Life Is…

It was Elbert Hubbard who said "Life is just one damn thing after another." I have to say that after the last couple weeks, I have to agree with him.

It just seems impossible that life should run along smoothly for even a short amount of time.

The first stressor was filing our tax returns. We used TurboTax and at the end, you have to put in either an e-filing PIN or your Adjusted Gross Income for the previous year. Well for some reason, we couldn’t get a PIN for Alan, so we put a PIN for me and his AGI. It was rejected with the claim that the AGI submitted did not match IRS records. So we followed the TurboTax "fix" only to have it rejected again. Alan called the IRS and everything matches perfectly and they don’t know why it wasn’t being accepted either. Oh! And did I mention that this was right around the same time that a government shut down was looming? The government shut down that would have halted all paper tax returns. Fortunately, the guy at the IRS told us to either put "0" in the AGI or to combine mine and Alan’s AGI’s from last year, even though we filed separately. Thankfully, it worked!

Then of course there was the threat of a government shut down, which had me practically in tears (and literally in tears at least once). No fun at all. On top of which, we had $42 to get through another week before payday. That was stressful enough without the worry that payday would be only half of what it normally is.

Well, Alan was nice enough to come home on breakfast, thinking that we could spare the gas and the $2 so that I could go to Spin class, one of my favorites simply because it completely kicks my ass.  Well, to digress a little bit, when I switched back to Progressive at the end of March, I decided to enroll in the Snapshot discount program. They send you a little computerized device that you plug into your car that measures how hard you brake and accelerate, what times of day you drive, and the type of traffic you drive in. In my car it plugs into a spot on the driver’s side under the dash, about where you would find the shut-off switch for a car alarm. Alan wears a size 16 shoe. Those are very large feet. And in Army boots, they aren’t always the most careful. So when he got back into the car after his ruck march this morning, he kicked the Snapshot device. Only it didn’t just pop out. It took the wiring harness for the plus with it. When we got back into the car to bring him back to the office, the wires must have touched. My initial thought was that the computer assumed someone was trying to hotwire the car and steal it so it wouldn’t start. After much poking around in the dash and under the hood, Alan finally found a blown fuse. We walked down to Ace (fortunately located in the shopping plaza at the end of the road) and luckily they had the right one. Alan separated the wires through the harness and replaced the fuse and the car started and has now stayed running long enough to get back to post. He brought the extra fuses just in case.

I can only assume that the wires touching each other or the metal of the frame caused a surge which blew the fuse. Hopefully it’s fixed. We’ll still have to find a wiring schematic somewhere to get the wires in their proper places. Unfortunately, I don’t really see it being solved. It’s apparently a common problem in Jeeps, Dodges, and Chryslers, and I know my dad has had fuse/computer problems with his Cherokee. I’d just really hate to get Ptolemy all paid off (less than $700 left now) only to have it fall apart. It’s bad enough that the AC system needs to be almost entirely replaced and I have a hole in my exhaust pipe so that needs replacing too.

And I didn’t get that job at the Christian daycare. C’est la vie. I suppose I must keep looking.

I have been taking advantage of the Army’s need for bilingual soldiers and using Alan’s e-learning account to access Rosetta Stone for free. I’ve started a German course and I’m doing pretty well. It seems to come pretty naturally, probably because the construction is closer to English than the Romance languages. I am having a bit of trouble with the articles though. I can usually get eine/ein and die/der but I’m never sure when I’m supposed to use das or einen. I do find interesting that plurals take the feminine form. In French you would refer to a mixed group as "ils" (masculine they) whereas in German it seems to use the feminine in most situations. "Sie" can mean she, you, or they regardless of the composition of the group. Linguistically that’s intriguing and says quite a lot about the development of the language within a culture.

Anyway, I’ve got plenty to do today and what with the car trouble, the day’s already half gone. I should probably start with the bread. Nothing says commitment like homemade bread. 😛

~Liz