Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Books and Learning

So I don't have much in the way of life updates this week.  Next week, I *may* forget to update, because the second book in the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson is coming out on the 4th.  It's a good day I have Tuesday off!!  If you like fantasy - particularly large ongoing fantasy universes - I highly recommend.  However, it is supposed to be a 10 book series, and he's only on book 2.  The next books shouldn't take as long to publish however (first one was in 2010, this one comes 4 years later), because he's done with the Wheel of Time series now.  If you don't like huge 1000+ page books, his other (smaller, normal sized) books are really good too. Some of those are: Elantris, The Mistborn Trilogy, and Warbreaker.  He's also got some really good novellas and young adult books (haven't read all of those yet).  Legion is a really good novella of his that I've read.  Anyway, to end that aside, if you like fantasy, you have to check out Brandon Sanderson.

Anyway, since there are times when life is just life and there's not much new to report on, I thought I'd do this.  I'm thinking about writing some posts that are like client education in a vet's office.  I thought I'd do one on puppy/kitten vaccines, vaccines in general, or maybe parasites, but is there any particular topic that you guys want to hear about?  I love answering questions; while some might be out of my realm of knowledge, I can still try!  Either way, it's just an idea on how to fill up some space.

P.S. - As a side note for taxes: if you ever have a weird situation or something you can't quite figure out how to represent on your return, and your job isn't being helpful - call the IRS!  We've had issues when the husband was a graduate student, since part of his stipend came from a W-2 and the rest the school reported as coming directly from a grant (plus he had a T-1098), because Emory liked to be *extremely* difficult like that (don't get me started on their payroll and HR department).  Then to throw a wrench in it, NIH stopped sending out grant income forms (whatever they're called, I can't remember), so Emory decided that they didn't need to either... Unfortunately, that's how they recorded most of his income, and we didn't not want to get penalized AGAIN for failing to report income.  But we called the IRS (second year now), and they were super helpful, and even said that "do it xyz way and we'll put it on record that you're trying to do this correctly, so if there's a problem in the future, we know it's not your fault."  I mean, I think they're so helpful because we're trying to be honest and do things right, which probably makes their jobs easier down the line.  Just thought I'd share - they've been really helpful with questions, since we had to pay the penalties 3 years ago due to our misunderstanding on what documents we needed for his taxes.  We even asked other "tax professionals," and they didn't quite know how to properly state his income.  I didn't think that many people know that the IRS has services like that, so just trying to spread the word!

2 comments:

  1. Oh man, thanks for the tax advice! I've been struggling with mine because SC gives a credit for purchasing eco-friendly cars even though the federal credit ran out, but I'm supposed to refer to the federal credit to figure out the SC credit, but I can't find it anywhere since they took it off the IRS forms, and my dealer couldn't hlp me and TurboTax couldn't help me (though I did get a free upgrade out of it lol)... So I'm definitely going to do that next!!!

    And I would be interested in anything doggy-related!!! Especially since I've figured out that our local Banfield Pet Hospital (the Petsmart one) is a complete scam. I don't know if all Banfields are like this, but they have flat out lied to me and a couple other people I know, in order to upsell some service. They try to make you feel like you're saving all this money, but really their base price is so jacked up that even with the discount they give you, it's way more than another place. The pup had to get some baby teeth pulled cuz the adult teeth were grown in on top of them and Banfield's quote was over $1000 - charging for "medical glove disposal" and other dumb things - whereas my local vet charged $100. Sorry, I ramble-ranted, but my point is, I learned all his puppy stuff from Banfield only to learn that they're a bunch of greedy quacks, so please, any info is good info! :D I'd love to read it! Also dumb customer stories are always super fun to swap!

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  2. I'm sure the IRS folks really prefer people who preemptively ask questions, to try to do their taxes correctly, rather than bulldozing their way through it incorrectly. I know I always prefer when people ask me stuff, rather than doing it themselves then bringing it to me to fix, once it's all screwed up :-)

    As a pet-less individual, I'm cool with hearing about any and everything!

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