<p>Dining room and kitchen done. I managed to sneak in a bit of home freeweights and have started in on cleaning the basement. I will work on it for a little while and then finish up later tonight. I hope to throw out a lot of things but I don’t know if I will be successful at that. I do plan to pull out the weight bench and do some bench presses. I’m going to try to leave it out (amidst the clutter) so that I can do bench presses at home.</p>
<p>Just finished the processing for my Federal 1040. Those of us in NH and MA have until Tuesday to get our taxes in because tomorrow is an oddball holiday in MA called Patriots day. It’s also the day of the running of the Boston Marathon. I have to do the NH Interest and Dividends form next. I’m hoping to find an online site to do it for free.</p>
<p>Need some exercises for one of my D’s. She is in good shape but very unhappy with her thighs. Her EC activity leads to muscular thighs and calves. In shorts she has the problem of if the waist fits the thigh area is way too tight. If she gets the thighs to fit the waist is too large. She belongs to the Y plus we have some resistance bands at home.</p>
<p>I’d rather run Boston Marathon than do my kiddo’s MA taxes. I’m glad we have no state income tax forms to fill out. LOL, I’m not the only tax procrastinator here on CC. :)</p>
<p>Hmmm. Perhaps I made an error. There’s always the gangsta shorts which have a ton of room in the legs.</p>
<p>Just finished son’s Federal return. It was actually a snap with TaxAct. He owes the Feds some money. The hard part is the MA return. Not the money part - the MA form is a nightmare because they have Universal Healthcare and you have to fill out this awful form proving that you have coverage. The other pain is in finding a website that will do the MA return for free.</p>
<p>Mike Boyle and Valerie Waters have both talked about this thigh issue and are in agreement. Lay off the squats and lunges if a young female thinks her muscular thighs are too big.</p>
<p>You can do Mass tax forms right on line and e-file directly from the mass Dept of Revenue site. It’s basically like filling in PDF file forms and hitting submit. Pretty easy.</p>
<p>It’s a bit more complicated for our son. He has to file a MA-NR (Non-Resident) return. I checked into doing this last year but they didn’t support NR returns. I found another site that should work - it’s one of those linked off the MA DOR site.</p>
<p>I was thinking about insulin earlier (yeah taxes and insulin go together) and I was thinking that maybe eating more but smaller meals is a way to reduce the insulin spike from carbs and sugar which may be of some benefit to the body.</p>
<p>This is kind of interesting. A short video tour of the new Boston University weight room/conditioning center, including an area with 18 Schwinn Airdynes for the kiddos.</p>
<p>Boston University won the fittest university in the country some number of years ago. A google search has them at #3 in 2005. They built that fabulous fitness center on Comm Ave many years ago (I’ve never been in it) and it apparently gets used a lot. I should see if I can get a tour of the place (I’m an alum).</p>
<p>BC, on another thread someone recommended TaxHawk for college kiddos. A simple federal and one state return is free. I’m not familiar with it, I just used our TurboTax to do the kiddo’s taxes. I finished mine, too. The co. took too much tax out of H’s bonus; otherwise, we never get a huge return, since I adjust our W-4s to end up getting back a hundred bucks or so. The IRS owed us… let’s say, a L-V bag. DH looked at the number and said, “That’s not a L-V bag, that a L-V suitcase!” LOL. Silly H. A new dryer would be nice…</p>
<p>I think I’ll play with my lead toys and then e-file our taxes. I’m resting after yesterday’s run, but H is getting some cardio exercise by running around the backyard trying to catch the neighbor’s dog. The dog actually did helped us a bit by cleaning up every crumb of dog food that our pooch scattered on the deck. We were doing yardwork earlier and must have left the gate open, and the dog slipped in.</p>
<p>As I understand it, the insulin spike after a meal is not really a problem for a “normal” person. The problems arise when you start to become insulin resistant, which forces the body to produce more insulin for longer and longer periods, rather than just immediately after eating. The insulin resistance is what tilts the balance to increased fat storage. Increased fat storage not only adds blubber, but makes fewer calories available for burning, so activity levels decrease and appetite increases because the body is essentially starving after locking away nutrients in fat cells. Crazy.</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, fructose does not cause an insulin response; only glucose does. Fructose is metabolized in the liver where, except for athletes, the metabolism results in fat and other products linked to insulin resistance.</p>
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<p>Standard diet advice is to eat smaller amounts more often throughout the day. I certainly don’t follow that as I eat basically two big meals each day. From what I can tell, I’m not the only one who finds that approach works. The plus side is that get to have huge fantastic meals and I probably am tapping into fat stores pretty hard before lunch. I’ve just never been a breakfast eater, which goes against every rule in the book.</p>
<p>Yup, TaxHawk is one of the two recommended by the MA DOR. The other one is SimpleTax. I tried SimpleTax (because it was first on the DOR page). It launched a Remote Desktop Connection to one of their systems and started up a tax session on their machine with the output on my machine. It’s certainly a different way to do taxes. I would rather have a simple web interface as I don’t like remote access programs in general - even if I’m accessing their system.</p>
<p>TaxHawk was a dud - filled out the Federal and they don’t do Non-Resident returns. I tried TaxSlayer but they wouldn’t provide me with the information that I needed to fill out the return so I’m just going to slog through the return tomorrow and do it by hand.</p>
<p>In the meantime, it’s time to clean out the basement.</p>
<p>Coffee: black this morning. No suger. Ever again. Undecided about half and half. So just plain black.</p>
<p>It was actually convenient - I was carrying so much stuff that it would have been a pain to put it all down to do the suger and cream thing.</p>
<p>Finished the basement this morning - got one hour of sleep. I have my running gear and may go for a short run today. I need to catch up on sleep tomorrow.</p>
<p>I adore breakfast - always have. I often have a small afternoon snack and sometimes a little more after dinner if I stay up late (which is most of the time.)</p>
<p>I always get cross when we get a refund - it means I overestimated in January.</p>
<p>I always give the US Treasury an extra $10K to play with each year. My income is too variable and can swing wildly, even at the end of the year. Sometimes I even file for an extension so they get it for a lot longer. I read an article on this in one of the financial sites and they said that getting big refunds is a psychological boost of some kind. I just don’t want to get caught short.</p>
<p>I gave NH a bunch of money a few years ago for NH Interest and Dividends taxes. They are draconian about calculating fees and penalties and interest if you don’t make estimated payments on time and one year, the fees, penalties and interest were more than what my taxes were so I just gave them enough for a few years.</p>
<p>I know. That darn sugar article puts you right off the stuff, doesn’t it? </p>
<p>I kicked the sugar in coffee thing years ago, but was off and on with drinking soft drinks, juices, lemonaid, and sweet tea. Looking back, I would say that periods of gaining weight all corresponded with drinking sweet beverages. 150+ calories a serving adds up pretty quickly. What a combo: a bag of Doritos and a Pepsi.</p>
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<p>I finished up the week and my 7 day stats, tracking every morsel of food, are:</p>
What do you think of diet drinks? We have Diet Barc’s in the refrigerator (along with non-diet of course). I do like the taste of Diet Barc (it’s a fair amount sweeter than the non-diet). The long list of chemicals in the ingredients list is a bit off-putting.
I suppose that I can live with coffee, tea and water but sometimes a little root beer is nice.
DH looked at the number and said, “That’s not a L-V bag, that a L-V suitcase!” LOL. Silly H. A new dryer would be nice…</p>
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