April, Come She Will (Despite Our Wishes To The Contrary)

April is the traditional month of get your freaking taxes done already.

While we were in lockdown some politicians had got together and sold the central post office building on 8th Avenue so Penn Station could be extended into it, thus ruining the only upside to Tax Day; watching the crowds of people sitting on the steps at 8:30pm scribbling out their 1040s for all they were worth, trying to get it done before the post office closed its multi-banked revolving doors at 9pm. Seeing people sitting around waiting for Bloody Long Island Railroad trains is no special treat, it being such a common occurence.

Turbotax told me I owed money to NY State. I double and triple checked, but ever since the tax code changes made by that nice President Trump I've been having to pay NY State instead of getting a refund, like I did for the previous gosh-knows how many years.

Brief explanation time: My place of work's payroll department has proved incapable of properly withholding from my paycheck while simultaneously deploying a cadre of personnel who refuse to believe they could possibly make any sort of mistake, hanging up the phone if one should suggest the idea merely because the Internal Revenue send one threatening letters out of the blue in spite of the fact that one is a married man with a kid, claiming to be single with no dependents¹. To offset the arrival of hate mail from the IRS I have, for well over a decade, instructed the payroll department to overwithhold from my pay to a usurious degree.

This, which should be a simply paper W4 form stating "please withhold an extra XXX dollars per month etc", is a stupidly hard automated form mandated by HRA that forces one to work out a bi-weekly version of the necessary amount based on net wages, then pro-rate for wherever we are in the fiscal year and AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!

Each year I would normaly receive a quite large refund from the Feds, a not-small one from NY State, and a reasonable one from NYC, paying me back the amount I had carefully calculated was really needed to ensure no-one would start talking about paying quarterly estimated taxes again, then doubled.

This year I got a smaller, but still large, refund from the Feds², a demand for a few hundred dollars from NY State (with menaces) and a refund from NYC that all-but matched the demand from NY State.

Given that the NYC tax withholdings are mediated through NY State, one wonders why the "arrears" in column one caused so much angst to the tax assessor part of Turbotax when it was clear they already had monies to which they thought they were entitled labelled "collected by NYC".

So with a contemptuous sneer at the suggestion to file "vouchers" and quarterly taxes - the IRS have my money, all they are entitled to within a few dollars more or less, it's not my job to watch which shoebox they keep it in - I e-filed and made tea.

1. The usual way of making the sums work↑
2. Who somehow never get round to thanking me for the interest-free loan . I digress↑

Ill Met In March

March was here!

The house was full of spackle dust but we had heat that worked, new baseboards that looked nice in the front room¹ and money in the bank for a new roof, if we could but track down a roofer.

What to do of a Saturday evening? Why, to drive over to Smithtown and eat a very late lunch at a small crepe restaurant.

And the crepes were indeed lovely, as were the hazelnut lattés.

I was feeling good as we drove home. We turned onto our street, and tootled down it at a sedate 30 mph² with Joni Mitchell bleating about Ladies of the Canyon and street musicians. All was well with the world.

Which was when Mrs Stevie let out a shreik and I looks over to see the front of a large SUV about an inch from the passenger side door coming over for a hug.

There commenced the lamest T-bone crash in history. I was doing 30. The SUV was doing whatever it was doing, not super speed at any rate. Had we been speeding we'd have bounced off each other, but as it was the SUV hit my car's front wheel, then gouged a nice path down the entire side of the car ending up with a nice ding in the rear wheel³.

We stopped to exchange information and that is when we discovered that the driver was a minor, and his passenger was just 18. The driver, I should add, was mortified and couldn't stop apologizing.

Both Mrs Stevie and I were concerned. Not only were these two lads very young, but they were Hispanic and we weren't, which could result in some unfortunate misunderstandings of the sort that had characterized that nice President Trump's tenure if we weren't very careful to avoid them.

First order of business was to ask if everyone was OK, did we need an ambulance and so forth. Then I called 911 and asked for a police officer to come and take down the details as the damage to my car looked both extensive and expensive. Then we made sure that the young driver not only provided his details, but got ours too. We insisted he photograph both vehicles as we were doing. No one had died and there was no need to have the whole thing spiral out of control. We were once young ourselves after all. I can't speak for Mrs Stevie but I was flashing back to a rear-ender I perpetrated on the South Circular Road back before electricity.

We wanted to call a parent, but the lads were adamant that there was no need. Mrs Stevie said the boys were aware that when the driver's mother found out about her car, she would revoke all driving privileges, and they were just starting their Saturday night out. I sympathized.

The police officer came and given the youth and demographic background of the young lads we stuck close to ensure that things stayed as pleasant as they could be. The officer was terse at first, and I'm sure that being on duty on a Saturday night was part of that, but he cheered up immensely when he heard a call on the radio for all officers not currently busy to go to the scene of a bad accident.

"They'll be scraping up bodies off the road for that one" he said, and cracked a smile as he turned to get our addresses. He was excused the grim scene on account of the prior accident, you see.

He was also keen to call a parent, but didn't force the issue once he ascertained that we had tried to get that too, and the young driver was not being coerced in any way. The passenger meant that any legalities involved were all properly sorted by the presence of a 'responsible adult'. It was clear none of us had been drinking, so the officer really only had to fill out his report.

Which was how I ended up driving a loaner car for two weeks while the Steviemobile II was in dock getting new wheels, new doors and cripes-knows what else⁴.

It wasn't all bad. The other guy's insurance paid for all the damages, and the loaner, while being a smaller car, had adaptive cruise and self-steer.

The former was great. Set the cruise for 50 mph in town and it would follow the traffic ahead ot the best distance and speed.

The latter was a royal pain that took me several hours to figure out and turn off. The wheel was fighting my road position habits. To check that it wasn't just my crappy driving habits I found a deserted stretch of curvy highway and let the thing steer itself. Two near excursions into the woods at the roadside persuaded me that the technology needed work.

I was getting quite intrigued by the long strip of metal that the builders had simply dropped inside the baseboard they had replaced⁵ and after a lengthy search online and a dig through the trash pile left from the construction I found that the loose bit was a damper that was supposed to be clipped to an odd-looking lug on the cover-support thingies.

I fished it out with some trouble, figured out how it was supposed to work and, with only the help of some Class Two Words of Power got it attached where it was supposed to go. Result. The cover however was missing a splice plate⁶. It took almost the entire month to track down the only supplier of that part - the same bloke who had sold me the Aquastat Relay⁷.

I tried mightly to source one somewhere - anywhere - else but it was no-go, so I made another trip to the store, where the experience was significantly different. Not only did he have the part, he gave it to me gratis, which was nice of him.

I fitted it, and was only moderately annoyed when, two days later, I found the missing part on a high shelf where the builder had left it.

Still, March was nearly done, and it would soon be nice weather. Time to get the roof sorted out.

1. But had a puzzling loose rattley strip of metal inside them↑
2. the actual speed limit thereabouts↑
3. It reminded me of the scene in Galaxy Quest where the ship scrapes slowly down the side of the spacedock while everyone cringes↑
4. I no longer care to ask↑
5. And nice it is too↑
6. used to join two short cover plates into one long one↑
7. dammit↑

More Fun With the Furnace

To be honest I simply couldn't face posting any more about the avalance of complete and utter suck that descended on me after the Great Lack Of Heat Pipe Fiasco, what with the slings and arrows being at a level not seen since the French decided to show the English a thing or two in the line of getting a good kicking at Agincourt.

But I have rallied and recovered¹.

When last I enthralled you my dear webspider² I stated that I was in need of a discontinued Aquastat Relay to make this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Slant Fin furnace start working again instead of periodically going on strike for whatever it thought it could get out of management.

Well, I finally tracked down said part, bought it³ and called John the Plumber, who came over that evening and made a solid attempt to fit it.

It would not work.

John said I should return the Aquastat Relay to the local plumbing supply place where I got it, and since he was at the end of his tether⁴ that I should contact a not-so local appliance service center and explain the problem.

Turns out I had two problems.

The first problem was the need to fund the service center technician with close to a thousand bux before he'd do tghe necessary. Easily fixed with yet anothert dip into Stevie's Bottomless Money Bucket, though the tech complained the entire time about the amount of howling, wailing and gnashing of teeth he had to put up with while effecting repairs.

But finally the job was done and the furnace, having had every part not actually cast into its superstructure replaced, decided that any more mutinous behavoir might be rewarded with a trip to the dump after a cosmetic thumping with my sledgehammer and fired up for the several hours it took to get everything toasty warm again.

The second problem was that the local plumbing stuff supply guy refused to refund my money for the non-working Aquastat Relay. It would have to go back to Honeywell, he said. It would have to be tested, he said. Only then would he refund the money I'd laid out, he said.

It was clear from the way he poked his face into the works and started furiously sniffing for all he was worth that he thought I'd tried to fit the bloody thing myself and had shorted the electronics and fried them.

John the Plumber called to see if the service center had fixed things. I told him about the plumbing supply place issue and he got very cross. Turns out he knows the guy who owns the place, so he offered to go down and explain the facts. Which he did and I got a call to say the refund was waiting for me and thank you very much John the Plumber.

The builders meanwhile had decided that they would not tear out all he sheetrock in the hallway, but would put a skim coat of spackle on it, smooth it and paint.

These guys were in love with spackle. If it had been a bit warmer we could have done the job properly and had huge fans exhausing through the windows. As it was we had to make do with propping the front door open while they worked, with the end result that the entire house was coated with spackle dust. I'm still cleaning it up.

They did an OK job, but missed a few spots, but I was so heartily sick of the process by then that I gave them a check and moved them out of the way so I could work it myself. The bannister was also put back slightly off-slope. It annoys the piss out of me but not enough to pull it off and redo it. Yet.

The electrician did some extra work for me, wiring for the new ceiling fan in the front bedroom⁵ and a new hall light that Mrs Stevie declared great, and eventually I was able to buy and install a fan.

Which was whan I discovered that the switched socket was now permanently switched off.

The other electrician came round and fixed it in a jiffy, but while he was working Mrs Stevie noticed his van door was ajar and helpfully slammed it shut.

A sad mistake. Turned out the door handles on all the doors were broken off, so it was vital that the doors not be closed unless someone was inside the vehicle.

Fortunately, several of the windows were missing too, so the electrician, still smiling bravely theough his own personal sucky Sunday, ripped off the taped plastic standing in for safety glass and climbed in. I was expecting a police officer to hove into view and misunderstand the nature of the crisis, but for some reason the anti-handiman demons turned off the Farce faucet.

All that remained now was to get some furniture, remove an old air conditioner from the wall, put in a new one, repair the bits the builders had left unrepaired and I could look forward to a cool, happy summer.

February had brought high winds that ripped yet more shingles off the roof, reminding me that we had not heard a dicky-bird from the roof guy who had been so enthusiastic about pulling off the roof in mid-December.

It was time to do some shopping around.

1. Mostly↑
2. Both real readers of this blog switched to watching cat videos on ticktock yonks ago↑
3. 260 bux neatly siphoned from Stevie's Bottomless Money Bucket↑
4. I don't blame him one bit by the way; in his place I would have told me to mount my velocipede and start pedalling - he had gone above and beyond and only been reimbursed for some of his time.↑
5. Scene of indoor waterfalls, collapsing sheetrock, innundation etc.↑