I spent the weekend at Barcode

Friday night I met up with Stephanie and her dad, Jean Claude, at Ale Works. Talked about this 40,000+ attendees, $700/head, Donald Trump financial seminar he went to in the city (for free, of course!)—and the fact that he’s actually 1/4 American. Story: his grandfather was an American fighting in France during WWI when he met Jean Claude’s grandmother. They had a child, Jean Claude’s father, but then his grandfather returned to the US after the war. As a result, Jean Claude has an American half-uncle who lives in LA.

Afterwards, Stephanie and I went over to Barcode on Mendocino, which I’ve been meaning to check out. Very swank. A really nice alternative to the Russian River/Ale Works downtown microbrewery juggernaut. Great drinks, though pricey, clean, modern decor, dj spinning background music, Spike Jonze music videos projected on one wall. Looking forward to going back. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long.

Saturday slept in, recovering from a wee bit of drinking the night before. Strolled through downtown SR because I wanted to check out a restaurant on 5th street called Satur Wine Bar and Bistro. Versatile menu (tapas), prices were reasonable ($9-11 range), decor looked upscale, not too snooty. But it was closed. We looped around to find a restaurant where we could eat outside and in the sun. Found Checkers. I’d never been. I had paneed chicken, she had the pasta carbonara. Quick trip through the mall, then a nap before Stephanie went off to prepare for her last spring dance show. I blogged.

Post dance show headed off in the direction of Barcode to meet up with some folks who turned out not to be there, but at the Belvedere. We stayed, had two excellent Mendocino Mojos, talked, basked, and closed the place down.

Sunday no plans. Eggs and bacon. Lazed in bed. Eventually got up and out (for dinner!) and went off in search of the fixins for some skillet burgers. Started my taxes and learned it’s going to be painful this year. As in $1500 painful. Time to call it a night.

Update: Hold the fucking trains! So I’ve been weathering the kind of angst that only a person who owes the government $1500 of his travel-to-france/buy-a-digital-slr-camera fund can endure, when lo and behold, I discover a $6000 discrepancy between my W2s and my year-to-date gross pay on my last pay stub from 2005. Lesson learned. It pays to check (and keep) these things. Taking into account a little bit of qualified tuition expenses, I swung from owing the government $1500 (and having to adjust to an additional $100+ taken out of my paycheck every two weeks) to looking like I might get $30 back. Yee-haw!

5 Comments

jackie

how do you owe 1500? that’s just absurd.

As it turns out, I got some poor direction when filling out my W4 form and took two exemptions (reducing the amount of federal taxes I withheld) instead of taking none (and possibly socking a little extra away for good measure).

Which means I’m 1500 behind for 2005, not counting state taxes (of which I still have to do both NC and CA) or penalties for underpaying, and for the last 3.5 months I’ve continued at an excessively low rate of deductions, which means I’m under for the rest of the year. Uncle.

Who knew I’d been living it up for the last year?

jackie

well, geez, I could’ve told you you’ve been living it up…

In fact it was absurd. It’s just hard to refute numbers printed on paper unless you have other numbers printed on other papers. All long something smelled fishy, I just couldn’t get all the facts and figures to quite add up—till now.

Turns out there is (as far as I can tell) an error on my W2s to the tune of six grand! *Ahem* Payroll?

Headache!

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