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Just to acknowledge that I'm not always as smart as I think I am...

While going over things with my Fidelity Guy, I discovered that I overpaid on my taxes the last three years. This came up because I was certain that some of the money that went into my 401K was above the pre-tax limit and therefor needed to get rolled into a Roth IRA, not a regular IRA. Except they couldn't find any evidence that I'd made any above-limit contributions.

Why was I so certain that I had? Because there was this section in the tax instructions for Additional Income where I (mis)read my W2 as indicating that I'd contributed more than the limit. So being a good, law-abiding person, I plugged in the numbers and added it to my taxable income. Except it turns out the numbers I misread as overage were actually non-taxable contributions to my employee-provided health and insurance coverage.

So I need to do corrected tax returns for 2022-2024 and get some money back. I don't mind the paperwork. I just hate losing my pride in being tax-savvy. (Please, no advice required on this point.)

Emptied another file drawer. The "get rid of all but one filing cabinet" project is going forward no matter what happens on the real estate front. It's fascinating to contemplate the half-life of "important papers". Eventually, everything becomes obsolete and irrelevant. It's comforting, in a way, that decisions that may seem nerve-wracking today may be crystal clear in five years. There will be no more linguistics undergrads popping up in my in-box asking me to dig through my memory of their classwork in order to provide a recommendation letter. The receipts and presentation handouts from the conference in Paris are long since irrelevant. And, as previously noted, there's no point at all in saving the hard-copy printouts of my dissertation data when I have the original computer files. (Although it occasionally reminds me that I should at least leave the world the legacy of the tidied up database of Medieval Welsh preposition data.) On the other hand, I found some things stuffed into the file folders that had no business being treated as old reference materials (e.g., the commercial pattern for the Boksten Man's clothing that I bought back in '99 in Denmark). This is why I actually look through the files before tossing them in recycling.

My excessively-over-engineered integrated financial tracking database has passed its next test: rolling over to the new year. There are certain features built into the files that assume each year's data will get archived out of the working file. Well, ok, one is a feature and one is a bug. The cumulative budgeting figures (i.e., whether I'm on-target for the categories with a specific budgeted amount) work off a "total in-category divided by day-of-year" so there's an awkward period between the start of the new year and the point when the old data gets archived when a year-plus's expenses get divided by just the "plus" number of days. The bug is that some of the internal complexity of the files makes navigation start to get r---e-----a-----l-------l---------y slow as more and more records are added. For most data entry it doesn't cause problems, but when I want to review the running balance for one of the sub-accounts, I'd better have a solitaire game handy.

I haven't done the full end-of-year financial analysis yet, but I'm delighted to find that I stayed under all but one of my tracked budget categories. (The one I missed on was "office supplies". Not sure if I would have been on-target if I hadn't had to buy a new laptop. Also, I was on-target for "food" only if you combine the sub-categores "groceries" and "prepared food". I went under on the former and over on the latter, but only by small amounts.) Since the budget tracking is something I use as a reference reality-check, rather than having unbreakable set-asides, this means that I've internalized my budget targets sufficiently.

And I believe I have all the paperwork and data necessary to do my taxes! So that's a project for tomorrow.

I am having the most insane amount of fun converting my previous all-encompassing financial tracking system (in Excel) into a new all-encompassing financial tracking system (in FileMaker). Yes, I'm having fun re-inventing Quicken from scratch (except that it's designed specifically to do exactly and only what I want it to do).

There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the Excel version, but I wanted to automate a few more processes, and I wanted to remove some redundancies (like, when I enter the mastercard payment, I didn't want to enter it both where it came out of the checking account and where it went into the mastercard account, or when I get cash from an ATM, I didn't want to make separate entries in the checking register and the cash tracker). And rather than having separate Excel tables for each financial "system" that I'm tracking, I wanted a completely integrated record. I wanted a more elegant, push-button way for doing the statement reconciliation. I had a number of very long drop-down menus for my various budget-tracking categories and I wanted to set up a more dynamic interface where initial selections would narrow down the next set of options.

I've done a couple of tear-down-and-start-again rounds in the last day, but I now have the basic framework set up and it's just a matter of tweaking some of the interfaces and setting up the budget-goal reporting screen. So far, the hardest part has been explaining to co-workers just what I was working on over my lunch break. (Quote: "I just look over my bank statement to see if anything looks funny, otherwise I don't worry about it.")

Had the appraisal for the refinance today. The fellow was cheerful and friendly and seemed impressed with the house, but I don't know if that's a good sign for getting the appraisal I need or whether it's just his "game face" and doesn't mean a thing. I keep reminding myself that worst-case is no change from my current perfectly comfortable rate. (Well, it would also mean I'd be out several fees to no end, but that's the only gamble involved.) I should know sometime next week, I think.

Ok, now I've finished my taxes. Clicked "send" and all. Now we'll see if the Great State of California actually has any money to pay refunds. And this time I'll backup the TurboTax file in multiple media (not just the print-out) for next year.

First step in Getting The Taxes Done is accomplished -- I've crunched up the 2008 expenses in order to have them conveniently available for inserting in the forms. (Actually, the first step was buying the 2008 copy of Turbo Tax.) Now to excavate all the relevant tax-related statements from the pile of non-urgent mail on the dining room table.

My friends, this is how they do it -- remember and be paranoidly vigilant.

You know how I had my Wells Fargo credit card cancelled and replaced after the burglary? Well, today I got an e-mail purporting to be from Wells Fargo saying they're concerned about unusual activity on my account and I need to fax them all my personal and account information to verify my identity or they'll cancel my account.

Yeah, right. Other than my knee-jerk assumption of fraud, what were the clues? Well, once you pull up "view source code", the e-mail address of mine that they're sending it to was harvested off my web site and is clearly one I would never have given to my bank. And the area code for the fax number is a toll number in New Jersey, not the expected toll-free number. And, oh yeah, what was the other problem with their approach? I'M NOT STUPID!

Of course, I get dozens of phishing spams like this every month -- hundreds in a year. Most are instantly recognizable as such because they're for companies I don't have any dealings with. But remember: pure chance means that they're eventually going to hit one you do. And like any good "cold reader", the bait is vague enough yet specific enough that if they get a chance hit on your immediate circumstances, you supply the rest of the scenario in your head. There is absolutely no reason to suppose this scam e-mail has any connection to my burglary. It doesn't need to. They shotgun this thing out to hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses and all they need is one or two people who have recently lost a Wells Fargo credit card who will panic and respond without thinking things through.

Now to see if Wells Fargo has a fraud reporting e-ddress I can forward it to.

It was an errandy day. (Hey, "errandy" is a word in Medieval Welsh, after all.) On my lunch hour I picked up the check from Toyota refunding my useless deposit, so now I'm officially free of any consequences of going elsewhere. The dealership in Vacaville claims in its on-line inventory to have two red Priuses, although it doesn't include a mention of the interior color or which options package they include. (I can make guesses from the listing price, though.) After the weekend I may wander up there and see what's up.

Then I took off from work early for a hearing test at Kaiser (the last item from my Major Tune-up ... uh ... checkup). I seem to have passed the test with an A-minus. The usual minor loss of certain frequencies, but evidently the tinnitis doesn't interfere with tone discrimination under test conditions. Kaiser was once again startlingly efficient: I was out the door again within 15 minutes of having arrived. This meant that technically I could have gone back to work and still had maybe 20 minutes before my usual quitting time, but it hardly seemed worth the bother. So instead I swung by the credit union to deposit the Toyota check then finished (most of) the food shopping for the party. (I still have to pick up disposable plates and napkins; I didn't get the ice cream this time because it would have sat in the car while I was working out; and I'm leaving the shrimp for the BBQ skewers to pick up Sunday morning so they'll be fresh.)

I decided not to start the food prep this evening, in hopes of getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Instead i'll be organizing the various recipes to make sure I don't forget anything. (If I don't make up a full flow-chart, I have this annoying habit of forgetting entire planned dishes on occasion.)

Last night I tossed together a new pair of hose to wear for the feast this weekend. Just need to finish the lacing holes this evening. Actually, I chalked out two pair (because they fit the fabric nicely that way) but only cut one because it's a radically new pattern draft, for which I'm glad because the pattern could still use some tweaking. (There's a smidge too much bag at both the ankle and knee, and the seat is just a little ... peculiar. Not so much that I need to fix the existing pair, but enough to need modification for the future.)

Also pinned the overgown in pleats to the stay-tapes, which looks like it's going to work decently. So they need to be sewn down.

I've decided which of the archaeological-clothing dolls I want to take to Costume Con for the doll display -- and realized that I can pretty much canibalize the write-ups on my web page for the accompanying documentation. (Not particularly in-depth documentation, mind you, but enough to explain what's going on. I have no idea what the usual standards are for this display, but I'm definitely in "showing up is 80% of success" mode at the moment.) Since the doll display runs through Monday and I'm only taking Friday off work but not Monday, I'll have to see if I can arrange for someone else to pack them up for me, or whether I'll have to pull them out early. (Or whether it'll be ok to drive down Monday after work to pick them up.)

So I figure I can get all the sewing finished tonight. That leaves me Wednesday and Thursday evenings (and Friday morning, for that matter -- but you know me: no last-minute packing) to make sure I have everything packed and organized for both Collegium and Costume Con, and continue reviewing my stage directions and responsibilities for my part as Butler at the feast.

It looks like the state tax refund has also hit my bank account (and the remainder of the annual bonus is due to come in this Friday). I suppose I could call the credit union to verify the refund, but the balance looks right for it and I'll have the April statement in hand to confirm everything before the time comes to write a check for the car. My Toyota rep has checked in by e-mail and they don't have my desired model in stock at the moment "but new shiments are arriving every day" and he's checking around with other dealerships. And, when it comes down to it, it's more important to me to get the package I want than to get it by my due date, so I'm not stressed about it.

Yay, my federal tax refund appears to have entered my bank account. One step closer to Prius Day!