Last night certainly didn't go as planned. I got a phone call from my pastor's wife that she had found a couple Easter baskets on clearance that were too big to fit in her minivan and could I pick them up? Sure, says I. I got to Meijer's after work to pick them up and my first response was, "You've got to be kidding." I know people with apartments that are smaller than these baskets. She also needed more of the plastic Easter eggs because she could only fit 2,600 or so of them in her shopping cart without losing them all over the floor. So I picked up another 400 to make it an even 3,000. All this is for an event we've started planning for next Easter. I'm sure I caused a couple accidents on the way to Kalkaska. It isn't every day you see a Chevy 3500 duelly with two giant Easter baskets in the back. I almost bought a pair of bunny ears to wear while I was driving, but I thought that would be too much.

Anyway, I took care of all that, stopped at the dry cleaners and the recycle place to get rid of about 100 pounds of cardboard from all the cabinets and such. I found my niece's makeup under the seat while fishing out runaway cardboard so I dropped that off while I was in Kalkaska. When I got home my parents were there, so we stood around and gabbed until 10pm. I ate something and vegged in front of the TV for a bit then went to bed. I was supposed to get homework done and get our taxes squared away, but that didn't happen. I'll try again tonight, but it doesn't look promising.

The only news I could find worth noting was all from Iraq and all bad. I looks as if we really stuck our foot in it this time.

While looking for alternatives to Turbo Tax I came across a page on the IRS website that claims to link to companies that offer free tax preparation. This has all the hallmarks of a scam to me. While I was dropping things at my sister's place last night, my niece asked if I could help her with her taxes. I figured I'd give these free sites a try. First, many of them simply don't work. I didn't waste my time figuring out why, but many of them seem to be broken in ways that prevents the site from being usable. Of course, the 16 pop up ads work flawlessly. I got one that worked and started in. It was all pretty painless until it came time to file the return. First there was a $5.95 charge to do the state return. That didn't seem to bad. Then there was the $12.00 processing fee to pay the $5.95 for the state return. I was beginning to smell a rat. Then finally came the $28 fee to have the refund mailed out. Understand, her refund was only $97 to begin with. As if all that isn't bad enough, most of these sites restrict the "free" filing to people with under $20,000 AGI, meaning they are charging these incredibly high fees to teenagers like my niece, the elderly, and the poor. These people should be drawn and quartered. The worse part is that the IRS is complicit in this or blissfully ignorant. One is as bad as the other.

So today I'll be stopping by Office Max on the way home and see what they have in the way of tax prep software. And just in case, I'm downloading all the forms and instructions from the IRS web site in case I end up doing everything by hand.

This is going to be a long week.

I've added a few blogs that I've stumbled across to the list of links on the right. They are just random blogs that I picked up from Blogger's latest updated list. I may or may not keep them depending on if they are kept current by their owners, etc. But for now I find them interesting even if I don't necessarily agree with them.

Politics:

I did find one article of note a few days ago about a 15-year-old girl being charged under child pornography laws for posting nude photos of herself on the Internet. Now, we need to think hard about this: Janet Jackson is paid millions to show her bare breast during the Superbowl half-time show. Courtney Love shows her breasts on David Letterman to the wild applause of the audience and David Letterman's heart-felt "Thank you!" MTV is non-stop near-nude females. But we are going to charge a 15-year-old with possession of child porn for taking pictures of herself nude. Folks, I don't know how to say this any more plainly: one or the other. Either we are going to be prudes or we are going to be sex-crazed maniacs. We wonder why 25% of our teenagers are in some form of psychiatric care. Maybe if we didn't bombard them with non-stop contradictions, they would have half a chance to be normal.

"Dress like a slut, but don't have sex."

"Don't do drugs because they will mess up your brain. Now shut up and take your Ritalin so I can drink my beer in peace."

"Don't even think about smoking those cigarettes that are prominently displayed at the counter of every convenience store, drug store, gas station, etc.; as well as being relentlessly advertised on billboards and in magazines."

"Why is this generation so screwed up? I just can't figure it out."