First, let me say that NCAA basketball is dead to me, so I don’t really care (I’ve moved on to lacrosse and that’s not going all that well either – actually, women’s lax is doing quite well so that’s good), but I was reading something this morning that said today’s two Final Four games are not on over-the-air teevee, but are only on cable channels and that they are on three different channels with three different announcing crews. This seems pretty bizarre to me. CBS (or Viacom or whoever owns them) presumably pays a lot of money for the broadcast rights for this stuff, and you’d think the advertising money they can get showing the games OTA on CBS would be way higher than they can get on a cable channel. Plus, why three channels? I mean if, say, 3 million people were gonna watch on one channel, it’s not like 9 million are gonna watch on three. Seems silly to me, but then again I’m not the type of crack network executive that would do things like buy the Sci-Fi channel and put “professional” wrestling on it on Friday nights (never mind changing the name of the channel to “SyFy”). Shoulda just renamed it the “sigh” channel.

So I just noticed that it’s April 5th (aka, 10 days to taxes) and my tax info is sitting there on my desk. Funny thing is, I did my taxes back at the beginning of February but I suffer from “fear of filing.” Anytime I have a decent refund coming, I’m afraid to file the damn things lest I’ve unwittingly made some egregious error that Turbotax didn’t catch. Which is silly, because I’m only getting a refund because I pay a ridiculous amount of property taxes and a somewhat less ridiculous amount of mortgage interest every year. It’s not like my taxes are even complicated – I have no hidden foreign assets or funky home office deductions and I don’t even bother to write off my charitable contributions (it’s not like I’m Andrew Carnegie anyway). And the interest rate on my savings account is negligible.

I’m not like the rest of you limousine liberals out there hobnobbing with Hollywood stars driving your Priuses (Prii?) and drinking your fancy Starbucks coffee as you head out to your weekend house in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard or most likely some other place that I’ve never heard of because if I’ve heard of it, it can’t be trendy enough. No, we’re simple pickup truck driving folks out here in real America. Well, OK, I drive a Hyundai (Korean car and Japanese tractor – maybe I’m not a very good American after all) but I’m hoping to buy a plow truck this year. So I’ll shoot for a Ford.

But, still, I have this fear of pulling the trigger on my returns (and am too lazy to motivate myself enough to go over them one more time). It’s really more of a fear of the possibility (no matter how remote) of having to deal with the IRS. Or any authority (maybe this is why I’m a mostly “good” person – I don’t actually believe in a god, but on the odd chance that there actually happens to be one, I don’t wanna have to get scolded by him/her) – it’s what keeps me from speeding (much – I do the obligatory five mph over the limit so that I feel like I’m getting away with something) or breaking the law in other ways. I just don’t wanna have to deal with the cops. And I don’t want people coming to my house and ringing the doorbell (fortunately that doesn’t happen all that much out here in the boonies). Basically, if I don’t already know you’re coming, you shouldn’t be coming. And if you ring the bell, there’s about a 5% chance I’ll do anything more than peak out the window and give you the stink eye.

I used to feel that way about the phone, too. I used to tell people, if you’re gonna call me you need to send me an e-mail first to let me know you’re gonna call me. I fixed that by not having a phone anymore. Or at least a landline. The only people that call my cell phone (do they still call them that?) are work or my wife. One I don’t mind talking to and the other I can’t avoid (I’ll let you figure out which is which).

I actually have to “work” today. A bit. They’re upgrading Oracle on one of the database servers from 10g to 11g (which means we’ll only be one version behind, which is actually pretty “bleeding edge” for my particular organization). So once they’re done, I’m supposed to go and check to see if anything’s broken. A real thrill.

Fortunately, I happened to glance at the work calendar, and found that I’m off on Monday. This was a pleasant surprise. I think my original intention was to be able to properly prepare myself to watch SU win the National Championship on Monday night.

Guess I’ll have to find something else to do.