Yesterday I went swimming early, which was great. I was tired after about 15 minutes, but pressed on to do a full 30 minutes. I actually noticed myself getting tired the night before at about 20 minutes, but went 45.
One of the things about exercising (ugh! I despise that word!) is that I’m more aware of signals my body is telling me. I have a baseline for what I’m able to do in the water — how should it feel if I hold my breath all the way across the pool? How should it feel if I go down 12 feet? how should I feel after 10 minutes of laps? The answer is “better than I feel right now” — and I am sick. It started with some extra weakness during swimming. Yesterday it progressed with backache and a nonproductive cough. Now I have the backache + headache + slight fever. I took it easy yesterday night.
I’m a bit resentful that my better judgment is telling me to avoid swimming right now.
In other news, I bought a new hard drive for the Windows box yesterday at Fry’s. Installed without a hitch. I tried out Ubuntu yesterday but the UI really didn’t run very well given the limitations of the video card. I ditched that and went with Xubuntu. So yesterday I spent a little time customizing that. I have a lot of stuff to migrate, and much to learn. I’ve not used any Linux variant as a desktop computer, but Windows 2003 Server is just not cutting it anymore for this machine. Then I think, maybe I just need a new video card, but a nice one is almost as much as a whole new machine, and heck, free software is free, and it’s a great environment to learn new things. That’s very important because as May comes in, this is the last month of my contract with Vivendi, and I want to brush up on my technological skills.
What I’d really like to do is have a new Mac, but financially that’s not a smart plan — not till we get the IRS situation squared away. I tell you kids, if you’re going to contract all year, be putting away those taxes as you go. Yes, it’s nice to have big dollars and put away debt. But the taxman, he will have his due, if not now, then later. Big lesson learned there for Leah and me.
Leah is doing great, the book she’s in is out, and some DW dough has showed up too. Also, any minute now we have our deposit money coming back from the previous place; Leah did a great job taking care of all the loose threads that needed cutting there — from cleaners, the floors, to dealing with the management company. The day before yesterday on the Dave Ramsey podcast Dave said to a person considering moving — I’m paraphrasing — “moving has big costs: financial, emotional, relational.” I agree with that wholeheartedly. April was really packed, and we got through it. Leah has done a great job. She may not think so, but she’s totally taking care of business.
That’s all for now.
two comments so far...
If you end up owing or getting back too much a couple years in a row, the IRS will want you to pay estimated taxes which really sucks. I had to go on an installment plan with them one year and avoided their high interest rates and late fees – as long as I paid the bill by august.
[…] administration. I still don’t like it, but I can do more of it if I need to. Maybe installing Xubuntu on my machine at home really has been useful as I spend more time on the command […]