Summertime and the theft is good

My Toledo estimated quarterly tax is due. Which is fine, except that I can't find the form to accompany it on the Toledo government website. There's a document on the municipal tax code itself, and a document for businesses on withholding it for employees (which my employer won't do, I asked), and there's the 2007 yearly form that says QUARTERLY ESTIMATED TAXES ARE REQUIRED twice and states that there is a form, but I can't find the form. You know what I can find? a "Tax Report" form with which I can report anyone I think is not paying the Toledo tax they should.

Also, I was woken up by a call this morning from a computer saying "If you are [me], press 1." I did so. It went on, "To verify your Citi Card billing address, enter your zip code." I hung up, thinking that phishing had gotten offline and into my phone and we were all doomed. Later, I found I had another message purportedly from Citi Cards, so I checked my account and found a $1,247 (or so) charge on it from Sears Roebuck. I called, and spoke with a lady who had terrible trouble deviating from her script when I asked questions, and closed the account. Apparently I have to wait for a Security Affidavit that they're going to send me before I can send in paperwork to contest the charge, but I shouldn't have to pay it in the meantime. Apparently there was a second charge after this, to Macy's, that didn't go through. I'm displeased with Citi for other reasons and intended to close this account anyway, but I'm grateful they have the security measures they do.

I'm also perplexed on how someone got my credit card number, as I haven't used this card in months (see aforementioned intention). I'm wondering if it had something to do with the Amazon order I put through months ago for Eric's Dungeons & Dragons edition four books, which just recently came out and was charged then to this card, only it didn't go through because there was some sort of error. Did the error involve someone taking the number out of Amazon's system for their own purposes? They only got a single, if expensive, item out of it, though. I wonder what they bought from Sears, and if I would have liked it.

Life is good.

I am currently feeling excellent. The tax thing got taken care of, by the way; I called up the guy I called before and he kind of laughed about it, noted in passing that I was listed under a completely wrong SSN in their system, and removed the charge. Today work was short because of a dentist appointment, which went very well, and after the appointment I went to Bassett's to buy wheat berries, rye berries, and oat bran for bread. I came home and spent a couple of hours in the yard, in the sunny not-too-warm weather, planting corn and echinacea and more parsnips and parsley. Then we made pizza for dinner (calculating along the way that homemade pizza costs us approximately $3 a pizza, which is $0.75 per meal) and now I'm alternately reading and working on my garden records. Soon I will write. I want more pizza but no, maybe I'll have one of the leftover killer brownies.

Not just my wages but also my patience

I got a notice in the mail from the Toledo tax department, saying I owed taxes plus penalties and interest, which about doubled the tax amount. I owed this, the notice said, for 2005.

I moved here in November of 2005, right after leaving my job. I didn't get another one until May of 2006. I don't owe them tax. I told them this several months ago, when they sent out the initial notices saying "We're out of money and so we went back over our records to see what we could squeeze out of people," or rather, "We have conducted an audit, blah blah blah," and told me I owed tax. I didn't owe it for 2005 then and I don't now. (I did owe for 2006, because my current company isn't in Toledo proper and doesn't withhold tax for other cities.) I called up the principal tax auditor conducting this thing and he said, "Yeah, I thought it was unlikely when we sent them out," and told me to send in my old W2s and that should take care of it. Evidently it didn't, or perhaps nobody opened the envelope. I am unamused. I am also uninclined to pay my quarterly taxes since they'll surely just lose the check.

An ambiguous state of affairs.

And so ends the Week of the Crazy Clients, with a wholly appropriate visitation from a client who supplied parameters for me to calculate how much of their product we needed and then when I delivered the number said, "Please use these numbers instead."

James called. He did go to the doctor, and thanked me for recommending he do so. His pancreatitis is indeed back. The doctor was very good, he said; was going to work with him as much as possible to save him money and get his insurance to pay for what needs to be paid for, when he gets it; and is going to recommend him for a study that will offer, for free, exactly what he needs to get a diagnosis and a determination for next steps. Depending on what's causing it, he may need gall bladder removal surgery, genetic testing, and/or a lifetime's supply of pain meds. But at least they're going to figure it out.

Also apparently his cholesterol is a little high, which is probably reasonable since he tells me meat is his one unalloyed joy in life lately, and so he's trying to figure out how he can possibly avoid fat. I've volunteered to send him some recipes and meal ideas. This ought to be fun. He's told our parents about this part, so they're making a bunch of chicken and pork for him. I'll gently remind Mom that it wouldn't hurt to supply him with some of the vegetable stirfries and noodle dishes and pickles and such that he loves, either.

As I was pacing around my boss's office (he was gone, and James called in the middle of the afternoon) talking to James about pancreatic stents and idiopathic etiology and cholesterol and food preparation, it struck me how very well my experiences have prepared me for exactly this situation. Too bad it's not me instead of him...I guess. "The doctor said, 'Yeah, it's pancreatitis again. Good news: you were right!'" James said.

I have found two pumpernickel recipes I really want to try. One takes no yeast, which I'm slightly suspicious of. I might give it a pinch of sourdough starter at the least. (It sits for 24 hours, so presumably there's some fermentation going on anyway.) I ordered yeast from King Arthur ($12 for a pound, including shipping; the 4 oz. bottles in Kroger are $7) and some pumpernickel flour. It is not my last indulgence of the weekend; there's a fiber fair in Findlay tomorrow and I’m going. Our tax refund came today, so I feel okay about that. Maybe I'll send James some bread.

The coming cold

So yesterday: it was 16 degrees out; the river was frozen; our gas heat was out. So was the entire neighborhood's. They closed the schools due to cold, so a bunch of people noticed and called in, including us. Eric stayed home, shivering in the computer room with the electric heater on, and waited for the gas guy to come. The gas guy knocked but Eric didn't hear him because the heater was on, so the gas guy shut off our gas line and turned on the main line. Several hours later Eric called to ask "Where the heck is that guy with our heat?" and they got it sorted out, but the house was still cold by the time I got home that night.

We worked on our taxes, and had a sort of an issue relating to it that sucked up most of the night, so I didn't get much else done. I did talk to my brother, because he called, and gave him a little gentle advice on saving money. I bet if I could get ahold of his finances I could do wonders, but I don’t think he's at that point yet. He did ask if we were okay for money, and added, "Mom and Dad are terrified to ask." He said he's currently spending about $500 more a month than he makes, but he's working on cutting out the coffee, and buying cheaper food for his lunch, and thinking about how to get rid of his car--though I doubt he'll really do that last. At any rate, he's thinking about it, and that's good.

We're expecting snow this weekend, anywhere from three to twelve inches, depending on who you ask and which way the storm goes. I plan to bake a bunch of bread (sandwich rye and rustic rye, and maybe cinnamon rolls for Sunday) and clean the house (my God, my house is filthy) and do a bunch of writing. That's the plan, anyway.

We did the pizza crust extravaganza last night, and except for a less consistent schedule of rising and resting and baking than I would have liked, it went off with reasonable scientific rigor. (I'm going to post it at The Fresh Loaf tonight if I remember.) We like the honey-wheat and the herbed crusts best, so the next step is to try honey-wheat-herb crust. Incidentally, doing mini-pizzas like this (each was about seven inches across) would be a great way of doing a tapas-type meal, or for a party. Bite-size pizzas would also be good, I bet, though a bit more work (but they'd bake up really fast!). Maybe I should try that for our next party. Along with the homemade pickles and salsa and ice cream. Maybe this year we'll learn to make our own tortilla chips?

Tonight I'm yet again working on the garlic-rosemary sourdough, using less garlic this time. Next week there will be no bread baking at all (we're going to ConFusion and there will be no pizza because I need time to recover from last night), so I better get my licks in now.

I got the first of my seed orders last night, from Seeds of Change. I was quite pleased--and the free seed packet was nice, of course. And then I was looking at Baker Creek and finding, among other things, seeds for a two-foot pomegranate tree. It has been very, very hard not to order those seeds. But I've got enough to deal with this upcoming growing season...especially since we've got all that landscaping to do in addition to the actual garden work. Though feeling free to call on Eric to do half of that will help a lot.

I called up the tax guy and he told me what to send in to prove I didn't live here when I was working in Dayton, so that’s fine. But the other line item, not enough Toledo tax, was due to my work taking out only the tax for the city the company is located in, which is lower than Toledo's. I checked with HR just now and they won't take out the proper amount, so I'm going to have to pay Toledo tax myself for the next couple of years. Realistically speaking this is probably better for me--I get to hang on to that extra couple of hundred dollars for longer--but it annoys me nonetheless.

We're going to the Farmer's Market tomorrow. I am determined. I wanted to go all summer last year and didn't, partly because I had my own garden and partly because it's downtown where we have no other business. Now that I know they're open in the winter--and I've been told they have greens and apple cider and eggs and apparently an entire poultry house, if Eric wants fresh chicken soup--I must visit and see what's there. I'm hoping they have cheese and potatoes, too.

It's a slow day at work, with my two big concerns being a project that's been delayed and a project with mistakes that I have to help ameliorate. I didn't make the mistakes, so I don't feel too bad about that. It hasn't been too bad for my first full work week in almost a month, though.

Ugh. I got a letter from the city of Toledo, telling me that I owe city tax for 2006 and 2005. They spelled my name wrong. The 2006 line had me working for an aerospace company, which I don't. (It's one letter off from the company I do work for.) The 2005 line? It was for the company I worked at in Dayton. When I went back and looked at my W2s I could see how that could happen; the W2 was sent to my Toledo apartment, because that's where I moved immediately after quitting. But still. Ugh. I called to see how I should go about proving I don't owe them that extra $266 and left a message.

On to happier topics. Specifically: pizza. Our next kitchen experimental subject is pizza crust, courtesy of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and a packet of pizza crust mix I bought from Jungle Jim's and decided the time had come to use. We tried it a couple of weeks ago. The mix was awful, the Prego (?) pizza sauce mediocre, the store-brand cheese didn't even taste like mozzarella. "We can do better than this," Eric and I said, because we like pizza and it really doesn't take long to make, even from scratch. So Friday I made sourdough pizza crust, because I had some starter to use up, and we used Trader Joe's marinara, and the results were so much better...but still needed improving. We have to replace the cheese yet, and I plan to make and can our own pizza sauce in the summer when the tomatoes come in; but I can work on the crust now.

So I found three recipes online that I want to try, and made up three more based on them. There's a control, of just flour, water, salt, and yeast. There's one with oil, one with oil and wheat flour, one with oil and honey, one with wheat and honey, one with herbs, and one with herbs and oil. To be truly scientifically rigorous I'd be changing just one variable at a time, but that takes too long and I want to see how these taste in combination. So this week I'm making mini pizzas, just crust, sauce and mozzarella (so I'll be replacing it soon), and taking notes on each variation. If we don't end up with the perfect homemade pizza, it will not be for lack of trying. Or geekery.

Things that grow (and shrink)

Eric asked last night whether I was going to have a gardening blog. I said no, two was probably enough. Now I kind of feel like starting one, of course. And then I’m afraid my current preoccupation with little green things will become very boring, very quickly. But whether I do or no, for now: things are growing! Yesterday morning I checked on the seed trays in my window before work, and decided to add a little water. As I did, I discovered a tiny slender shoot in a corner of an eggplant peat pot. It was so far in the corner, I was afraid it wouldn't have room to grow, so I fetched a plastic spoon and carefully dug a hole in the middle of the pot, then carefully dug up the seedling. I didn't go down deep enough--those roots are long; no longer they take two weeks to come above ground--so I dug the hole in the middle deeper, and disturbed another long root. I replanted the seedling in the new hole and watered it and prayed I hadn't killed my only two seedlings. Last night, the seedling was bigger, and a new one had come up in a different pot. So yes, I may end up with eggplants this summer…if I can keep them alive long enough.

Also two of my saved pepper seeds are pushing little green stalks up, which excites me since I had figured I'd harvested them too green. It's so amazing that seeds grow. Kind of like Eric's sister last night (we visited to play with the baby and see how they were dealing with being home with each other all the time--her husband took two weeks off), saying, "It's so strange to think that I make everything she needs to live and grow."

We met with Paula, the cake-making lady, last night before visiting Eric's sister, and had a great meeting. She loves our idea for the cake, and she's happy to make three or four different flavors for the three or four different cake layers. And she advised us to go with slightly less cake, because not everyone eats it. We met her through Edith. In the car afterwards, I asked Eric, "Are you okay with not having a contract?" He said yes. I said I was a little nervous but I trust Edith, and he said, "A lawyer friend of mine said in a [World of Warcraft] discussion that there are two types of contracts that never go to court. One is the four-hundred-page one with all the ts crossed, and the other is the neighborhood handshake over a backyard fence."

Of course I wouldn't sue Paula if she didn't show up with the cake. She said, "And you can pay me whenever, afterwards if that's easier for you or whatever." I'm figuring on giving her the check when she shows up with the cake. If she didn't, we'd just tell everyone that we'd decided on ice cream instead of cake and pretend we'd planned it that way. And then Edith would never eat at her restaurant again. And that would be sad, because it's good food (and ice cream).

This weekend we will, if all goes as planned (ha!), get three projects out of the way: taxes, invitations, and the trash pile by the driveway. This is the trash pile that the previous owners said they'd move, but didn't. Last summer it grew volunteer tomatoes, so I don't know what they put in there--it's mostly old boards and some paneling and a lot of dead vines. But it's ugly, and it's useless, and I want it gone. I have already secured Eric's consent to help, and if the weather cooperates at all, we'll be out there once he can't stand working on grading anymore (which shouldn't take long). Yay for a prospectively productive weekend, especially since these past couple days I haven't gotten much done at all. Well, that's not true--I've visited people, helped Shel make lemon bars (and thereby make Eric's mom drool), and accomplished a wedding thing. (I also called the ring people. The girl who answered took my information and said someone would call me in a few days. Dunno why.) But this weekend will be more conventionally productive. Especially if I turn out to get a tax refund.