The Dangerous Book of Garbage Collecting Tax Men

- I do have something rather embarrassing to admit.

I've been a homeowner for 10 years as of April 1st. There are several federal holidays every year. To this day, I can never remember if the garbage collection is delayed a day for the whole week or not. We had a holiday just a few weeks ago and I already forgot what I did. I *think* it is the same day but I'm not sure. I have no doubt that after the next holiday I'll look to see what my neighbors do and then probably have to run the cans out in the morning because I'm wrong.

- A couple of years ago I took a week off to teach a developer class at a local education center. I did not get a W2 form at the end of the year and thus I forgot to report it on my taxes for that year. So I get a letter from the IRS saying that I owed them money, which is fine. I did. The money that I got from the gig was completely untaxed. My issue is that they are taking 40% of the money that I earned that week. Yet you'll hear that we need to pay more taxes and that will surely fix the problems. It didn't at 10% and it didn't at 20% and it didn't at 30%. I'm sure 40% is the right answer...

- Some friends of mine that are to be married this summer are getting grief from one of the families. One of them is an atheist and the other, well, isn't. The one family is upset that they are not having a religious wedding.

Now let me first say up front that this isn't a rant that is (directly) about religion. My main issue with this is that someone else is trying to force their will on someone else. To make matters worse, it is about religious belief. Religion, at its core, is the belief in something that can't be proven. It is something that you feel in your gut and chances are you only had it in your gut because of how you were raised and where you were raised. If you want to believe in that, fine. But to try to shape someone else's life based on your own gut feelings and unverifiable stories from the stone age? When you think about it, that is arrogant.

- Nothing new to report on the baby front. We're past the first trimester and that is the dangerous part (especially for us). We did go shopping for furniture a couple of weeks ago - that was a little sobering. It still really hasn't hit me yet even though I've seen several sonograms. We find out the gender at the end of the month.

- The ladies are making a long-overdue trip to the vets tonight. I think I'll bring the video cam so that you can appreciate the degree that these two will whine in the car.

- David sent me a link to this article last week: It is an article that talks about how ridiculous we are when it comes to parenting and child worship in this country. Believe it or not, there are school districts in Massachusetts that are now jumping rope without the rope because using rope could hurt their self esteem. I suppose their self esteem won't get hurt when they get an F in math?

I know I've written about this before but lessons learned in childhood (good and bad) prepared me for adulthood. How many times have we seen instances of people that had a sheltered childhood that went on to go nuts when they went away to college? My cousins are great examples of this - mommy and daddy took care of everything and to this day they haven't grown up.

This reminds me of a story from my childhood. One of my friends from the old neighborhood had gotten in a fight with another boy. His parents ordered him in the house and had him sit at the table. I thought for sure he was going to be in big trouble and that the parents of the other boy would be called. Their response? They wanted to know if he was prepared to defend himself.

The first book my kid gets is the Dangerous Book for Boys. Unless it is a girl, but I'd probably still do it.

As usual, Carlin had it right.