Feb 13

Like always, please visit my website: http://www.thomnichols.com/
Fantastic news everyone. Yes, you guessed it. The official Rockies schedule was posted. It actually might have been posted before now, but today was the first time I looked at it. It is February 13th today and the first game is March 3rd. So, that means that there are only 19 days left until Spring Training and baseball. Yoo Hoo!!!!!

Our first game is against the Arizona Diamondbacks and it should be a great one. I don’t know anything about it yet, because I haven’t looked. But, I’ll let everyone know next week after I start reading what’s going on this week. So, enough about that.
The other great news is that the River of Magic is finished. I typed up the last page on Saturday. So, today I’m starting the re-read to make sure there isn’t any continuity or storyline problems, not to mention spelling or grammatical problems. There are usually more spelling and grammatical problems than anything else. When I’m typing, I’m usually going pretty fast and that’s not good. Sometimes my fingers are behind what I’m telling them to do and something gets forgotten or misspelled or even left out. So, I have about a week or so of the re-read and then it goes to my Editor (my mom). She’ll find everything that I miss.
I’m going to put in a lot more effort this time into trying to get it published the right way instead of just going right to self publishing. It’s about time to stop messing around. So, even though it’s finished, it might not be available for several more months.
The not so fantastic news is that I turbo taxed my return this last week. We’ve always had so many kids living with us that we’ve never really had to worry about getting a refund. Well, nearly all of the kids are out of the house and working. When I threw the numbers into Turbo Tax, we ended up owing $600.00 to federal but getting back about $20.00 from the state. Not very good news. So, we’re going to take all of the stuff down to H&R Block just to see if they can do anything for us. I hope so. Next, we’re going to have to change out W2 withholdings. We also want to try to get a house. We were expecting to try for one next year after my youngest went off to school, but we need that deduction, so we’ll try for one this year. That means that I need to start throwing money into our credit cards and stuff. We talked to the VA last year and they said that we almost qualified. They just wanted us to bring down a couple of the cards. We probably could have done it, but we were planning a trip and some other things and as it turned out, we maxed out those cards they wanted us to bring down. We still have some things planned this year, but I’ll plan them better this time.
Speaking of income taxes, my oldest daughter and my daughter in-law are going to get really good returns. I’m so jealous. My youngest had just started working and didn’t make enough to file this year. She will next year and the little bit we got for her will be gone, so we’re really going to be in trouble next year if we don’t get the house.
My oldest had her Army Reserve training this week. She had more to do than last month and they’re still trying to send her to another school. Since all of the military have pulled out of Afghanistan, the government is cutting military spending, so there isn’t much money to go around. They’re even kicking people out that don’t pass their PT tests and don’t measure up to their standards. My daughter is ok, but she said that there were about eight people in her reserve unit that didn’t pass their PT. They retook it over the weekend and only two of them passed the second time. She still hasn’t found a regular job yet, but she’s trying. The hard part for her is transportation. She really needs a car.
My youngest daughter is still working at the movie theater. She likes it, or I should say she likes having her own money. She likes most of the work, but some of it is kind of boring. She doesn’t like being the person that stands at the door taking the tickets because she can’t move around.
My wife had to work at a different building all last week and this week, so she had to be at work an hour early every day. It screwed up our transportation system, but we’re coping pretty well. It’s only a few more days anyway. She’s kind of tired of it because she loses an hour of sleep every night and can’t make it up during the day. So, she’s exhausted.
I taught my granddaughter a new word today and got in trouble. We were in the car when my wife went up to my daughter’s apartment to see what was keeping her. I made the mistake of saying that she probably walked in on my daughter and her boyfriend doing something funky. Well, my granddaughter liked the word funky and liked it even more putting the word monkey after it. So, when my wife came back down with my daughter and her boyfriend, she asked them if they were doing the funky monkey upstairs. I don’t think my wife is going to let me hang around with my granddaughter anymore.
My God daughter’s daughter had a birthday party on Sunday. It was nice. She’s getting pretty big. I think I got in trouble. I disappeared upstairs and ended up watching some TV. When my wife came up, she wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t intend on watching TV, it was just on and I got carried away. But, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, so I’ll make it up to her.
That’s about all for today. I’d better get started on my re-read. The sooner I get that done, the sooner I can start on the next one.
I woke up late today and it took me a while to realize that I was running late, so I’m putting in some loud music in the playlist to keep me going tonight. Dio, White Lion, Dokken, AC/DC, and Slaughter should do it.
-Thom