Vox Lucens

***FLASH FLOODS POSSIBLE***

Increasingly high levels of impending joy have led to the significant possibility of flash-floods of happiness affecting all those that come in contact with the owner of this site. Please be on your alert for rising levels of joy, and brace yourselves accordingly.

In order to focus scarce resources such as time on best meeting this emergency, what little time has been devoted to blogging lately will be re-allocated to the emergency effort. Posting shall re-commence at such a time as the moon shall no longer be made of honey.

No apologies will be forthcoming for this prioritization of resources, but complaints may be made on congratulatory note-cards sent to Fresno, California. However, you are warned that such mailings may, in fact, increase the levels of impending joy and therefore be highly counterproductive to the resumption of blogging.

–The Management

***END EMERGENCY BROADCAST***

Every year, long before I get used to writing the new year number when I scribble out the date, I begin to get that sinking, horrible feeling that I have to do my taxes.  At first, that feeling is a minor annoyance, but as time progresses it gets worse and worse and worse.

I’ve taken a variety of approaches to dealing with this pain.  I’ve hired accountants.  I’ve slogged through paperwork on my own.  I’ve contemplated moving to Andorra.  Long-time friends might remember the year that I actually threw an income tax party in an attempt to reduce the pain - misery, after all, loves company.

This year, I thought that I was going to end up doing them myself.  I’m not next door to my cheap Charleston accountant, and H&R Block is more expensive than I want to pay.  Online programs are expensive, too, and there’s always the fear of the unknown because I’ve never used one of them.  But then, then I found the answer - a tax program that is cheap, and just as important, does not make you pay until you are actually ready to file.  You can be sure that it is going to work for you first.  I don’t know why I didn’t find this sooner.

So I bit the bullet and tried it - and now, my friends, I am on the other side of the pain.  I am on the side of relief, the immense relief that comes from knowing that when April 15 rolls around I will have no worries, for I will not be standing in line or burning the midnight oil.

And finally, I would also note that this year, the relief is even deeper.  Normally, my relief is twinged with cynicism - that though I have done my duty, my duty to fund government extravagance is hardly a duty worth praising myself for.  This year, though, I can rest assured that my tax money has nothing to do with government extravagance, for government extravagance now revolves around spending money nobody has.

But my part is done for another nine months.