Now nature is throwing things at me

[bill_schubert]

I get home from a quick trip with Hoss into town for some gingham and the damn sky is falling:

No golf ball but big enough to hurt if it had hit me

Actually the largest hail I've seen so I'm glad I got my car in the garage just before it started falling.

Geez, one comment about the lack of weather around here and all this.... 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I'm done with work but couldn't quite pull my foot back in the car.  I told them I was 'off for the season' which means I'm on the list to be contacted again next October when they start tax season again.  We'll see.  

My problem is I love the 15% or so I can really help.  But the mind numbing repetitious questions from people who just have decided to go through life knowing more about the Kardashians than how their country operates.  It was the the same issue I had running a computer company.  People being willfully ignorant and expecting me to wave a magic wand and make it all go away.

But the 15%.  I helped a physician resident who had one more year of his residency to go, figure out a way to get help setting up his father's estate.  He just needed someone to talk to and I had all the time in the world and a few good ideas.  

And the kid who did not understand about paying taxes when he worked as a 1099 employee so he ended up owing $5000 he didn't have.  I spent 45 minutes with him discussing how the IRS worked, what were estimated taxes and how to pay them as you go, how to get the IRS to allow him to spread out that $5000 over a couple of years.  How to catch up with his money and get better employment.  

And the girl yesterday who had Covid and the associated brain fog and really needed someone to help her step through the return.  She got a refund of $10 from the IRS and $1 from the state but that was OK.  She had filed and it had not cost her anything but it meant that she was likely to get the third stimulus now.

Or the woman who started out being cranky but by the time we were through fixing the problems she had created we were quoting Bonny Rait lyrics to each other.  She had a wonderful laugh and was nine months from retiring from a support job with the NY assembly.

I took maybe 400 calls and worked with some nice people and was able to really help a bunch of them.  And get some money which, now that nature has dumped the huge ice rocks she has onto my shingles, I may need to fix my roof.

So, yeah, I may go back in October.  It will give me something to bitch about.

Comments

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

Free ice cubes!

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a yard full of them.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

Congrats on getting the yoke off your neck for now, but not a bad thing to have left a few toes in the door! I wonder if in October the calls might be more interesting in a fewer "Where's my refund?" kinda way.

[nick-101.livejournal.com]

Wow, that must be some hailstorm. :O

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

My guess is it will be hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. I'm hoping we're OK. Hard to tell how our shingles did.

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

That's huge!

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

There were reports of tennis sized balls of hail. Fortunately this is the largest I saw in our area.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I started very late in the season and being the first year had to learn a lot. But I might try one more year as it will be different, as you say, earlier in the year. We'll see first of all if they invite me. My stats were mediocre as I suck at doing the stupid stuff that they depend on for their stats. But I showed up and that is likely enough for them to want me back.

I always hate burning bridges.