Hrmmm… well, this past Sunday marks the 33rd year of my residency on this planet. I don’t feel any older, but I’m sure that with the progression of several more of these birthdays… I will. All in all, it was a fairly good day.

It’s not often that a person gets to share their birthday with the running of the Daytona 500… especially with being a NASCAR fan, like I am. So, that in itself was good. The end of the race could have turned out better, but ya can’t win em’ all.

I thought it to be somewhat ironic that Kasey attempted to help Earnhardt Jr. move toward the front and give Jimmie Johnson a challenger for the trophy at the end. Then, Junior’s “old man” engine apparently went into sleep-mode and push Kahne back several places as the 5 to 6 car locomotive steamed past both of them in the faster bottom-groove. ~sigh~ I guess we’ll see how things pan out in California next week.

In other news… ice sucks. It sucks not because it inhibits the proper and safe flow of traffic… but because it inhibits the proper and safe flow of traffic from Friday evening until Monday morning. What good is that?? If you’re gonna mess up the roadways… at least do it on a work day.

Nothing has been accomplished by Jack Frost unplugging his nostril on central Arkansas over the weekend, only to have the roads become at least 75%-80% passable by Monday morning’s commute time. Yay.

At any rate, here I am once again, sitting in my windowless office on the second floor of a manufacturing plant. Each day I listen to the constant scream of power drills, the crackle of welders, the loud whir of metal grinders, the banging of hammers on ¼” plate steel and the shouts of workers trying to communicate over the noise level. At least it’s work and it’s paying the bills.

Well… I know this is short, but I’ve got stuff to do. More later.

Howdy boys n’ girls…and anonymous commenter. It would seem that the “day of love” is once again upon us. Time to shower the object of your affection with gifts of chocolate, flowers, candy hearts, red hots, valentine cards and stuffed animals.

Love is a very powerful, yet sometimes blind, leader of our lives. Love binds special people together through trials and joys. Love can be precious, passionate, sympathetic and loyal. Love can also make someone give all they have, freely….only to find that the sentiment isn’t mutual. As I said…love can sometimes be blind.

But through happiness or hardships, love tends to remain even through hearts sometimes get knocked around and trampled on. It’s all a matter of looking past the shell to the innermost part of someone. When you can truly see their heart…when they let you in… it’s a special and precious gift they give. Always cherish that when it happens. By doing this, they are showing their devotion to you.

Now that the mush has been tossed out there…on to other matters. As for the question about the new Jeep (from the prior post) it is 2WD. Ideally, I would have gotten the 4x4 version… but the incentives and rebates aren’t coming into effect until the end of the year. We may return and upgrade to a nice 4x4 at that time, with plenty of equity still left in the vehicle.

The extended warranty we chose will add value to the trade if we come back in, because the next buyer won’t have to pay for it to be carried on the vehicle. The money we saved in getting the 2WD enabled us to insure its value with the warranty. Pretty smart tactics.

The picture is still forthcoming… and will be posted soon. More later.

I thought I’d take a moment and update the blog to include a new addition to the driveway. We’ve recently brought home a brand new 2006 Jeep Liberty Sport for the wife. Her 1994 Jeep Cherokee had over 250,000 miles on it and had served us well for about as long as it could, with our budget.

It is a deep green color (I’m told it’s “Beryl Green”) and suits her very well. She’s giddy with it and I’m happy that we were finally able to get her something safer and more reliable. It needs the glass tinted, for sure… so I’m gonna be looking into the cost of that. It’ll keep the temperature down in the vehicle this summer and keep the interior from fading.

I haven’t had a chance to snap a pic of it in the driveway, yet. But, here’s what it looks like (thanks to Jeep.com)

Well… that about does it for now. I’ll have more soon (and an actual photo of it). Y’all take care.

Howdy, boys & girls. I’m back with an update for the ol’ blog. We have secured the tax return. While it’s not the amount I had initially estimated, it was a notable sum. The most important thing is that it was enough to cover the bills we had concerns over. Not only that, but it was enough to give us that security plus a bit of spending cash.

Now, with my existing second job, I can probably set back that second paycheck and use it to fund the ATV I’m wanting. Shouldn’t take but about 8-10 weeks and I’ll have enough for a good down payment.
That’d put me getting it somewhere around the end of March to mid-April. That’s not too bad.

Apparently we lost out on the larger return amount because of some stupid Federal guidelines or some mish-mosh. We were told that even though we filled out our W4’s as “single and 0 dependants” on the part-time jobs my wife and I worked… that the employers’ payroll departments had to gauge the withholdings based on the annual income from that particular job.

The Federal Government doesn’t have a “part-time-job” bracket to judge withholdings from. So, when the employers looked at their annual charts of how to withhold the “single and 0 dependants” claim… they saw that the part-time job status would put our annual salary below the poverty level and they withheld far less than they should have.

To make the long story short… we basically screwed ourselves out of some extra Return money, because our part-time job taxes were based off one scale… and the annual income bracket was another scale. We didn’t lose the money… it was just paid to us in our paychecks rather than as part of the Return. It sucks, I know. The Feds really need to look at this and make a provision as to what status an employee needs, tax-wise.

If it’s going to be a full-time position, fine. But if it’s only part-time, then there should be a different tax bracket to calculate on. Eh, what do I know? I’m just one of the blue-collar workers. Actually, I guess you could consider me a light-blue collar worker. I’m sort of in the middle…somewhere between ditch-digger and corporate executive.

At any rate… I have a new cellphone. I got a Motorola RAZR v3 flip-phone. Yup, it’s ultra-cool. Love this thing!! So, at least something good came out of all of this headache. This, and the ability to catch up on the bills. All in all… not a bad situation, I reckon.

More later…