadian taxes, but gets taxed as earned income later, but I'm not sure what happens in terms of my USA taxes. I assume I can just exclude it, but what about the interest, and what happens when I withdraw it?

But for the moment (i.e. this weekend, which is what this entry is about) the big problem will be locating my USA tax forms. Which arrived in the first week of January, got carefully put away somewhere, and this morning when I finally went to put them in the folder with the rest of my tax stuff, there they weren't. What I've been looking at and keeping very carefully safe and where I knew it was for at least a month turn out to be my 2005 tax forms, not my 2006 forms.

And I was feeling good about being smart. Well, maybe I'm kind of smart. But 'wise' or 'organized' is obviously a completely different matter.

So this weekend is going to be about finding my USA tax forms, rather than actually doing anthing about filing my USA taxes. Unless I find them early, in which case there may still be some useful tax preparation this weekend.

I'm not sanguine. But then, as a person with dysthymia, I'm never really sanguine about anything.

Turns out I'm smart after all

I just took the CBC's "Test the Nation" IQ test, and scored a very respectable 128. Which a) isn't worth much, since IQ tests are, well, unreliable, but nonetheless b) is 10 points higher than the last time I had my IQ officially measured.

Which was back in college. I had an educational counsellor/psychologist who, on a whim (or rather at my instigation) gave me, and interpreted for me, a dizzying battery of tests. And when she said "you a person of slightly above average intelligence", I was very relieved.

When people think of you as smart, they think you must be smart at everything. And if something isn't coming easily for you, say you have trouble adding seven and five and reliably getting fourteen*, it must be because you're lazy. Because it can't be that you're not smart.

But it turns out I wasn't quite as smart as people thought I was. I was/am a person of slightly above average intelligence. About 115, depending. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. But on individual skills, I am wildly unpredictable. Turns out there was some particular measure--abstract memory or verbal reasoning, or something like that--that I was freakishly good at. And this made up for the fact that I was distinctly below average at a number of things. Like subtraction.

I could do word problems, because I could always figure out what the problem was about, and I understood the relationship between what the problem was about and how to calculate the answer. I wasn't doing the math (because I was hopeless at the math) but I could reason 'about' or 'around' the math, and (eventually) arrive at a plausible answer. So it looked I could subtract, when it turns out I all could do was fake it really well.

So like I say, I recently took CBC's "Test the Nation" test and did respectably. 12/12 language, 5/6 memory, 10/12 logic, 5/6 visual, 9/12 mathematical, 12/12 perception. Whatever that means. For my age, I came out at 128. Respectable. But lately, I have trouble even counting, let alone subtracting.

^*Yes, I know five and seven is thirteen**. I was trying to be funny.

^** <rimshot>

Fiddling instead of accomplishing squat

So along with other migrations, I've migrated to the 'new' version of blogger, and the 'new' version of templates and layout control. And I finally figured out how to deal with links the way I like to deal with them, and managed to get most of my links fixed. Well, many of them. In the coming weeks, I'll be playing with my colo(u)r choices and things like that. Let me know what you think. Also, if you're a pal or family (you know who you are) and you have a website or a blog or something, I am (re-)compiling my list of non-professional links. If you wanna be linked, or if you especially do not wanna be linked, ya gotta let me know, or I'll just decide for you.

Well, that was exciting

I'm migrating.

I'm migrating this blog onto the new version of Blogger, which shouldn't (have) affect(ed) any readers, but put me into a whole big mess of javascript loops and unenabled cookies, and no way to log on to request help. (If I can't log on, folks, I can't log in to click the thing that will take me to the contact page, especially if the first thing the contact page does is ask me to log in.) But now I think things have settled.

I'm migrating to Thunderbird for e-mail. This is because there's a 'portable' version that can live on my new USD flash drive (or whatever you call them--I usually call it my 'stick', but then that can be odd out of context). I lost my old USD flash drive (it's probably in my apartment somewhere with my HBC credit card that I haven't seen in two years), and replaced it with a bigger, cheaper one, which came loaded with all this stuff to make my life more portable. So now I'm migrating all my internet stuff (e-mail, blog, and browser) Mozilla products on the stick, so I can carry my cookies and saved e-mails and so on with me, and always have them when I log on, regardless of which machine I'm working on. Yee haw.

So anyway, I migrated to the new version of blogger, and due to a problem with my cookies or something got sent into a never-ending javascript-cookie loop which it took me until just now to fix.

Next our new lab will be ready to migrate to, and probably before the end of summer I'll be migrating to a new office, further down the hall. My Deanlet for space is big on 'consolidating' my department which is scattered over two floors (it used to be two buildings) into one corner of one floor. So I'll be moving sometime soon. Anything that gets me closer to the mens room and the stairwell to the new lab space (or rather the stairwell which is convenient to the new lab space) is presumably a good thing.

Wherefore art thou Blister Packaging

I realize the point of blister packaging is to prevent people from opening the package and making off/tampering with the contents. But it seems to me that the emphasis on preventing opening is overblown. I mean, the potato chip industry has been producing packaging that obviously prevents tampering, or at least makes it very visible, without actually making the package impossible to open. As has (with varying degrees of success, I admit) the over-the-counter drug industry, the refrigerated milk and juice industry, and the small office supply industry. And if stuff sold in blister packaging were more successfully packaged, I would not now be bleeding onto my keyboard. </rant>

Daylight Shmavings Time

Much as I enjoy going home while it's still light, I figure it's staying lighter later anyway, and Daylight Savings Time just makes it more likely I have to go to work while it's still dark.

Why do we do this? And why does George Bush believe screwing around with the clock is a good thing? Seems to me any energy we save in the evening is energy we use in the morning. The cows don't care about DST, and consequently neither do the farmers.

I like DST, because it usually marks the midway point (more or less) between New Years and my birthday, so it (and the corresponding switch back), makes a good time to switch out toothbrushes, check batteries in smoke alarms and flashlights, and so on. So as bad an idea as DST is, it has its benefits. But screwing around with it seems to be without any value at all. And yet a large number of people (read the Canadian government) has jumped on the bandwagon. Except Saskatchewan, which never held with the whole DST thing anyway. Like Arizona. I never thought I'd think of Saskatchewan as a sensible place, it being basically like Manitoba but rectangular, but in this, Saskatchewan Rocks. As does Arizona.

So I'm going home, in the daylight, to crawl into bed and get some much needed sleep.

Well, it's official.

I get a course break next year. Well, technically, a 'half-course' break, since around here a full course is a full year. So for the most part, I teach five half-courses a year, fulfilling my obligation of 2.5-full course equivalents. And it's still that way, even though the new computer system can't actually handle full-year courses, and you have to link, by hand, to two virtual half-courses. But whatever.

So, under current agreements, I get a course break next year, in exchange for consenting to be Graduate Chair. Which, frankly, takes a lot more time than teaching a half-course, but whatever. The plan is to eliminate the course break for Grad Chairs, in exchange for a (small) global reduction to 4.5 full-course equivalents in 2 years across the board. And I'm told my department is small enough that we technically aren't supposed to get administrative course breaks for our grad chair. So as long as it looks like I have to be grad chair anyway, I'm d*mn well getting my course break while I still can.

So it looks like one of my courses next term is going to get pulled, which is too bad for anyone who wanted to take it. But oh well. I ain't doing it out of the goodness of my heart. Especially since it looks like I still be Undergraduate Chair, and quite possibly acting Head for the fall term. Next year is going to be Administrative Hell, what with all the new administrative responsibilities, trying to get the new lab up and running, and trying to get a couple of articles and a grant application out the door. It's going to be a rough summer, come to think of it.

But at least there's three-hours a week, one term, that I don't have to spend in the classroom, and with it the possibility that I might actually get enough sleep without having an 'early' morning class to teach. So on the balance, I'm happy. I guess.

For any other Zelda weirdos out there

I just found the cutest parody of a Zelda-game trading sequence. It's cute. It doesn't make much sense, but that's part of the fun. Check it out at
www.armorgames.com/games/zeldalampshade.html.

I could be at home ...

... watching celebrity poker, making and eating chicken salad, or sleeping. Or catching up on all the work I didn't do last week. But it's 7:15pm, I'm at the office, printing an ms I agreed to review. Which is taking a long time because I'm trying to save paper by printing 2up and double-sided.

But I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night, and I really want to go home and go to sleep. But at this rate it'll be 9pm by the time I get home. Which I take as a Sign From Above that I should stop somewhere and get takeout on the way home. Which won't go very far in the trying to save money stakes, nor the trying to lose weight stakes, but at this point I just don't care.

Luckily, the friend I usually try to catch breakfast with on Tuesdays is 'trapped' in Palm Springs, because apparently instead of booking a flight back for February 19th, he booked it for March 19th. So somebody else (thank heavens not me) has to cover his classes tomorrow. But the point is that I don't have a breakfast meeting in the morning, so there's no real impetus to get out of bed too early tomorrow, except the chicken salad and catching up on work pressures. But I'll cope with those tomorrow.

I just want to go on record as saying *I* didn't get to go to Palm Springs last week. The furthest away I got was just under 5 miles, according to Mapquest.

Well, now I know what -40 feels like.

Well, -38C, which is what it was a few minutes ago walking from my car to the office. Happened to snag a prime parking space, but that's another story. But Breakfast Television was still reporting 8am's official temp of -40 at 9am when I was leaving the house. For reference, -40 is where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales converge.

No one will believe it, but I've become quite blasé about the weather. Oh, I still complain. It's what I do. I avoid going out if the wind chill is below about -30C, and more than once I've begged out of stuff because it was just too cold, or snowing, or whatever. But a good friend complained about how cold it was where he lives. -16C! Horrors!

Now, I won't say that it's been months since we've seen -16C. Actually, it's only been a couple of weeks. But still. -16C? As I said to my friend, "puh-leez!" Talk to the hand, cuz the ears are covered in three layers of fabric.