I’ve turned into a big fan of Trader Joe’s over the last couple weeks. Sure, Trader Joe’s stores don’t have EVERYTHING I need in a grocery store. But I’ve found that a lot of their products are high in quality, and in many cases, better than what’s available from my usual grocer (Von’s). Plus, the hippies who run the place are total LOLZ. Check out this cartoon from the side of a Trader Joe’s bag:

And then there’s this cartoon from a recent Trader Joe’s flyer:

“Stuffed salmon!” Silly hippies.

(Images also available through Flickr.)

(Photo also available through Flickr.)

It was gray and rainy on Wednesday. But that didn’t stop me from firing up my recently recovered propane grill and cookin’ some burgers.

See the full photo set here.

I filed my household taxes earlier this week. And the results of this year’s filing have really left me scratching my head. For the first time ever, Jen and I owe enough money ($229.00 on the federal return) to make me understand why people are annoyed by taxes. In the past, we’ve always come out even or ahead. I’m not sure exactly what’s caused us to go negative this year. I ran our tax documents through two different tax-preparation sites (taxact.com and freetaxusa.com), and I was able to determine that, based on the way taxact.com processes things, that something from Jen’s W-2 was sending us into the red. I’m guessing it’s got something to do with the way her W-4 form from work has been set up. But I have no way to know for sure, especially considering that she didn’t change anything on the W-4 between this year and last. I guess we could always have things evaluated by a “tax professional,” but as I stated above, both taxact.com and freetaxusa.com came to the same conclusion. Unless BOTH sites are wrong, it seems like paying someone to prepare the taxes would be a waste of money. I even went through the itemized deductions list on taxact.com just to see if there was any way to bring the number down, but that didn’t change anything.

Overall, I’m more frustrated with the lack of clarity in the filing process than with the fact that we owe money. Of course I’d love to not have to pay. Fortunately, we have the money to cover it. Regardless, the whole thing leaves me wondering if it’s math or some kind of black voodoo magic behind all of this tax business. I doubt I’ll ever know.

Read a short article about the cool software app Grazr that features input from me! For more information on how I’m using Grazr, take a look at this entry.