Tis The Season

For sure the most depressing thing about the holiday season ending every year is the fact that, if you live in Chicago, you can look forward to at least two more months of frigid weather and grey days. But for me and my peers there is another beast waiting to pounce just after the New Year: tax season. Fortunately, I don't have one of those jobs where you basically live at the office from Jan to April. I do, however, get to be the guy that is in charge providing all our internal documentation to those individuals who do live at the office for those 4 months. In addition, since I've become a CPA I have become the one-stop shop for tax advice and/or preparation for many of my friends and family. I'm happy to help out and even happier when I get some paying work thrown in, but it does make for a pretty hectic couple of months. This year, in addition to our own personal taxes (which were more complicated than usual due to us having rental income and expenses for the first time) I also got to do personal taxes for two uncles, my uncle's business, my friend's partnership, and another friend's corporation. Today at lunch I mailed the last envelopes off to the IRS so as of now I can officially stop thinking about the IRS. That is, of course, until one of you pop up in the comments with "I have a question about my taxes . . ."

So even though it's not exactly current anymore I do feel compelled to make a comment or two about the Oscars. As promised by me last year, I watched exactly 4.7 seconds of the Oscars (the time it took for me to get up off my couch and walk to the PS3 to put Mass Effect 2 in). As I played my PS3 I had the laptop open and automatically refreshing the winner lists; I'd periodically announce the winners to Christy. Now that's the way to watch the Oscars. Judging by some of the stories I saw the next day, I missed even less than usual. The very idea of trying to make the Oscars "hip" is pretty comical. It's like going off camping in the middle of the woods and then complaining that there isn't a good day spa in the area. Certain things just don't go together.

As for the winners themselves, overall I think the decisions were decent. My biggest gripe is probably in the Best Supporting Actress category. I was pretty astonished when I first heard that Melissa Leo was nominated. I didn't have anything against her performance; there just wasn't anything there that stood out to me. Hailee Steinfeld, on the other hand, definitely stood out to me (even though I still contend that her role was a leading and not supporting one). The Academy tends to penalize you for being young though, so it didn't surprise me that she didn't win.

Next week brings my favorite sports event of the year - the first 2 rounds of the NCAA tournament! The whole tournament is great, but it's the first weekend that's really something special. 48 games in 4 days and for the first time every single one will be televised this year. Could there be a better reason to sit on the couch and not move for 96 hours?