IRS Lives!

Another night of less than optimal sleep. I hate setting an alarm. I get so anxious about not waking up on time. Sigh. When I am president, I think I will have my assistants call me or knock on my door when I need to get up. I think that might be less intrusive than an actual alarm. I also think that the alarms that have large lights on them that just get brighter and brighter until one wakes and turns them off are pretty cool.

I did get to her house on time this morning. A little early of course. She was late. Life is that way. She also sat in the back seat, which was a little surprising. Not that I really care. But if she had told me ahead of time, I would have cleaned out the back seat for her. I think my car is too old to have heated seats in the back. And I didn’t know where the cup holders were – turns out there are holders in the door pockets. Lastly, she needed to borrow my charging cable because my car didn’t have a USB-A port which is what her cord needed. It was a long way to Olean. But it went pretty quickly. Easy drive. Nice weather. Lots of beautiful views. We really do live in a great part of the country!

On the way home, I stopped and charged for a bit at a Tops. It was good to have a rest from driving. They didn’t sell Pepitas. So I didn’t open the package of them that I have in the car as a gift for EC (and JC if he wants some and EC is willing to share). Sigh. The route I took home, sent me through Naples past BVT. I still have bad memories of that place. I know it was my fault. I oughtn’t to have said yes. I was just so excited to be doing paid work in the theatre. Long frustrating story that, if you go back far enough in these posts, you can find out all about it. Not my best moments.

At home, I had some lunch. I finally, after months it seems, finished my bag of sweet potato chips. Woo hoo! A weight has been lifted.

Gosh, my hotdogs and baked beans last night were about the best version of that I have made and had. This time I added sauerkraut, sour cream and mustard (dill) and boy howdy was it tasty! I also counted how many pieces I cut each hot dog into so that I can more better keep a decent ratio between hot dog and not hot dog. I think I will have more of that tonight.

I am not sure how appetizing this looks to anyone else, but…

I did a second shift of dashing and it wasn’t too bad. I ended up declining one because I didn’t want to drive to Lyons yet again for way too little money. Soon after that, I got a well paying offer to Seneca Falls. It might have been about the same distance, but the $ was completely different. I took that one and made it my last for the evening.

While I was waiting at Char Burrito, I noticed a message from the woman I delivered to Olean this morning. She was asking about trips to Rochester. And then she called me and told me that she wasn’t able to get an uber back to Geneva. Honestly, I am not surprised. It is a terrible ride. And I doubt there are many Uber drivers in Olean on a Wednesday night. I opted not to drive another four hours, in the dark, to go get her. That was around 5:30 pm. If I had gone, I wouldn’t have been back until around 9:30 pm. I feel a teeny bit guilty. I hope she figures it out!

Now I am home and falling asleep as I type this. But I want to eat a bit before going to sleep. Not that I am particularly hungry. I think it will be the last of the leftover pasta tonight instead of the delicious baked beans. I want to add some sort of sauce, but I am not sure what at this point. I found the shells with chick peas to be a tad dry for my taste.

Augustus for President: I had a reminder set up for me to call the IRS again today. I had put it on daily repeat, figuring that the IRS wouldn’t get their act together for another week. I was surprised when the message said my wait time would be between half an hour and an hour. It was about half an hour I think. I had a very nice person to help me. She said that a letter was in the mail and I ought to get it. Eventually. It really should just take three days, but I am not going to be expecting it for at least a week. But then I can finally get my bank account for the campaign going and start collecting contributions. I like that word better than donation. The campaign isn’t a charity. It is a group on a mission to make the United States and hopefully the world a happier and better place. Not great again, by the way…

Other than that, I did have a lot of thoughts that I added to the database. And I have decided that I will start a separate presidential blog post from this, my personal one, beginning in January of 2026. Tortoise steps rule!

I may change the start date of my tour to all fifty state capitals to Wednesday, February 11 2026 as that will be exactly 1000 days until the election. Thoughts are welcome!

48 hours?

That’s good to know! I guess overnight parking is ok…

Yay for productive mornings! Well, mostly sort of productive. Like, I didn’t create a great oeuvre, but I did complete a few tasks from my reminders. And read a good bit.

What did I do, the curious amongst you might be wondering? Well, first off, I called the ATT class action phone line and got my claim in. The more people who claim, the smaller the payout will be for each of us, but I don’t really care about the money. It is more of the principle of the thing. (For those that don’t know, ATT had two major data breaches in the last couple of years and are paying up for those.) I had to wait an hour for someone to pick up. My guess is that they have a timer on the calls and wait an hour to make sure that people are serious. Hmm, maybe any money they don’t have to pay out they get to keep. Anyway, that was a good thing done.

Next up, I had the “find copies of Diary of a Plate Addict” as an action item. I had looked in a lot of places. I looked in two more. I looked more in depth in the front hall closet and found way more boxes full of media than I had recalled. I guess I need to start digitizing pictures. I am going to start with digitizing pictures of people and see if anyone knows who any of these people are. Anyway, no boxes of books to be found. I looked in the attic – surface level – no books to be seen. I reluctantly looked in the basement because I believed I would be unlikely to put the books in the basement where it is known to get damp – not good for books. And what do you know, I found the boxes of books! Huzzuh! I now have a good amount of books to take with me on my trip. I don’t expect to sell many copies of either book on this trip, as I won’t be having events so to speak. But I might sell the odd copy here and there. Every sou helps.

After my last entry, I had some raisin toast for lunch and then headed to Wegman’s for some shopping. I bought some stuff I didn’t need and that wasn’t on my list. And of course what was on my list. No alcohol. No meat. Guess how much one bag of stuff cost me. Go ahead. That’s right, $70+. Sigh. I guess I am going to have to start selling stuff out of the house at some point to help make ends meet. Not tonight though, Satan!

I came home, did a little cleaning, mostly in the kitchen – ok, all in the kitchen. And then I called the IRS to see if they had gotten my change of name letter and if the name had been changed. The menu took me to the appropriate place only to be told to hang up and try again and that maybe someday they would be able to take my call. I wish they would have just put me on hold. But that wasn’t an option.

And that’s all I really did all afternoon: call the IRS to no avail; and read. Soon, I will be heading to dinner with JC and EC!

Augustus for President: I did a bunch more items in the thoughts database. First go through is almost done. I think I have 25 more records to look at and categorize. That and calling the IRS were my two big efforts on the campaign front. Oh, and someone online suggested that we lift the cap on house membership. I think that’s a great idea. Let’s get it down to one congressperson for 400k people. Or 350k. So about 1/1000th of the population. I like decimals. I wonder what other representative democracies have in terms of representation.

Cameron’s Bakery

My pizza from Saturday

Today I did two dash shifts. Both were ok. The second was a typical Tuesday in my dashing experience. Too much distance (90 miles) for too little money. Oh well. I survived. And, when I was in Auburn, I was tasked to go to Cameron’s Bakery. Down the road a bit from Kostas. It looked like a cool place! Someday I will go back there. Maybe.

At lunch time, the meat fairy stopped by with venison sticks. I have never had a venison stick. And so, when they were offered, I accepted. The meat fairy brought a lot of venison sticks! I guess I will have to thaw some sometime and see what they are all about. I mean, why not?

I didn’t get much of anything accomplished at lunch time. I had thought to pay my tickets and make some calls, but I remembered (or recalled) that it was a bank holiday today for Veteran’s day. I will just do the stuff tomorrow instead.

Augustus for President: I hate being ripped off. And I wish I could figure out who ripped me off and how and why. Apparently EIN numbers are free, yet I paid $300+ for mine. Grrr. Really, really irked by that. At least it wasn’t $1000. Right? After I call the IRS, if I get someone, if they say that my change of name hasn’t shown up and that it hasn’t been accomplished, I might just tell them to cancel that EIN number and get another one, as Elijah recommended months ago. Maybe K+ did as well. I was reluctant, at the time, because I still thought they an EIN would cost me another $300+. Sigh and grrr.

Way too many random thoughts. I have to come up with more categories somehow. Which is kind of what I was looking for from the various people to whom I farmed this project out.

One of my thoughts is that I would like to see if I can tackle some of the income inequality by staffing up the IRS big time, maybe pair them with DOJ prosecutors to go after the big ticket people who ought to be paying a lot of federal tax.

I really could use some help on the campaign. I need someone as crazy as I am to assist me in this endeavor. I am sure they will turn up eventually. But it would be great to have them around sooner rather than later…

Vegetable Day!

Woke up in my own bed and that is not a bad thing. I did, though, wake up thoroughly depressed. And not just a little depressed. I mean, thoroughly. Not wanting to get out of bed depressed. There are lots of reasons of course. Here are a few:

• The Country’s problems with Drumpf and Co.
• The World’s Problems (Gaza, Rise of Authoritarianism, Greed)
• My problems (not going to list them – too depressing – actually, I just don’t want to as they seem small compared to the other problems)

And that’s just the point. All of my problems, though real, are actually small. And they will get dealt with one way or another. I just need to keep on trudging along. And, as I type this, my depression has lifted quite a bit. It is still there, but it is no longer debilitating. Woo hoo!

So, I decided today would be a vegetable day. And I have, for the most part, succeeded. I have done a few things, made a few tortoise steps here and there, but mostly, I just let the day slide past. Despite time being the only thing we really have a finite amount of. I guess part of me is just waiting to get started campaigning for real. It will give me some more focus. Until then, just putt, putt, puttering along.

One of the things I did was play with Wick Editor a little on the iPad. I was excited because I could create stuff there. Unfortunately, it looks like I am having the same problem with Wick and the iPad that I was having before. Sure, I can create a file in Wick on the iPad but I can’t then open the file. Or so it seems to me. So, I guess I am back to waiting to see if I can do what I want with Powerpoint. Or back to Swift again. Probably Swift is going to be the answer. Though, I did have a thought as to how I could fake the one page thing with Keynote…Maybe I will try that later tonight if I don’t get too fuzzy.

Augustus for President: I don’t want to start accepting donations until my bank account is hunky dory. And I can’t do that until I get a response from the IRS that my name change has been acknowledged. And that isn’t going to happen until the government starts working again. If then. I know that Drumpf and Co have gutted the IRS. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I keep coming up with questions, looking for answers, and trying to figure out things. For instance, I found out that both Zazzle and Vistaprint can make campaign buttons. And I keep playing with apps to try and build a sound machine. I know I can do what I want with the midi device, but the utlimate goal is to be able to do the sound machine stuff from the iPad. It is either that or the midi device. Though the midi device requires a computer to work.

I also came up with a design for name badges for people who want to support my candidacy. I would love if everyone who supports me would wear a badge similar to the one I wear when I am out and about. The new one has their name at the top: My name is Xxxx. I choose: Augustus for President. With the website at the bottom. It’s a start. I amhoping some people choose to wear them. Eventually.

No Blue Skies Today!

We did not have much of this today

It is going to be fall soon. Not excited. I mean I like some of the stuff about Autumn. But I don’t like how dark it becomes here. The sun shines less frequently it seems. But we will somehow persevere.

I woke up late this morning. I mean, really late! I thought I went to bed at a reasonable hour and slept pretty decently. I heard my boarder leave for work around 7:50 am. Then I asked Siri what time it was (I don’t have to raise my head and look) and she said it was 9:28 am! Eeek! I like to be out dashing at 9:30 am at the latest. Otherwise I have to work later and that eats into my daily three hour lunch break! Can’t have that. So I hustled my butt and got out in a fairly timely fashion.

It was a two dash day. The second dash was close to ideal. I made my basic goal and did relatively little driving. Woo hoo! The first shift was ok. Though it ended weirdly.

My last dash was two dashes. The first was a delivery to the Colleges which went ok. Except that the app didn’t think I was in the correct place. Which I was. But that upsets the app and often (almost always) when this occurs and I am asked to get a PIN from the customer, the PIN doesn’t take and I can’t finish the order. Since I had a second order, and didn’t want their food to be any colder than it already was going to be, I called Dasher tech support. I was greeted by a new AI voice – it sounded like a young woman – maybe 17 to 23. And very realistic. I explained the problem and it asked if I wanted to complete the order. I said I did. She said she had done it and was there anything else. I said no. Went back to the app and found that the AI had completed the wrong order. She had completed the order I hadn’t delivered – which had no PIN request. Sigh. So I called back, eventually got a person and he fixed everything. Unfortunately (?) the order that had been mistakenly completed resulted in a refund to the customer and a request to me to dispose of the order in any manner I chose. I chose to eat the order.

It was ok. The person had ordered a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger biggie bag – which includes a drink (they chose some coffee thing that I poured out), four nuggets, fries and the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. Which the customer asked for without bacon. WITHOUT BACON! They could have ordered the Jr. Cheeseburger deluxe which doesn’t have bacon and is $.50 cheaper. Sigh. I ate it anyway. I just hope that I don’t get sick from the meal.

I am home now. I have done some Duolingo. And written this scintillating blog post. Oh, and my depression is gone as well! Leftover Chicken Riggies tonight. I think I will still have one more meals worth of food from that container. Eeek!

Augustus for President: I called the IRS to ask them how to change the name of the company associated with my EIN. I was of course directed to a menu and when I got to my choice, a voice came on and said they were too busy and that I could try again tomorrow. If I really wanted to. I guess the cuts to the IRS are starting to show…I went to the website and read that I needed to send them a letter asking for the name to be changed. Which I have done. $.78 for a goddam stamp. Seriously? But at least I did something. Oh, and you can do something too: reply to my surveys! Please!