It is a inevitable that just before a vacation, things will go haywire at work. But I made it through, and now I've got a week to relax. Sadly, I can't take the canoe anywhere yet, because the life jackets have been delayed. But we're going to Letchworth on the weekend and we can surely rent a canoe there. In the meanwhile, I intend to do some reading, gaming, and serious exercising. Naturally, of course, the weather is also unseasonably cold.

We were going to bike to a classic car show this evening, but my better half is currently napping. She's just now getting over a bout of illness, so the cars can wait for another day.

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Good weather has finally arrived. (Although, as a chronic complainer, I wish to point out that we are wanting rain.) So the bikes have come back out of storage, so's the ice cream maker, and I bought a used canoe. Now we just need to find some time to use said canoe. Also, I discovered that the previous owner of the house owned a smaller canoe than the one I just got. I know this because the nice canoe rack he had built into the garage is too narrow. I guess I'll have to make my own.

IMG_20150501_183452 by boviate, on Flickr

I'm experienced with car-topping canoes. But all previous attempts were made with flat-topped cars. The curved roof adds challenge.

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So, this thing apparently really runs. It's got 256 cylinders and a top speed comparable to a decent runner. It's powered by compressed air. I'm not sure how many non-lego components there are, but I sincerely hope that the air tanks are made of something a bit more substantial.

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I'm considering replacing my car.

Now, the family tradition was to drive a car until it was totaled or until it is utterly uneconomical to repair. My current car doesn't qualify. It's an '04, but it's seriously only got 60k miles on it. It didn't get used much while I was deployed, and then when I was in university I found it was faster to ride my bike right up to the building I had class in compared to finding a parking space and walking.

But the latest Consumer Reports magazine was their car issue, and it had a checklist for "Should I keep my current car?" Mine is a great candidate for keeping, what with being low mileage and in good shape mechanically. But it lacks pretty much all recent safety features. It has no side-curtain airbags, no traction control, and doesn't even have anti-lock brakes. CR recommends replacing a car without those.

Further, it's a coupe, not a sedan, and the two-door configuration makes getting people or stuff in the back seats a huge pain in the rear, if you'll pardon the pun. Also it's a stick shift, which is fun, but my wife still hasn't learned how to use it. That means we can't trade cars, so we're missing out on one of the advantages of being a two-car family.

I'm currently thinking about getting a new Honda Fit. I'll have to schedule a test drive sometime. There are several dealers in the area, so that shouldn't be hard, and also if I decide to get one I can get bids from all of them.

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Today I've been doing the taxes. Why didn't we file earlier? Two reasons: First, we're missing some paperwork and have had to request replacements. Second, my estimates are that we won't get much of a refund if any, so there's no reason to rush. Normally a refund is a tax-free loan to the government, but interest rates are currently so low that we're not really forgoing much money.

It's been an eye-opening experience. I'm finally working a professional job, so I'm making much more money. Plus, I married a woman working a professional job. So there's so much income to report! It's amazing! To me, at least.

It's also so much more complicated. Perhaps I should have asked my father-in-law the retired accountant to do it for me. But I've got software doing the heavy lifting, the only really difficult part so far has been figuring out Form 8949. Which capital gains are covered, which are noncovered, etc.

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Recently several branches of the bank I work for were picketed by the John Birch Society. I'm kind of surprised that Lyndon LaRouche is still going strong. At any rate, for the rest of the day we joked about being in the pocket of Queen Victoria.

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So, this weekend should be like most of my weekends: I get up Saturday morning, go to work, come home at night, sleep, get up Sunday and work all that day too.

Except there's going to be a mighty blizzard while I'm at work on Saturday. They are calling for another foot of snow, with temperatures so cold that road salt doesn't work, and high winds giving wind chills of -25 or so, well into the rapid-onset frostbite area.

So I'm bringing some extra food to work, because there's a distinct chance that I'm going to get stuck there for a while. I put some frozen food in the trunk of my car, but upon further thinking I'm going to put it in a cooler, because I'm probably going to pull my car into the loading bay. When it's inside a garage like that, it not only will be out of the snow, it might be warm enough that my battery can crank it.

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I don't think Buffalo's received an unusual quantity of snow this year. What's unusual is that most winters we get an occasional thaw that melts off much of what's already on the ground. With no thaws this year, the snow just keeps piling up.

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We had a lovely white Thanksgiving, and are about to have a white New Year's Eve. Too bad the Christmas in between was snow-free.

Interestingly enough, my winter beard has some white hairs in it. That's new this year. I came to terms with my receding hairline years ago, but the salt-and-pepper was a surprise.

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