Spot

This is absolutely miserable. I've been told it isn't common until age 60.

Yet I have seen customer after customer come to my desk, saying, "Oh, but that's the way we've been filing for the past 10 years!" I tell them it's illegal to file that way if they're married, and they always look at each other, totally shocked.

Yesterday, this one guy actually pulled out his phone and called last year's tax preparer and spoke to her in Spanish for a bit and hung up. Then he looked at me and said, "I just talked to the lady who usually does our taxes and she says it's perfectly legal."

I said, "Were you married and did you live together for the last six months of the year?"

He said Yes, and I refused to file them Single and Head of Household.

This is my fourth year doing taxes, so I've taken the prep course four times.

Am I missing something?

I'm right, here, aren't I??

I mean, really

That being, of course, "Never Mind The Bullocks" by The Sex Pistols.

Just a rumor I've heard.

Discounting the raincoats, of course.

She was at least a flake. I mean, she wasn't very responsible, now was she? She didn't seem to have any kind of job, she played suitors (whom she picked up in bars, evedentially) off one another, she was admitedly a gold-digger, she walked out on her husband and children (after marrving a man when she was 14), she was repeatedly insensitive to the Japanese-American guy, the drunken bash she had at her place didn't seem to be an uncommon occurance... And at the end, after the protagonist guy kind of told her off and tossed the engagement ring at her, they just kind of...looked at each other. Are we to assume they lived happily ever after? Did she even play house with that guy? Or did she change her mind again after a day and a half?

She was a bit weird of a role model, wasn't she?

is an album title by Michelle Shocked. Now, am I really reaching here, or is it also something one of the far-off background voices says somewhere on "Dark Side Of The Moon"?

I'm 50, she's 45, this is a first marriage for both of us. At first, I was really exicited by the demographics of our situations: She'd never been married, I'd never been married. She's never had kids, I've never had kids. She's never had a subrance abuse issue, I've been sober for over a decade. She's never smoked, I quit smoking 9 years ago. I thought: WHEN am I going to get this chance again??! I thought I had all the bases covered, I even went to her and said "Full disclosure: how much do you owe? I am debt free." She looks around and says "Well, here it is." and the documents had her owing about $7,000 in student loans. I thought, that's not so bad. When she graduated college, it turned out that she really owes $40,000 in student loans and $10,000 in credit card debt.

I really don't think she intentionally misled me, I think she wasn't astute enough to correctly state the measure of her own debt. Since then, she's shown no motivation for disposing of that debt at all. She won't work a second job, when she inherited a bit of money she wouldn't pay it towards the loans. And she's not striving very hard for a career in education, which is her degree. She's working at the Head Start program, which is good, I guess, but it's not the same as being a teacher, employed by the State.

The more I write here, the more I can see that I'd be just a nut to stay. But what a shame. I waited until I was 47 to get married. How could it have all gone so wrong?

The state contated her half a year after she graduated for her to start servicing her debt, and she got a stay for a year. That year comes to an end this summer. Starting then, I'll have to pay $500 a month on this, if I'm still with her. 'Course, if I leave, she could pretty easily get an attorney and slap me with half her debt (I'm guessing). Another option is to move in with her aunt and simply start being a slave to my wife's student loans.

But if I left, I would be free. It might be a hassle, but I was not given the full picture coming into this. But then I'd be a 50-year-old divorcee.

They're in little tupperware bowls, for crying out loud!

My lady completely supports her husband and they were both shocked when I told them you can't claim a spouse as a dependent. Am I completely forgetting something from tax class, or are there really that many unscrupulous tax preparers who let them do that in the past?

Like the odor of a teacher operating a mimeograph machine to prepare a test? Or- my all time favorite- the smell of a brand-new, freshly opened record album.

Records are coming back, tho. And they still smell like that when you first open them.

Either pleasant or unpleasant.

Mine is probably "Benji- Original Soundtrack"

(Hey, the title song is a Charlie Rich tune. The Silver Fox was once considered kinda cool.)

One that you would be embarrassed if anyone you know found out you liked it?

Mine is "How Bizarre" by OMC

I'm kind of partial to the Roger Dean series for Yes, so I'll go with "Tales From Topographic Oceans"

You don't see him jump off the bike, but when the bike goes over the edge, Jimmy doesn't fall with it.

On the album, doesn't he wind up stranded on a rock in the bay, despairing over his situation?

Or are they songs about different characters?

What was her name?