Personal posts page 56

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Long day downtown today (yesterday). I took the day off for the Cavs parade, then went to an Indians game after. I may post more later, but to summarize: packed rapid transit, lots and lots of people, lots of waiting, lots of sun, hot, lots of walking, lots of garbage, saw a few Cavs players from afar, kinda heard some speeches, confetti and loud fireworks, saw people running from what turned out to be gunshots, large colorful animal statues, kid running across baseball field and climbing home run wall to escape into stands.

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Woo, the Cleveland curse broken after 52 years. Such a close game all the way to the end. Stressful, back and forth. Worked out that the Cavs were ahead at the end. A battle. Something for the Cleveland 52 years in the making. Don’t know if this will change things for the future of the city and area, but it at least changes something of the feeling that being a Clevelander / Northeast Ohioan is.

Cavs

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I think I’ve watched or listened to more basketball this playoff season than in any previous entire season. Last year I watched the finals but this year I’ve been more into it. It has been surprisingly time consuming, especially when I get caught up in the pre-/post-game news and speculation. It has been rather stressful, even when the Cavs win, especially these finals. It is easy to get caught up in the game and want the local team to win. It can feel like their identity is part of my identity and their success is part of my success, in part because of the city’s renowned “Cleveland curse” and broader “rustbelt” identity against a desire for the area to succeed. I sometimes have to remind myself that their game is not my game and their success is not my success. It can feel great when they succeed and might have an influence on the city’s morale, but it is unrelated to success in my own life. Just watching the games has been entertaining, some of the plays and records broken have been exciting, and so has how far the Cavs have come against expectations. If they lose game 7, I think it was still worth it to watch. That said, I do hope the Cavs defy the odds and finally break the “Cleveland curse”. Go Cavs.

Flight of the Conchords show

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Saw Flight of the Conchords do a live show at Playhouse Square to(last)night. The show was opened by Arj Barker (Dave from the TV show) who did a stand-up routine. It was quite funny. FOTC did about half new material, half old, but the old stuff had new parts interspersed. Funny stuff. And not just the songs: The banter in between was plenty funny itself. It was a hard hearing at times when the crowd was loud, but I caught most of it. Glad I decided to go.

Of note, playing at the same time and one theatre over was Opera Circle’s showing of Il trovatore, which my friend / coworker was involved in. I had been torn between seeing the two. I checked less than 24 hours from show time for FOTC tickets but it said they were sold out, so when I left, I had been expecting to see the opera, but intended to ask about FOTC tickets. When I arrived, tickets were in fact available. The cheapest available was $55, so I was ready to pass on that and started asking about the opera when the lady said there was a free ticket that somebody had returned and that they couldn’t charge for that I could have. I couldn’t turn that and a rare chance to see FOTC live down. Also, I had arrived late for the opera because the rapid took longer than expected. I’ve seen many of Opera Circle’s operas since meeting my coworker. So, sorry Wanda, I’ll see the next one.

I took the rapid downtown because I don’t like dealing with traffic and parking there and for one person it’s hard to compete with the price. I was a little anxious walking around downtown because of an event that happened last year, but nothing happened this year. It did, however, take some waiting.

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Wednesday evening, as an addition to my regularly scheduled shift, I got to play locksmith, first attempting to fix the lock on the office door, which wouldn’t lock for me, and then replacing it with the old one.

Bird rescue attempt

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Today (yesterday), I spent around three hours getting a bird detached from a tree in the back yard. It was just hanging there from its leg, and it was hard to tell how it was attached. It was pretty high up and not reachable with any pole-like implements we had available from my ladder. My roommate helped for a while, but had to leave for work. I eventually succeeded in getting the bird down using two ropes, one put in place by throwing with a Kong dog toy on the end, the other raised with a garden tool tied to a stick. The ladder wasn’t entirely stable with the long combined pole, and the rope-throwing took many tries. I used the rope to break the branch, causing the bird and branch to fall. The branch was still alive, so the operation took a while even after I got both ropes in place. I set up some yard-waste bags and a towel below the bird to soften its landing.

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Finally finished my taxes and got everything mailed. Always a relief with a tinge of worry that I did something wrong. I’m getting money back for the first time in years, and was able to pay this years first quarter estimates with over-payments of last years estimates. This was due to me making less than previous years, but it did feel good to not have to deal with the estimates.

Except, of course, for Cleveland, part of CCA. CCA makes you, with the way the form is set up, subtract your over-payment from the whole year estimate and then pay a quarter of the remainder. Even though my over-payment was more than my estimated quarterly owings, I still had to mail in a check. It’s like a penalty for over-payment. And if I instead took my over-payment as a refund and then payed the real quarterly estimate, they have separate mailing addresses for returns that have refunds and returns that have payments. Not sure what I should do when one return is both. Confusing. Which is a common problem with city taxes. They always seem to have things that are vague and confusingly worded, set up differently than federal and state, and there isn’t the software guidance or countless web articles, posts, and answers to help that there is for federal and, to a lesser extend, state.

As I say every year: Next year I should probably pay an accountant to help me with this stuff.

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Feeling worn out after spending somewhere near five hours this evening between:

  • breaking down and burning sticks and other wood from previous tree / branch / bracken removal and dead-fall
  • scooping dog poop

The start of a busy weekend.