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4-10-04 // 11.40 am "cause some consternation" NP: no music, though I am half-watching Chelsea/Boro on TV. The state of Missouri is broke, so they keep raising taxes. I live here in MO but I work across the river in Illinois, so IL taxes are witheld from my paycheck, but MO ones aren't. In any case, I get a MO tax credit since I'm a resident non-earner. This is based off of how much tax I paid to my employment state. However, since Illinois' income tax rates are now much lower than Missouri's, there is a discrepancy this year. So I owe a chunk of money to the MO that I wasn't expecting to have to pay. Bastards. I really fucking hate taxes... I mean, I pay taxes and I'm willing to pay them as long as they go to useful services. However, knowing that I paid an increased amount to Missouri this year and the state legislature still had time to debate and introduce a bill regarding naming an official state dinosaur makes me a bit angry. Although to be fair, this is my fault, I should've checked on the tax rates at the start of the fiscal year so I could've upped my IL witholding. I'm doing so now, so next year things will be alright, but still. Grrr. So yeah, more taxes to pay mean no May trip to California. Though it's OK, I'll just go in the fall. There's also a good chance that Marillion will finally be touring the States in September/October, so if that happens I might fly off to Chicago or Detroit or wherever for a night and see 'em. The across-the-hall neighbors have been playing Madden and whooping for about 24 straight hours at this point. They need to shut up. They also have a little kid, couple of years old at most. The kid kept on yelling "daddy!" for about 15 minutes earlier. Not in a bad way, just playfully, trying to get attention, etc, but still. Stop yelling, people! The fact that I woke up this morning with a headache doesn't help. Ugh, go away headache. Had a pretty nice day yesterday. I worked a super long day on Thursday so I only had to put in five or six on Friday and was able to leave around 12.30. Steve and Sarah were in town for his birthday so we went to Fitz's for a late lunch. Actually, Erin had met them earlier at the comic shop, but it took me ages to get there from IL as there was a bad combo of bridge construction and tourists taking advantage of the super warm day by swarming around the Forest Park/Skinker area. Came home, listened to some music, did the aforementioned taxes (grrr!), took a long walk (almost two miles, I think), shaved and showered, and relaxed. Erin got off work a bit early, so once she was ready we headed all the way out to Riverport to Dave & Buster's for Steve's birthday. It was a really good time -- I remember not having a very good time at Dave & Buster's last time I went (two years ago, admittedly), but that may have been due to not having good company and the fact that it takes at least an hour to get there from where I was living in IL at the time. But this time it was a very good time, Steve & Sarah were there, so was Marc and Ryan H came up from Cape. Erin had a blast, I drank a few beers, played this weird carnival style "feats of strength" game with a sledgehammer and base to hit, was able to keep an eye on the Cards game now and then, and yeah...just lots of fun. Got home at like 1am and was exhausted in a good way. Neighbors need to stop yelling. Now. No plans for today, really. It's kind of cold and spitting rain outside so I'll probably just stay in. Walk on the treadmill, play some Magic online, watch footie & hockey, catch on a bit of reading, etc. Should be nice, assuming this headache ever goes away...
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