Rough Day

Today was a pretty rough day, but it did get better at the end, so I will end on a slightly higher note.  It's been rainy and dreary for two days straight, which never helps.

We found out that the counsellor who is supposed to turn up and help us through some family drama can't make it until Sunday (yes, really!), so this feels like a wasted week.

Our furnace, which is only two years old, has been acting up and not actually heating the house.  The repairman turned up and, after some poking and prodding, said that the control board needs to be replaced.  This happens to be under the extended warranty we have, but it still means two or three days without any heat.  I suppose better now than in December or January.  

In the late afternoon I had a dentist appointment.  The cleaning was quite involved and more painful than usual.  And a had a small cavity between two teeth that needs to be filled in two weeks.  So that was no fun at all.

Then my wife got a letter from the IRS demanding thousands of dollars.  This really confused and upset me.  When I got home I realized this was related to correspondence I had with them back in August & September.  I have no idea why they wrote to her, however.  I actually filed a 1040X and did pay what we owed in September (and they cashed the check!), so it is probably just crossed communications (and I don't owe any more), but it is still annoying and will probably take a while to straighten out.*  I also have yet another mini-audit from the CRA to deal with, though I didn't learn about it today, but it is still on my mind with all the other tax annoyances.

The bright spot in all this is that I was one of 200 or maybe even 500 Canadians to be selected to get a set of the books shortlisted for the Giller Prize, courtesy of Scotiabank.  I'm supposed to put them out in the Little Free Library, though nothing says I can't browse them first (not that I have the time to read anything not on one of my lists!).

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be better.  The weather should be nicer, and I'll plan on biking in to work and perhaps dropping off my bike for a tune-up, which it sorely needs after I have practically ridden it into the ground since the pandemic began...

* While dealing with the IRS is never fun, I found it easier to get things straightened out on the phone with agents in the early 2000s.  This time around, the agent more or less saw things my way, but said it would take 16 weeks for the 1040X to be processed, at which time they would say whether they agreed with my revised calculations.  I said it was fairly silly to pay the money, only to turn around and have the IRS refund it at the end of December.  He agreed to turn off the warning letters, but if the IRS doesn't agree with me, I will be on the hook for even more interest, though probably not a penalty on top of that.  Fingers crossed I got it right this time.