A week of dodging bullets. Yes, that’s a good thing.

First up, I spent today proofing our income taxes. I spotted several errors and when I crunched all the numbers our bill went from $500 in to maybe $100. Whoot! My brain is shot but all I have to do now is print out the forms and send them in.

Second, it was Plush Dudley’s eye checkup this week. He’s had glaucoma for a year and the pet optometrist told us that’s usually the point at which the drugs stop working. Nope, his eye pressure is still excellent. That’s really good news.

Third, TYG went to a social event last weekend and developed a hacking cough a couple of days later. Then I started to hack and cough. No, that’s not good news but it’s very good news that it’s largely cleared up for both of us. Normally she has a hard time fighting off these things and I’ve had multiple infected throats intensify into laryngitis. Doesn’t seem to be happening.

And last but definitely not least, Wednesday morning my iPhone stopped charging. Bad news, obviously, but when I took it to the Apple Store right after lunch, the young woman at the Genius Bar solved the problem — debris in the charging port — and cleared it out easily. I’m impressed and relieved.

Work was … okay, partly because I had to spend the whole day working on the taxes. I’d thought it would be smoother but I made more errors than I thought, and kept thinking “Oh no, that makes us pay out more” followed by “oh, but this error cancels that one out and then some.” Trust me, not as exciting as it sounds.

I didn’t watch anything for Jekyll and Hyde but did work on the section covering Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde. Reading some of the reviews and analysis of the film, I found it more interesting (not necessarily more entertaining) than my review at the link.

I proofed another dozen or so entries in Savage Adventures including yes, The Mental Wizard. I wound up writing two articles for The Local Reporter, one of which they’re holding for next week. They printed one article on the local Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle and one held over from last week on Carrboro’s commitment to Vision Zero, a program for eliminating pedestrian deaths due to traffic.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop we’re suffering an ongoing problem: our tech/admin person is AWOL (valid personal reasons), the site won’t let us load photos a lot of the time, and the hosting company isn’t answering my emails. In hindsight having one person handle the admin with nobody designated as backup was a mistake but this was always meant to be a fun project so none of us thought about that. TYG, skilled IT pro that she is, would have known better.

Still I managed to get some stuff up: reprinting an old post about the choice between buying old vs. new comics, one on what makes a good antihero and one on Timothy Dalton’s debut as Bond in The Living Daylights (Maryam D’Abo, below, plays the Bond Girl)

And the taxes are done! That’s a load off my mind, as is the smaller tax bill.

Doc Savage cover by James Bama; rights to all images remain with current holders.