Eleven Books, 6 Easy Hours

Things I Love Right Now:

The Earned Income Tax Credit. Hooray for a negative income tax rate for working five months out of the year!

Things That Bug Me Right Now:

Filing your federal taxes on turbotax.com isn't actually free, despite the numerous signs saying that it is, unless you start the process from irs.gov or taxfreedom.com. I forget this every year and have to go back and do it all over again.

I was hoping to run the Pirate's Cove 50K next Saturday, but I couldn't get next Saturday off and had yesterday free instead, so I picked a random route through Tilden and Wildcat Parks for six or seven hours yesterday. I felt great, but I almost killed myself on the bike ride home. I took a really sharp turn, but was still trying to crank it to beat a light, the pedal hit the ground, bouncing me off the pedals and throwing the bike in the other direction towards the cars waiting at the light. I managed to get one hand on a brake a couple inches before I would've flown across the hood of the pickup first in line, earning the thumbs up from the frightened driver watching it all play out. That part and the fact that I listened to The Fountainhead on my iPod the entire time were the only bad parts.

I couldn't resist buying another book (The Last Season, Eric Blehm) at Cody's, but I feel less stupid about buying a large number of books that will take me years to get around to reading because I finished reading Wallace Stegner and the American West by Philip Fradkin. It was a pretty good biography. Not super-amazing or anything, but good. It did clue me in on some other Western authors I should probably check out some time (Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Austin), plus some Stegner stuff I hadn't heard about (The Wilderness Letter).

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