Random musings collected over the first few no-Internet days of the festival...
American money is going to require me to redo my wallet habits. Small change over here really is small change! In Australia, I would frequently be carrying around more than A$10 in pocket change; one- and two-dollar coins made that rather easy. Fifty-cent coins helped, but they were proportionately larger.
Here...your coins are good for nothing other than rounding off the bill when you pay at the cashier. So...I'm going to have to look into getting a slimmer billfold and coinpouch instead of my current (trending towards shabby) wallet.
The tax system over here is...GAH! Really, really bloody-
*reins himself in* Sorry about that. But it's getting to be so complex (at least procedure-wise) that it's ridiculous. Right at the moment I'm beginning to use the IRS's online classroom for small businesses...I'm hoping and praying that'll show me how to go from a W-4 to how much tax actually has to be taken out.
I've pretty much figured out the components of the federal taxes (income, SS, Medicaid). The State taxes I still have *no* idea about whatsoever, and the exact amount of income tax (and how much of that the standard deduction allows me to remove) I'm likewise clueless about.
*sighs*
Hopefully I'll figure it out. Without resorting to a CPA.
*offers up a heartfelt prayer*
Social security card still hasn't come. Probably due to the Easter holidays...or just my own impatience. It's only been a week.
Passover is producing the predictable effect on my insides.
[side note]
Chabad, on Passover, use nearly nothing mass-produced other than wine, salt and Matzah - and we don't use anything we can't peel, either. So there's a lot of cooking-from-scratch done, but it makes it a really good time to get chemicals and stuff out of your system, do a thorough detox.
BUT.
Matzah and a lot of the foods we eat are very, very hard on the belly. Stomaches are known to bubble and squeak more than usual at this time of year.
[/side note]
So I'm bubbling and squeaking. Not too much, over the last day, but more than usual.
(And today, I haven't had any Matzah yet. I did a lot of biking - roughly two hours worth - due to a sudden emergency in the local hospital. A Jewish woman who'd been in intensive care suddenly worsened, and the Rabbi was out of the area. So I biked back from the mall as fast as I could (30 mins, shaved to 25), and then biked to the hospital (30 mins each way) to say psalms at her bedside.
As a result, didn't really eat until 4pm.)