We had our taxes done last night, which is always painful yet inevitable. I think it’s a little crazy how two of the things that America supposedly values most are marriage and the spirit of entrepreneurship, yet if you do either of those things you get slammed with a tax liability. Self-employment tax? Seriously, WTF? 

i was trying to think of something clever and pithy to say to introduce this post, but i’m coming up dry tonight. our big news of late is that we are a one-income family now. doc’s company is closing business at the end of april, at which time he will become unemployed, unless he lands a new job before then. i have no doubt that he’ll be able to find another job quickly; the question is, will he find something that he likes or that is, at the very least, more personally satisfying than producing literature about air conditioners and heaters, day in, day out?

emotional state check: not bad. a little nervous, trying not to become a lot of nervous. remaining mostly pragmatic with random “holy shit” moments. doc is really on top of things, feeling almost a sense of relief mixed in with the uncertainty. i know he needed a change… i guess sometimes change has to be forced upon us for us to take advantage of it. that’s how i am, anyway.

so we sat down and took stock of all our expenses and all our assets. we’ve spent a couple of nights doing that and coming up with lists of ways where we can cut back, decision/question lists and to-do lists. we’re mostly ok. we can’t live on my paycheck indefinitely; i don’t make enough to cover all our bills and expenses (even the super scaled back version of things). but we’re ok for a while.

health insurance bites. i’m utterly amazed at how much it costs. i pay nearly $200/mo for just myself; to add doc will be an additional $250/mo. but we gotta do what we gotta do; going without health insurance is not an option.

as they say at work, problems are not problems but instead “opportunities for growth.” so we’ve just been handed a big growth opportunity. don’t you just hate all those feel-good human-resources buzzwords? for instance, in our annual performance reviews, we’re required to rate ourselves in a number of areas… but we don’t use the “excellent, good, fair, needs improvement” terminology — oh no. that would be too NORMAL. instead we use “excelling, doing, learning, absent.” they correlate to the original terms but they’re not so “judgmental,” says HR. i say “bullshit!” i’d like to tell them that they can shove their key messages and strategic impact decisions into either their blue, red, or green hat and then identify their performance gaps, remove obstacles, and self-correct to their heart’s content!!! as joel said, they should also move their cheese and determine their parachute color. all the while developing any of the seven habits of highly effective people!!!

upbeat news: i get to to go chicago in june for the HOW design conference. four days of hanging out with other artists, talking about art and design, and eating deep dish pizza. sweet!

one a/c compressor and valve: $1100

one temperature sensor and water pump: $550

new brakes and cylinders: $450

not having a new car payment: priceless

driving a rented toyota echo that smells like someone peed in the air conditioning system: $15 discount

discovering that the toyota echo is the crappiest piece of shit car i’ve ever driven: no big surprise

maxxing out the credit card: it’s the american way.