A foul, uneasy mood...
Aug. 13th, 2001 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI don't know what's gotten into me, but I am not in a good mood. And I can't seem to snap out of it.
The house is pretty crowded with junk. That bothers me. I tried to go through it, separating stuff to keep from stuff to throw away, but after filling two trash bags with the latter, I saw no progress. Looking at the "keep" pile, I started to wonder why it had ended up there and not in a bag. Do I really need an unopened paper tablecloth (original price, $3.49)? Where would I use it? Why? I've not used one before.
I need to get in the correct mood, where I'm deaf to that voice that says "Hey, this might come in useful someday!"
I downloaded and filled in the IRS form to request an additional extension of time to file last year's return. Unfortunately, the instructions don't indicate where I am to send this form, only telling me to send it where I would normally send my return, but I don't know where that is.
Which reminds me... Before I left for Houston, we had a client in the store who left both her state and federal return in overnight envelopes. addressed to the appropriate agencies. The only problem was that the address was not the physical street address that both FedEx and UPS require. When the client did not answer her home phone, I went on the Internet to hit the appropriate web sites, which were of little help in this regard. I called the IRS toll-free help line and was regaled with an automated phone system that was laced liberally with amazingly content-free announcements, mostly centered around the so-called "tax rebate." I called twice, since somewhere along the line some computer decided I had been given enough "information" and cut me off. Unfortunately, the same system cut me off the second time I called, too.
But that was then. Today was now.
I had rented two films upon arriving in Houston, and both of them were due back today. So I sat down around 1 pm to watch an Italian film titled Malèna. It told the story, through a young boy's eyes, of the life of a beautiful young woman whose husband had been killed in North Africa early in World War II in a town that hated her precisely because she was young, beautiful, and alone. Each man seemed to think Malèna was a loose woman who slept with the other men in the town, and the women suspected her of sleeping with their husbands. People would not sell her food. At one point, the town dentist announced that he was sleeping with her, which resulted in her being brought up on charges as a homewrecker.
Eventually, there was only one way she could pay her debts and stay fed, and the townspeople eventually took their revenge for that, too. In the end, though, after the war, she and her husband (who had, it turned out, not actually been killed, but only wounded and taken prisoner) returned to the town, and the last few scenes showed the townspeople coming to accept her.
I didn't understand the point of the film at all.
Anyway, after returning the films, I took the IRS form to the post office around 4 pm, and found the Pearland post office jammed to the rafters, with patrons awaiting their turn to be served by a clerk who was in no great rush to get anything done, least of all service customers. After five minutes, I quit the line and drove down to Clear Lake, stopping at the Webster post office on the way.
The line in Webster was even longer, and the clerk was even slower.
Anyway, I have until the 15th to send the form, so there's no pressing hurry. Maybe 4 pm is not the right time to try to visit post offices around here. I need to determine the correct address to send the form to, anyway.
In the end, even after a dinner at one of my favorite places, the Outback restaurant on Bay Area Boulevard, I was still in a foul mood. I stopped by the Barnes & Noble, but found nothing of interest there.
So, despite the fact that my shift didn't start until 8 pm, I decided to go JSC and loaf a bit. I'm here now, with just less than a half hour to the start of work.
I can feel the mood dissipating, slowly. I'm going to be okay.
Cheers...
The house is pretty crowded with junk. That bothers me. I tried to go through it, separating stuff to keep from stuff to throw away, but after filling two trash bags with the latter, I saw no progress. Looking at the "keep" pile, I started to wonder why it had ended up there and not in a bag. Do I really need an unopened paper tablecloth (original price, $3.49)? Where would I use it? Why? I've not used one before.
I need to get in the correct mood, where I'm deaf to that voice that says "Hey, this might come in useful someday!"
I downloaded and filled in the IRS form to request an additional extension of time to file last year's return. Unfortunately, the instructions don't indicate where I am to send this form, only telling me to send it where I would normally send my return, but I don't know where that is.
Which reminds me... Before I left for Houston, we had a client in the store who left both her state and federal return in overnight envelopes. addressed to the appropriate agencies. The only problem was that the address was not the physical street address that both FedEx and UPS require. When the client did not answer her home phone, I went on the Internet to hit the appropriate web sites, which were of little help in this regard. I called the IRS toll-free help line and was regaled with an automated phone system that was laced liberally with amazingly content-free announcements, mostly centered around the so-called "tax rebate." I called twice, since somewhere along the line some computer decided I had been given enough "information" and cut me off. Unfortunately, the same system cut me off the second time I called, too.
But that was then. Today was now.
I had rented two films upon arriving in Houston, and both of them were due back today. So I sat down around 1 pm to watch an Italian film titled Malèna. It told the story, through a young boy's eyes, of the life of a beautiful young woman whose husband had been killed in North Africa early in World War II in a town that hated her precisely because she was young, beautiful, and alone. Each man seemed to think Malèna was a loose woman who slept with the other men in the town, and the women suspected her of sleeping with their husbands. People would not sell her food. At one point, the town dentist announced that he was sleeping with her, which resulted in her being brought up on charges as a homewrecker.
Eventually, there was only one way she could pay her debts and stay fed, and the townspeople eventually took their revenge for that, too. In the end, though, after the war, she and her husband (who had, it turned out, not actually been killed, but only wounded and taken prisoner) returned to the town, and the last few scenes showed the townspeople coming to accept her.
I didn't understand the point of the film at all.
Anyway, after returning the films, I took the IRS form to the post office around 4 pm, and found the Pearland post office jammed to the rafters, with patrons awaiting their turn to be served by a clerk who was in no great rush to get anything done, least of all service customers. After five minutes, I quit the line and drove down to Clear Lake, stopping at the Webster post office on the way.
The line in Webster was even longer, and the clerk was even slower.
Anyway, I have until the 15th to send the form, so there's no pressing hurry. Maybe 4 pm is not the right time to try to visit post offices around here. I need to determine the correct address to send the form to, anyway.
In the end, even after a dinner at one of my favorite places, the Outback restaurant on Bay Area Boulevard, I was still in a foul mood. I stopped by the Barnes & Noble, but found nothing of interest there.
So, despite the fact that my shift didn't start until 8 pm, I decided to go JSC and loaf a bit. I'm here now, with just less than a half hour to the start of work.
I can feel the mood dissipating, slowly. I'm going to be okay.
Cheers...
