02 05 00

deep freeze

All right, now. There, there, Prohosting. That's a good server. Goooood server...

Sorry about that.

In case you missed it, there was an entry yesterday. However, Prohosting decided to go tits up and I wasn't able to upload. Hopefully things are better now.

For those of you just joining us, I have a dead rat in my freezer.

I miss her, I do. But it feels so strange knowing there's a dead thing in my freezer. (Actually there are lots of dead things in my freezer, but when I met them they were already dead.) I wrapped her body up in three or four plastic bags and put it on the shelf where the ice cube trays would go if I ever used them.

When I was opening the freezer to put her inside, I was struck by a thought: Am I putting her in there upside down? I felt the dead mass inside the bag and located her feet, and made sure she was upright. I don't know why I felt it was important, but I did it.

So, she's still in there.

I went over to my parent's house yesterday and tried to stick a shovel in the ground behind the rhododendron bush where I've buried my other rats, but the ground is frozen solid. Until the weather warms up a bit Aurora will have to remain in my freezer.

God this feels weird.

This morning I absent-mindedly opened the freezer to get a toaster pastry thing out for breakfast and I saw the bag sitting on the shelf. Aurora is in my freezer. I grabbed the pastry as fast as I could and shut the door again.

Damn, this is fucked up shit.

What else can I do? What do you do when a pet dies and you can't bury it because the ground is frozen? I thought about taking her to the vet and having her cremated, but then she wouldn't be buried next to Frisby, Araby and Nod... And they should all be together.

I know, intellectually, that Aurora doesn't care one way or the other what I do with her body. But I can't just dispose of her like a bit of unwanted garbage. I can't.

Still, I don't know how much longer I can deal with the freezer thing.

In Other News That Isn't About Dead Things

While I was at my parents' today, I did my federal and state income taxes.

I'm mailing in the federal return because I didn't want to pay to file it electronically. My dad has that Turbo Tax program, which was pretty easy to use. I got stumped when it started asking for things about last year's return. I didn't know you only had to do that if you were itemizing deductions. But by the time I realized that, I'd screwed up the return so bad I had to start over.

Good news: I'm getting $500 back from the feds. Bad news: I'm shuffling that money directly into my credit card payment in an attempt to knock the balance down a bit. My dad is probably figuring I'll use it towards the car loan, but he still doesn't know about the massive credit card balance I'm carrying. sigh Yep, still haven't told him. Oh well.

I filed my state income taxes electronically over the phone, and I'm getting a $133 return. But that money will get shuffled into my city income tax, which will probably be about $150. (Yikes!)

Why so high? Ok, this gets a little convoluted, so take notes.

For the 1999 tax season I got three W-2 forms: one from FarAwayEvilCompany, one from the company that took over FarAwayEvilCompany, and one from where I'm working now.

The city that FarAwayEvilCompany is in has a 1.5% income tax, which is withheld from the gross pay. The city that I live in has a 2.0% income tax. So if everything remained the same, I would owe the city I live in the 0.5% difference.

But! Although the company I work for now is just up the road, they are not within the city limits. They are actually in the township. (Yes, yes, if you've lived in a Big City all your life you don't have any clue what I'm talking about. I'll explain it below.) So this company doesn't - and can't - withhold any city income tax at all. So I'll still owe them 2.0% of whatever I made at this company in 1999.

Totaling it up, I'll owe 0.5% of my income from when I was at FarAwayEvilCompany, and 2.0% of my income from where I'm working now. I haven't actually sat down and done the worksheet yet, but I think it'll come out to about $150.

Man, do I hate taxes. And yet, taxes pay my wages. Oroboros - the snake which eats its own tail.

A Brief Explanation of Rural Government

This might be useful for people who don't live in the United States or for people who have always lived in the Big City.

Most people think of three levels of US government: federal, state, and city. When you get out into the sticks, it gets a little more difficult.

I'm not really in the sticks, but the government here still thinks it's 1950.

So for me, there are five levels of US government: federal, state, county, township and city. A county is a subdivision of a state. There are 88 counties in Ohio. A township is a division of a county. There are 16 townships in my county. And a city is a city... While most stay within township boundaries, some cities sprawl over two townships.

Anyway, you have the county government, which acts all hoity-toity as if people actually care. Township government is sort of like a city government, except the only people who care are the twelve people or so who live in the township proper. Townships can't have income tax, so the company I work for can't withhold anything.

It gets even more complicated when you throw villages into the mix. A village has more people than a township, but not enough people to be a city. There is a village about ten minutes from here, but I don't have a clue how their government works and I don't really care.

It's all actually pretty simple, but it really gives me a headache sometimes.

...

Oh, and there is still a dead rat in my freezer.

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