2005-04-22 � Puppies and Peanuts


Talking to the Taxman About Poetry

O dear. Somewhere along the line, it seems i have turned into a once-a-week-poster. (the horror, the horror). sigh. I fully intended to be more prolific with the updatey-ness, i did, i did! But I got all side tracked with all sorts of really compelling stuff like Provincial Sales Tax and finally figuring out how to get my printer to print from my OS 9/Classic Mode software ( Illustrator and Quark Xpress). I haven't updated either in like three years and when I installed the Panther OS on my Mac (months and months ago after the Horrific Hard Drive Holocaust of 2004), I was suddenly unable to print out of either application. Argh. But on Tuesday, buzzing with caffiene, ambition and the urgent desire to print, I spent four hours pulling out my hair and finally managed to puzzle through it. With a minimum of cursing and crying, i might add. I was immensely impressed with self, but was unconvinced that this heroic breakthru would make for much of an interesting post.

Not that there isn't other enormously interesting stuff going on. For instance, I was visited on Wednesday by a guy from the Ontario Ministry of Finance and whoa... that was mind-blowing and hugely entertaining! Like Cirque du Soleil entertaining! Better than Disneyland and Universal Studios...COMBINED! Yeah. um...Not. I did manage to get him well and truly lost, though, with my exceedingly blonde directions, delivered over the phone around a mouthful of blueberry muffin. That was kinda fun. "Um, yeah, I think it's north off the QEW. No! South, South! No...uh..Wait, can you even go South off the QEW? I dunno. Maybe it's West. It could be west. Go West, young man! Go West. No, wait...um... well, I can tell you it's sorta close to that big new Superstore... you know the one? the one with the Krispy Kremes. But not really... uh... um, don't you like have a map or something? Shouldn't the Ministry of Finance furnish you with one of those when they send you out on these missions or a GPS tracking device or something?!!")

Then, turnabout being fairplay, he managed to get me horribly lost with the whole Provincial Sales Tax thing. Granted, there are few things that make my eyes glaze over faster than the words "tax", "finance" or "budgeting", but c'mon!!! You would not believe how ridiculous the Ontario Provincial Sales Tax (PST) rules are. For instance, if I send my finished files to my client via the internet or an FTP site or whatever, I don't have to charge them PST. But if I burn those same files on to a CD and give it to them that way, then I do have to charge them sales tax. All together now..."WHA-A-A???!!" And apparently (and I'm so not making this up), if you sell a bag of peanuts and they are unsalted, you don't charge PST. But if you sell the same size bag of peanuts and they are salted, you have to charge PST. ARGH! Not that i'm planning on going all Jimmy Carter and selling peanuts...salted or unsalted... anytime soon, but still! This is exactly the kind of thing that makes my eyes roll back in my head and spin around until I pretty much drop to the floor in a gelatinous, semi-conscious heap.

But it did force me to tidy up my office and go through my shoebox full of receipts so that I can shove them at Jack this weekend and tell him to do his thing.

sigh. So not interesting. But spring is bursting out all over the place, budding and blossoming and greening it up and yesterday I spent fifteen minutes petting the most marvellously large, big white dog and that makes me happy. and reminded me of the painting up there, completed long ago (acrylic on illustration board). Real blog-worthy adventure must surely be just around the corner, right?!! Right?!


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