Tax Emancipation Day

I really love the sound of that, although it doesn't have the meaning it implies. What it really means is "you have another day to do your taxes day." So I did that today. I'd started it months ago, so today I input the last few bits of data and finished up the feds, state, and local taxes. That's really all I have to say about that.

After I finished up the taxes, Chris and I tossed the twinks in the car and headed over to Max's school to get him. We then spent the next two hours at Wegmans. First, we each got a treat (I got a muffin, Max and Ben got donuts, Chris and Milo got a cookie) and sat down at their tables in the eating area and made up our menu for the next two weeks. From this we made up the shopping list. Then Max and Chris took half the list and the twins and I took the other half of the list (but we still ended up with some duplicates) and we restocked the pantry.

Back at home, the whole house was filled with smoke. The wood pellet stove had experienced some sort of technical malfunction and was slowly emitting smoke. I had to tear weatherproofing plastic off two of the basement windows to let in air, Emily got locked onto the back porch so we could open all the doors. I emptied the still glowing/smoking pellets into the ash tray below the furnace and took it all outside to dump into a muddy spot. I gave Max the important job of using all the rainwater he could find to extinguish the last of the glowing pellets while I cleaned the furnace out more thoroughly. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong with the stove, but I think it might have been some of the crazy wind from today's weather blowing back into the smoke stack as the pellet stove was trying to ignite the pellets.

Anyway, then Max made everyone sandwiches for dinner while I put everything away. Chris headed off to his garage to get some work done. Then Max did his homework.

We (well, Max, Chris, and I) are trying to get more active so we can have a fun spring and summer and fall and not feel terribly out of shape. The weather is thwarting our efforts though. Max and I were going to ride bikes to his school in the mornings, but the temperature has to get at least into the 40's to pull that off. So we did a Kathy Smith DVD together tonight. My abdominal muscles were alarmed to be called back from their hybernating state. It's only been a couple of hours since we did the DVD, but I can tell that I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

The Orenburg Shawl is going well. Only thirty more rows (15 on the chart, 15 purl returns) before I'm finally back on the original chart for the pattern. Doubling the length of the left and right borders seems to have quadrupled the size of the body. I've been using the chart to get the hang of the pattern, but the chart assumes a starting number of stitches of 100, and I started with 183. I'm not sure it's realistic to think I could really finish the shawl by the end of April, but definitely by mid-May. Then it gets tucked away till Christmas.