What I’ve been doing for the last week and a half
It’s been a while since I’ve given a real update on stuff. I might not have time to write the whole thing now, but at least I’ll catch up on a few days…
I went up to my parents’ house a week ago to help them pack up and move. They had to be out last Monday. When I got there on Saturday, there was still A LOT to be done. The movers had moved out most of the furniture, but there was a lot of other crap that had to be packed up in boxes. I concentrated my efforts on the basement…which hadn’t really been touched. Aunt Kathy packed up my mother’s stained glass while I packed up other stuff and helped Dad move the ping pong table out.
I spent the night with Mike and Sarah in Freeport. They went to bed early, but I stayed up to finish my taxes. It turns out that I get back ??? or so on my federal taxes but had to pay ??? or so on state taxes. Of course, I probably screwed them up royally with all the extra forms I had to fill out. If I get audited, I’m sure I’m screwed.
Anyway, that Sunday I went with Mike on a run to the storage space they rented and dropped off a truckload of stuff there. We went back up to the house and put the kitchen table in the truck. Mike drove it to Freeport and I followed in his car. …and then I had to drive the truck back to Lewiston, get my car, and drive all the way back to Boston. I arrived home exhausted…and had to show up at 9am the next day for work.
I showed up for work and everyone I knew who worked for Monster.com (now just known as “Monster”) three years ago reacted in shock. “Woah! What are you doing here?!”
“I’m back.”
“No WAY! That’s AWESOME!”
…so that was pretty cool. 🙂
A lot of things have changed, but a lot is still the same. It’s nice to start a job where I know a lot of people already. Actually, the last time I took a job where I didn’t know anyone was when I started working for The Monster Board for the first time back in 1997.
The first week of work went well. I’m still trying to figure out my new role as “Senior Web Applications Developer” and what I need to do with DoubleClick’s mess…but I should be able to pick it up quickly.
After work on Monday, I went up to Nashua, NH. NH has no sales tax…so that saved me a couple of bucks when I bought a spiffy new Power Macintosh G4 with dual-1GHz processors, SuperDrive (DVD-R), and other nifty features. I went home, hooked it up, and started copying files from my four year old G3.
Monday was Patriots Day in Massachusetts and Maine. Although it was April 15th, the holiday means we got an extra day for taxes. While a few gigabytes of files copied over Ethernet to my new Mac, I spent the night re-copying my tax forms so they weren’t covered in scribbles. I double-checked the math too. After running to Store 24 to make a few copies for my records, I was finally done. Phew!
I didn’t get to bed until late.
I mailed the taxes on Tuesday on my way home from work. Tuesday was also the deadline for the Anime North AMV contest. When I got home, I immediately began getting my submissions ready. My original plan was to submit a new video, but it’s not ready. (Hopefully it’ll be ready by Otakon’s deadline.) Anyway, I re-rendered my Cowboy Bebop and Survivor videos at a better resolution and burned them to DVD-R with my Transformers video. (The TF video looks crappy, but I don’t have the original files anymore and this is the best copy of it I’ve got. I just stuck it so I wouldn’t feel like I was wasting so much DVD space.) After burning the DVD, I recorded them onto VHS tape (Anime North’s required submission format), boxed up the tape, and mailed it off to Canada.
Now the thing is, I didn’t finish all this until around 10:30 at night. Luckily, since Massachusetts taxes weren’t due until that night, the post office by South Station was open until midnight. I headed downtown to join the people mailing taxes.
The place was mobbed. With all those people, you’d think they’d open at least TWO post offices in the area to help with the number of people. What amazed me most was that there were people actually working on their taxes at the post office. Talk about putting it off until the last minute! Geez!
The lines in the post office itself were long, but the line at South Station wasn’t too bad. I mailed the package there…although the guy seemed confused at first. Not surprising since I was the only one NOT mailing taxes. …but I still needed it postmarked by the 16th.
What really horrified me was one guy mailing about 30 envelopes with an accountant’s return address. (I assume he was the accountant.) He had stuck on “Delivery Confirmation” stickers on all of them instead of “Certified Mail”. So here he is at 11:30pm the night taxes are due changing all the labels on all the envelopes at the post office. I hope I never have an accountant like that.
…and next year, I’m definately getting an accountant. Taxes suck.
So, the rest of the week went pretty well. Finally got to relax a bit on Wednesday night and catch up on my video tapes. On Thursday, I did up a new Anime Boston flyer for Port Con Maine and got packed up for the convention. I also made a big “Anime Boston 2003” logo that can stick to my car, but I never actually ended up using it.
I headed up to Port Con Maine after work on Friday. …but I think I’ll save that entry for later. (I’ve got pictures to share!)