3/25/01

Check out how many freckles I have these days. It's from all that running I've been doing. I wear sunblock every day, but I guess it's not 100% effective. I'd always heard that freckles were supposed to go away as you age, but I get more and more of them every year. I used to only get them on my nose when I was little, and then they spread to my cheeks and then my forehead, and now I have them all over my face.

You know, until today, I was doing pretty well in my lab's NCAA pool. If Illinois had beaten Arizona this afternoon, I would have correctly guessed the final four. But now they're out, and I'd picked them to win it all. There goes my five bucks...sigh.

Of course, that's nothing compared to what I discovered this afternoon I have to pay the IRS. I finally sat down and did my taxes today when I realized that this is probably the last free time I'll have to do them before they're due. I work crazy hours all week, and then my next two weekends are going to be pretty busy. Next weekend is my birthday. I'm not doing anything too special this year--probably just an excursion to some bar or other on Saturday night and then dinner with friends on my actual birthday, which is Sunday. I'll have a big party next year when I turn 30. But anyway, I didn't want to be stuck doing taxes on my birthday, and the weekend after that, my mom's coming to visit, and then it'll be April 15th. So, I got it over with today, and the process was actually far less painful than I thought it would be, but I owe a lot. I just made too much damn money this year.

Other things that happened to me this weekend:

-I thought I saw Robert Sapolsky at the corner store in my neighborhood, but it probably wasn't him because he works at Stanford so he probably lives down there and probably wouldn't be hanging around the corner store in my neighborhood. I do have a tendency to think that all white guys with beards look alike.

-I got a cell phone. So far, two people have called me on it. I don't anticipate using it often, but it is a convenient thing to have. The AT&T people scared me by telling me that my credit wasn't good enough to get a "roaming" plan. This freaked me out, because I have no credit problems and a long credit history, so I was scared that something had gone horribly wrong without my knowing about it. It turned out that my credit was actually fine, they just didn't want to give me that plan because I'm an "unemployed" student. Anyway, I was able to convince them that my credit history was solid, so they finally came around, but it was all very weird. It was the first time in my life anyone had ever tried to refuse me credit for anything, and it was such a small thing...

-I ran in a 12K race this morning. It was a nice course--it started over in Sausalito and we ran across the Golden Gate Bridge and then over to the Aquatic Park near Fort Mason. My time was a bit slower than my goal, but I still did OK. One of the professors on my orals committee also ran in the race. I talked to my dad on the phone this afternoon, and when I told him that he asked me "did you beat him?" and I said "no," and he said, "good."

Now I'm watching the Oscars. I haven't seen half of these movies, but I guess that's not why people really watch anyway. The fun is in seeing what everyone's wearing and who acts like they've been toking up in the back of the limo (Goldie Hawn).

In the forum: Taxes and Freckles.