Sand Dunes

I am an actor (I claim a small income each year for acting jobs). Normally, I can deduct items like headshots. But I was just hired for a role and I will need to lose about 10 lbs. Since I need to lose weight for the role, can I deduct Weight Watchers fees on my taxes?

What is your opinion? Should I change my plan?

I currently have 700 minutes per month for $40. I have gone over on my minutes twice in 5 years (but those were spendy mistakes). I have an option to upgrade to unlimited minutes per month for $50.

Is it worth it or am I just wasting another $10 a month on something I really don't need?

My daughter spends one morning a week with another girl she's known for a long time. Last week, they suddenly started not getting along. I don't think it's exclusively one kids "fault". They seem to trade back and forth as to who sets it off. One instance is the other girl sat on top of my daughter so she could see the storybook better and my daughter started crying and yelling at her. Another instance is the other girl touched my daughter's hair and my daughter yelled "don't touch my hair" and pushed her. Sometimes the other girl will hit her, though I've never figured out how the provocation happens.

Basically, I'm hoping this is a weird "phase" that these two are going through. Should I continue to talk to my daughter about it and just separate them for awhile?

I'm friends with the other girls mother so at some point, these two really need to work it out.

I don't want to form an LLC because I don't want to keep this self-employment thing going for more than 2 years.

I work on small business websites. I have access to passwords, Cybersource accounts etc. If there were a problem and a client sued me, right now I'd be in trouble. Can I get a simple umbrella policy to cover me? Clearly I haven't a clue so any help is appreciated.... (I'd prefer not to spend $300 an hour to talk to a business attorney. I only bring in about $1000 a month!)

A friend and her husband are divorcing. She has no family in WA and it's very expensive for her to live here. She has been the primary breadwinner so probably isn't going to get any financial help from him. Without family support, she is really struggling. She's not looking to end or curtail visitation with the dad in any way. She simply is unable to do this single mother thing without support. She's happy to fly back up to have visitation. She's happy to have him fly to her new state.

What does she need to do to be able to move out of the state with her child? Is this simply not going to happen?

Normally I go with Enterprise but their prices are much higher. Thrifty and Dollar have the best prices for car rentals out of the airport. Anyone have a good or bad experience with either at this particular airport? Anything I should know? I will be travelling during the day. Thanks!

I'm looking to use one of the two as a simple CMS for my smaller clients (local businesses and sole proprieterships that don't need "fancy" functionality). I've used Moveable Type in the past but know that Wordpress is also very popular. Which do you prefer and why? I would especially love to hear from people who have experience with both. Thanks!

How would we know if they are pregnant?

I am going to delete my stupid Facebook account if I cannot hide my birthday. The entire world does not need to f*cking know how old I am. I am so pissed right now. I had the profile up for 4 minutes when my MIL made some crack about my age. Seriously. 4 minutes.

I recently got a bad review of the show that I'm in right now. It wasn't just bad, it was particularly nasty about my performance and I'm the lead. I don't want it to bother me (as I have several more performances to do) and it certainly hasn't hurt our ticket sales but still, I find myself not handling it very well. This show was supposed to be a break for me so to say I'm disappointed in this review is an understatement. (We have gotten other positive feedback including a nice review in a larger paper.) Any suggestions for how to handle poor reviews?

This is actually three questions:

1) Is it possible?

2) Can "I" do it? I have no experience. I have built desktop PCs so I'm not completely "build averse" but I know ZERO about cars.

3) Is there another good inexpensive option? I just want to be able to unlock my car when I've got my baby in one hand and 4 grocery bags in the other.

I really don't see the allure of Facebook. Can someone please explain to me why they like it? What they use it for? Don't consider this a snarky question. (It's not.) Consider this an opportunity to really explain your love of Facebook. Thanks.

My dog was diagnosed 3+ years ago. She's on a low-res dog food (Hill's ZD) that is fine but she's still losing weight. Anyone ever try any supplements or protein powder? Did it help or not?

I work as a web contractor. Sometimes I do very small projects (less than $200) because it's essentially a few hours of HTML work. Often these small businesses will not provide me with any tax documents at the end of the year (1099s). Do I just file my taxes assuming that they too are claiming that they spent $200 on business expenses for me? My fear is that without tax documents, these businesses may decide to claim that they actually paid me $1000 and the IRS might not like that and I'll be the one to get audited. Is this a valid concern? Am I being too paranoid?

(I keep all invoices online and have a record of invoices submitted and payment received.)

I itemize and writing off a portion of the $6k I paid in insurance premiums would help. I am self-employed and, because decent individual health insurance is nearly extinct, I got my insurance through my domestic partner's employer. How can I "prove" that I paid for this health insurance? Do I need to have a $6k check written to my domestic partner that says "for health insurance" on it or am I pretty much screwed? (Which I've been learning is fairly typical for self-employed persons.)

There are a lot of things I like about Gmail so I'd like to make it my primary account. (I also hate most of my other options right now.) But I am having so many problems with any email thread that has multiple recipients! Ex: if there are 6 people in an email conversation and 4 write back at various times, I have a tendency to miss one or two responses. This has been a real problem. I've missed some really important stuff. I'm not a computer idiot -- I actually do frontend web development. Yet I seem to be the only one in the world with this problem. Has anyone else had this issue? How have you worked around it?

I had an amazing tangy spaghetti squash salad at a party years ago but I remember nothing about it. Except I liked it. Anyone have a good recipe?

Argh! My markup validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict. My css is:

div#colA > p:first-child {font-size: 12pt; line-height: 16pt; font-family: Garamond, serif;}

I've moved it to the bottom of the stylesheet. I've added more specificity before div#colA. This has got to be a dumb mistake on my part but I'm not seeing it. A little help?