Betty, one of my college classmates, commented on Facebook about my blog posting of yesterday:

If I were writing a blog, it would be boring. I read, I did puzzles, I exercised, I went to the doctor, I cooked. Next day, ditto. Although I did make empanadas and samosas this week.

Well, Betty, today’s entry is for you!

The most useful thing I did today was to file our taxes – they were actually finished months ago, but I didn’t get around to filing them until today. I wasn’t in a hurry since we not only weren’t getting a refund but we had to make some hefty payments and I had to free up some cash to make that possible. When the SECURE Act was passed late last year, I realized that it made sense to move money from our traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs – but I hadn’t planned for that during the year, so the last-second move significantly increased our tax liability for 2019.

And we did another Roth conversion this year – I am pretty sure that tax rates are going to go up in a year or two to help pay for the (very necessary) deficits that the government incurred this year for pandemic aid, and I’d rather pay at today’s relatively low rates and avoid being taxed later. So we had to free up funds to pay 2020 estimated taxes, and again, I wasn’t in any hurry to do so.

But July 15 is looming, so today was the day to actually deal with the taxes instead of just dreading dealing with them. The process was fairly painless – the worst thing was discovering that I couldn’t get into EFTPS for some reason and having to find an alternate way to queue up our estimated tax payments.

But it’s done for another year…well, another 9 months. I suspect next year’s deadline will be back to April 15.

Other than that, it was a quiet day; no new recipes, not much culture (we did watch the first episode of Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s Bard Talk, but that was it), and only a quick trip to Manresa Bread to pick up a loaf of levain that I’d pre-ordered. I have done well at hacking away at my inbox, but I haven’t achieved Inbox Zero, so I have nothing to brag about on that front.

Life goes on!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an enormous number of things get done on the day before a vacation. Today was not a day before a vacation, but I did a lot of things anyway, very few of which were exceptionally interesting.

We continued to add to our bar, this time with dark rum and oregat syrup so that we can make Mai Tais sometime soon; I also ordered a cocktail shaker from Cocktail Kingdom at the recommendation of The Wirecutter – it should get here next week. And we got rid of a LOT of corks (thank you, BevMo)!

I spent a while working with the new Treasurer of the Silver Tongued Cats, explaining the spreadsheet I’d built to track our income and expenses; it’s a shame that I didn’t document it while I was building it because I’m not quite sure how parts of it work any more!

We tried another new recipe: Lynda Balslev’s Quinoa and Kale Tabbouleh from the Mercury News. It was good and not difficult to make, but it wasn’t sufficient as a main dish. If we make it again, I’d want to add some protein to it (or have it as a side).

And I was in charge of the live stream for Shir Hadash services tonight (taking the Zoom feed and sending it to BoxCast). There were many things I wish I’d known before starting the feed (such as what to do when the Rabbi sent us off to breakout rooms; I suspect the video of those few minutes is far from enthralling). But the service made me feel good, so I’m glad I was able to help make it available to others.

Shabbat Shalom!