easy, they say. faster, they say. snort, i say.

Last night, I was watching Fox (cringe) "news" and they had a lil snippet about how there are scads and scads of Mississippians who didn't file for their stimulus boost.  So the reporter admonished us slackers to go on and claim the damn money wouldja, it ain't like Bush will be remembered for anything else positive.  I dug thru my paperwork and find the ssa-1099 that was sent to me this year (it's sorta like your working person's w-2, or your self-employed person's 1099; only it's for those of us that receive funds from the social security administration~that's where the ssa comes into the 1099 picture), along with the stuff that i had on the stimulus payment info which included five pages of directions and a sample 1040A and a blank form to fill out.

And i commenced to reading the documents which were liberally peppered with "do this except in this situation and only if you have blonde hair and were born on a tuesday" sorts of missives.  those super clear and easy statements that bring to mind those logic puzzles that start out with a few statements (like:  there are seven soups served on five days and two soups are served every day, but pea soup is never served with chicken soup and crab soup is only served with chicken corn soup) and then you're spoda figure out if Mary and Jim went all the way on their second date.  so you can see that i was really excited by the line on page 2, subsection B, indent * that read, "you too can go on line! and use our super! easy! and fast! website to file your return so that you too! can claim your stimulus payment!! yes! you can!".

i was thrilled and relieved to think that no! i wasn't gonna have to suffer! thru attempting to fill out a return when i'm at way less than my operating capacity.  first i went to the "just go to our www.irs.com website to file, it's fast! easy! and blah blah blah"  that's about as long as my attention span was.  blah blah blah.

once i got to the www.irs.com site, i couldn't find the "file here" (fast! and easy!) option.  eventually i got it, but i was thinking, maybe it'd be easier to just fill out the damn form and send it in.  but then i'd have to find the address to send it to.  so i persisted.

long story a tad shorter, it took me three friggen hours to file electronically.  the thing was, once i got started, i was afraid to stop and then send in the written form cuz ya know, the irs ain't playin' and i don't need them to be thinking i'm trying to pull a quick one on them by filing twice.  so i pushed thru the eFile.

dudes, i filed single.  no children (or any other dependents).  nothing complex like iras, retirement plans, service served, educational credits and deferments etc etc.  and i have one income source as seen by people's exhibit a (the ssa-1099 aforementioned).  and it is so far below any cut-off point that it doesn't even make it on the scene (sorry but $6804 may be a laughing matter for the irs's eFiling forms and created a snafu, but for me, that money is my money and all that i got~~so yeah, $300 is no chump change to this chump.  cuz it's what, about half of my monthly income).  you'd have thought that it wouldn't have been so difficult to file.  not even in my current state.

three hours.  damn.  but those are probably the highest paid three hours i've spent in a long long time.  (i used to charge more when i was a research consultant for private firms and universities~back when i could think about more than one thing at a time and follow the threads thru)  now i'll be able to pay my electric bills this summer and use that air conditioner as it was meant to be used, by god.

3hrs=$300
coolness?  priceless