On the Home Stretch

...and I'm tying up a few [hundred] loose ends. 

Boy, I hate tax time. 

I can remember my dad laboring with a hand-cranked adding machine, stacks of papers and receipts in piles all over the dining room table, scribbling figures on yellow legal pads and thumbing back and forth through the tax manual every year. Mom usually shooed us out of the vicinity when this was going on. I never quite understood the general tension and crabbiness that accompanied this annual event when I was a kid, but believe me, I've figured it out since!

This Burroughs model is similar to what I remember, though ours was a sort of grey-green affair, if memory serves. I found this one in Etsy shop KairosVintage:

www.etsy.com/listing/226611725/vintage-burroughs-adding-machine

Of course, I don't use an adding machine, though I rather wish I had one. No, I'm a thoroughly modern 20th century type and I use a solar calculator. It's no use expecting me to key figures into a computer program. That is so not happening. 

Anyway, the past week I have been slogging away at the dratted process and the worst is finally over. I still have papers and files to stow away, and the table is still littered with tax time detritus, but I can't quite face dealing with any of that yet. But it's a relief to be at this point at last.

So it's a good time to catch you up on that goofy little piece of blue plastic I was trying to identify a week or so ago. You can read about it here:  http://sheertrashroadshow.blogspot.com/2015/03/and-today-we-have-naming-of-parts.html

Two days ago my son walked into the room, spotted the piece, and said, "Oh! Where'd you find one of those?" He recognized it instantly, sauntered off to his room, and returned with a dusty Lego "Bionicle" toy I've seen on his bookshelf a kazillion times without ever really looking at it. It turns out the rubbery blue mask is a Bohrak Kohrak face from the series that came out sometime around the late 1990s.

Wyatt was pleased at my finding a replacement; his mask was lost in the mud of our old fish pond years ago.

Anyway, mystery solved. Yet another meaningless quest for trivial knowledge satisfied! 

So now, let me share the next two tax-time treasury installments, with only one more--the final one--left to go. You'll have to wait for that one until I clear off the table!

I subtitled this one Staggering Toward the Finish Line.

www.etsy.com/treasury/MTUzNDcxMDN8MjcyNDgwNDE4OQ/oh-no-tax-time-for-the-electronically

And I open this one with a weighty question:

Question to ponder: 

Does the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel

mean I'm almost done,

or has the stress killed me, 

and I'm rising to meet my Maker?

www.etsy.com/treasury/MTUzNDcxMDN8MjcyNDgwNzE1OQ/oh-no-tax-time-for-the-electronically