More Maui

What can I say? The island is beautiful!

Maui - day 1

Here's the view from our deck. More tales and adventures after a good night's rest. B. & I are still tried from all that traveling.

Woodworking, Greens, Taxes

Hey, I finally finished my cutting board!!! Last night I did some more sanding and then covered it with mineral oil. What a change the mineral oil made, bringing out the richness of the wood! It's amazing that it took me so long to make but also amazing that I made it. :)


This past weekend I attended a class titled "Cooking with Greens". I expected that I'd learn how to use swiss chard, spinach, bok choy, etc. in recipes and that maybe by seeing them used (and tasting them), I'd learn how to prepare them myself - and maybe even like them. Imagine my surprise to learn that half of the recipes we'd be tasting were for broccoli, my most-hated vegetable!! Here were the four recipes for the day: Chocolate Broccoli Cake, Broccoli 'Guacamole', Beans & Greens Soup, and Scrambled 'Eggs' with Greens. The idea of a cake made from broccoli seems repulsive but I have to admit that it tasted pretty good, not at all like raw broccoli. The broccoli guacamole wasn't bad either. It made for a tasty dip or spread - as long as you were not really expecting avocado guacamole. I was pleased with both the soup and the scrambled 'eggs' (tofu) as it showed me I could incorporate greens into types of recipes that I currently make, that I wouldn' t have to sit down to just a big plate of greens. So for me, the class was worthwhile. I made the soup the other night and both B. & I liked it. Next I may try to make that cake!

I was back at the homeless shelter today and one of the guys who showed up was the one who was having problems last week entering his taxes. His first comment was "I finished my taxes!" and that was good to hear. He actually made so little last year that he wasn't required to file but by filing, he should get back all that was deducted from his paychecks. And, I hope, make him eligible for the rebates.

Taxes revisited

B. & I sat down and went over our taxes this morning and we did indeed find an error. In one spot, I had entered some taxes as income and - of course - that was throwing everything off. So we ended up with a refund from both federal and state and that was more to our liking. :)

Woodworking progress & tax preparation fiasco

Here at last is my woodworking project, a cutting board. It's almost finished. It needs a little more sanding and then I have to stain it but I'll do that next class night. This week's class was spent planing, sanding, sawing, and routing and I'm beginning to feel more comfortable on all the corresponding machines. Still, I am also beginning to feel that my future is not one of woodworking. What a lot of work it took me to get to this simple little cutting board! I'm not sure I want to invest that much time in something when I could be knitting or crocheting instead. Once I get this cutting board completely finished, I'll work on building blocks for the remainder of the classes. I have a study wooden tool box that I made in my very first woodworking class and it will be perfect for storing wooden blocks, should I ever have some young guests who would like to play with them.

Yesterday morning at the homeless shelter was a busy one. A lot of guys showed up, mostly to work on resumes or check email. One guy wanted to work on his taxes but he was easily frustrated just entering his W2. I helped him get going and then he spent the rest of the two-hour session that I'm there completing his taxes. He was just in the process of e-filing it at noon when I leave so I stayed a few minutes to let him send it off. And as he hit the key to complete the e-filing process, the computer shut down, complaining that it had an Internet error! All his hard work vanished. I assured him that it would still be out there, that if he just came back and signed on again, he could finish it off and be done with it. I don't think he believed me. He sure was frustrated - and even if I could have stayed longer, he was in no shape to continue work on it right then.

B. and I are having tax issues of our own. We spent a good part of the weekend working on them only to find that we still owe MORE money, after all the money we've already paid this year. Something about the figures just doesn't feel right so we plan to go over everything again today and see if possibly we didn't enter something we should have. We're hoping for some slight error that when corrected will either net us a refund - or a greatly reduced tax owed.

I went back to the library craft circle last Sunday to give it another try. This week was a lot more interesting than the last time. There were only four of us there, one woman that I had met last time. Everyone was working on interesting projects and had lots of ideas, suggestions and patterns for future projects. And, in addition to meeting some interesting, like-minded people, I made some more progress on the baby blanket I'm knitting. Definitely a good session.

Unsettling News

Late last week, 500 people were laid off from Home Depot headquarters (SSC) where I used to work. Most of the cuts were in Information Technology so that means a good number of my friends and former co-workers were among those to lose their jobs. I don't have a complete list yet of those let go but of the names I have heard, the folks were all good hard workers, people I was able to count on when I was trying to get a job done. Sad times...