iG.STUDiO: Ilya I. Gerasimenko

Time and again, life presents me with another proof that for some absolutely unexplainable reason I am not allowed to have money. Once I have any unspent funds on any of my accounts, something comes up and clears the offending surplus. This time I just didn't have a chance to shovel the unexpectedly timely security deposit refund from our previous place towards the credit card I used to pay for our vacation. That resulted in a chain of seemingly unrelated events, which, in turn, helped me to get rid of the extra money. 1. It rains cats and rats on Saturday, so we cancel our trip to Long Island, but since there is a parking spot right in front of our building I leave the car on the street overnight. 2. I totally forgot to take my car to the state emission test, of which I am gently reminded by a bright orange envelope under my windshield wiper with a $65 parking ticket. 3. I am taking my Jeep to the closest (and only one) Jeep dealership in Manhattan, (Manhattan Jeep Chrysler Dodge)...

Something's telling me that there will be a lot of posts with this name, that's why I made up a special label for them. This post's issue is taxes, and the thing I don't get is: why if I dutifully put in all my dependents in my W-2 form, and then repeat the process in my 1040 form, I end up owing taxes? And I am not saying hundreds of dollars. I am saying THOUSANDS. The time for taxes is, of course, passed, and all I owed is paid, but why? I was naive enough to actually expect a refund this year, and that refund would help A LOT. Darn it, I am still not over. In addition to that my daughter's taxes, which I prepared with TurboTax, are proved to be wrong at least on the state level (the state of New York apparently disagrees with TurboTax on the matter of who can claim child care expenses as a deduction—long story short: my daughter and her son were both my dependents for the year of 2007, but she paid for the child care institution, Cassian goes to, and according to...

...generally, when the amount of money in my savings exceeds a certain number (and that's not a large number), mainly, because I expect various unpleasant events to take place. Usually, the car breaks down. Sometimes I hit something, but sometimes it breaks by itself just as well. This Tuesday I came to work, parked my Jeep, spent 9 hours at the office, went back to my Jeep and turned the ignition key. Nothing. The lights are on, though, radio works, too - I have power. So it's a fuse, or starter. I checked the fuses (found two which claimed responsibility for the starter operation), one was all right, the other one I couldn't pull out without pliers, so I decided, that it's all right, too. It looked nice from the outside. So I called AAA and asked for the tow to the dealership. The truck came in about half an hour and the driver checked my battery, confirmed that it's not it, and offered me to start my Jeep with a help of two seemingly undocumented individuals, who...