Imported From Livejournal

• On Saturday, we went to TJ Collectibles for the Prerelease. I say “we” as Jessi and Hannah came along, and Jessi got to play Magic for the first time since Hannah was born. Wizards changed how prereleases work significantly starting a few months ago, so that the focus of prereleases is on local stores rather than large convention-like events. While I appreciate their efforts at constantly bringing players into local stores, prereleases used to be the main chance for all of the TJ’s judges to get together, whereas now we’re all apart at various places, and I was basically alone for most of the event. And when your event only has 20 players, there’s really little need for more than one judge.
• When we left for church on Sunday morning, my car didn’t want to leave. Pressing the accelerator caused the engine to rev, but the wheels didn’t turn. It works in Reverse, 1st, and 2nd gears, but not in 3rd or Drive. It seemed rather sudden, as it worked fine on Saturday, but seemed to break overnight. My dad managed for me to borrow my grandmother’s car for a few days so that I could get to the Rising Phoenix prerelease and to work for a few days while the car gets looked at. It may end up being that the car will cost more to fix than it’s worth, though.
• While I did get to Rising Phoenix to run their prerelease, the event was a bit of a disappointment. Only 4 players showed up, and we needed 8 in order to run the event.

• Apparently, the newspaper got it wrong that Mr. Singer would attempt to appoint a successor for Town Moderator if he were elected to the Board of Selectmen. It’s still not clear to me who would. The Board of Selectmen would be a possibility, although I would think that it could be Town Meeting. However, it’s possible that the Town Meeting has delegated that authority to the Board of Selectmen via their annual vote to let them fill appointments. But Mr. Singer would need to get elected, first, anyway.
• Making the Selectmen’s race more interesting is that there’s a Bay Path senior who plans on running.
• I’ve basically gotten the custodian of Jessi’s former 457 plan to admit that they gave us an incorrect 1099-R, but that they won’t send a corrected one. I may call the IRS and try to get them involved in correcting the situation.
• I made enough money judging last year that I’m claiming it on my taxes. I hope they accept my assertion that it’s “hobby income” and not “self-employment income” and thus not subject to self-employment tax. Especially as I consider it a hobby and not employment.
• I’ll be judging this weekend at the Conflux prerelease, on Saturday at TJ Collectibles and on Sunday at Rising Phoenix Games.

The big business development that was being planned for the center of town on Rte. 20, and went through 8 months of getting Planning Board approval, is now kaput. They have no intention of moving forward with the project, didn’t file the paperwork they needed to after approval, and so the Planning Board will be revoking their permit.

Last week’s Charlton Villager (7.3MB PDF, page 3) reports that David Singer (2006 State Rep. candidate and current Charlton Town Moderator) is running against Jack Bacon for Selectman this year. If he wins, he’d resign from the Moderator post. He says that he’d appoint an Assistant Moderator to finish out his term, but that doesn’t sound correct from my understanding of Town Meeting Time and M.G.L.. However, town meetings are run by custom as much as they are by law, so it might be legit for him to do so. But I think it’d be better if there were an election or even just a Town Meeting floor vote to determine the successor. And of course, in any event, I need to decide if I want to try to run for the position.

Most people who have a job pay the “FICA” or Social Security tax. This tax is 6.2% of income paid by the employee as withholding from each paycheck, and another 6.2% of income paid by the employer. But of course, this system that’s supposedly good enough for the rest of us doesn’t apply to government employees. No, they have their own program. For part-time government employees in Massachusetts, there’s a 7.5% compulsory contribution to the Massachusetts SMART Plan instead of a payment into Social Security. It’s a 457 plan, which is somewhat like a 401(k) or 403(b). Although, unlike those, there was no choice as to how to invest the money. The fund that it gets invested in is called “The Income Fund”, which is a fund that isn’t supposed to lose value, but that I can’t easily find many details on.

Interesting developments in filing taxes this year. On the federal level, the IRS’s Free File program now has a basic just-fill-in-the-forms web filing option, without the restrictions that the “regular” Free File program has. It looks like the IRS strong-armed the tax software industry into making it for them.

In past years, I’ve used TaxACT for federal filing because they offer it completely free as long as you keep on clicking “No, I don’t want the useless deluxe version” every other screen. I may still use it, but I’m very happy that there’s an option that just emulates the paper method, but does it electronically.

• As mortgage rates have dropped significantly, I’m working on refinancing my mortgage. I find it bizarre that when staying with the same bank, they need to do an appraisal to ensure that we have a low enough loan-to-value ratio, when they’re already taking the risk of having loaned us the amount of money that we have out. In fact, by lowering the payment all the refinancing is doing is lowering their risk. And yet they have to follow their procedures. Truly bizarre. On the plus side, if the appraisal comes in at less than the tax valuation, I can bring it to the Assessor’s office and potentially lower my property taxes.
• This weekend, I’m head judging the North East Open, with the complicated logistics of having many draft pods running at once within one event. Hopefully, it will be a fun and interesting event.

• I’ve been on vacation since Dec. 24, and was sick for a good chunk of that time. This caused us to miss the Mass. Academy Reunion and TJ Collectibles staff Holiday Party, amongst other events, which was very unfortunate. Being sick is not a good way to start a vacation. But I’m feeling much better now. Hopefully, the rest of the week will be much better.
• We’re leaving this afternoon (through the snowstorm) to go to the 15th annual New Year’s celebration at my aunt & uncle’s house in the Berkshires. It’s always a fun time, although I’m not sure how the sleeping arrangements will be this year. Many of the people of my generation have gotten married over the past several years, so more and more people come every year. It ends up being the only time we see some of our relatives each year.
• For those of you living in Massachusetts, if you haven’t done so yet this year, today would be a good opportunity to see your reports free via MA state law. The MA law lets you see a report from each bureau free once per calendar year (unlike the federal law), so you really don’t have anything to lose by getting it today, since the clock resets at midnight.
• Speaking of midnight, there is an extra second today just before midnight UTC. While we get one 23-hour day and one 25-hour day per year due to the bizarreness of Daylight Saving Time, today we get a rare 24-hour-and-one-second day. It will be at 7:59:60 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. I’ll try to remember to note how I spent my extra second.
• Reflecting back on 2008, the big event of course was Hannah coming along and changing everything. Pretty much everything in life centers around her now. She’s growing healthily and happily, and I’m sure she’s going to learn to crawl any week now.
• Happy new year!

On Friday, I woke up shortly after 5am to the sight of nothing, which was the first indication that it would be an interesting day. The power was out, of course. We got out the flashlights and I turned on a battery-powered radio to WTAG, where they were having their usual morning host reporting from his cell phone on his attempt to get to work. He was describing the work crews in front of him on Rte. 56 clearing one tree just to have another fall down. It seemed like it was worst in the Paxton, Holden, and West Boylston area. West Boylston had declared a state of emergency, and that’s where I work, so I figured it would probably be fine if I didn’t go to work. If it weren’t for that on the radio, though, I would have gone in as normal. There was no sign of anything wrong around our house, other than a rainstorm. When Hannah woke up, we went next door to my parents’ place for the company and because they have a wood stove.

I’ve hardly judged at all since Hannah was born, but I do enjoy it and plan to continue to do it as much as I can. I’ll be judging at a PTQ in Hartford this Saturday.

But I won’t, for instance, be judging at NY Comic Con because I don’t want to be away for home for that long.

“A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2008.”