I've paid my taxes, and thank goodness that they're all done. Normally, I would have taken them to a tax preparer and said "take whatever money you want, just get the darn thing faraway from me." However, my girlfriend persuaded me that my former approach was ridiculously extravagant, especially since my taxes are ridiculously easy. Consequently, we used the turbotax program that she had on her computer. It still cost about 25$ to file electronically, but overall, turbotax was a relatively painless experience. Maybe next time around, I should buy the program myself and have it installed on my own computer. A basic Quicken program was something that came with my new laptop, and, I have to say, I really think it's a really handy program to have. As a person, who has a lot of hangups with money, I think I'm beginning to relax about it a little.
School continues as always and I'm still behind in work, but what else is new? On Tax day, I sat in the back of class to watch the instructor I TA for try desperately to capture the utterly bored students' attention. He wasn't succeeding. In fact, one of the students near where I was sitting was actually doing her own taxes during the lecture. I watched her looking up information in the tax tables, and presumably filling out the short form. I admit I was impressed that she seemed to both start and finish her taxes all within class time. It's kind of amazing what students will do when they're bored in a large class of 100 students. They don't think the professor can see, or really cares (which he probably doesn't). Close to where I usually sit, two guys normally have their laptops open, and one of the students this last time was developing a website, presumably for a project in his computer science class. English professors who are a certain age are the worst with technology. Half of the time, they're not sure how to get the lights in the classroom to turn on. Usually, when I enter the classroom, which is always five minutes before the professor, I make sure to turn them on and raise the projector screen. Otherwise, the professor would spend about ten minutes looking for the buttons and asking if everyone can see in the dark. Although, I guess I should stop, because judging from the students' interest, those ten minutes might be the only amusing thing in class.