On Saturday, El and I visited our favorite local beer and wine store. The store has a bar where you can sit for a bit and have a drink. I had a half pint of Bosteels Brewery's Pauwel Kwak and then a pint of North Coast Brewing's PranQster ale. Kwak is most well known for its interesting serving glass, but the store doesn't have those glasses. Both beers are Belgian (or Belgian-style), but the Kwak is a slightly darker amber ale while PranQster is a lighter golden ale. Both have average alcohol content for Belgian ales, 8.4% for the Kwak and 7.6% for the PranQster, and both are quite drinkable. While I was enjoying my beers, El did a sampling of various red wines. We also picked up a four-pack of Nemesis by Founders Brewing.
I got my federal tax refund back the other day. Of course, that means that I got my tax returns finished up and sent off a few weeks ago. For my federal taxes, I e-filed using Free File Fillable Forms. For my state taxes, I fell back on the old reliable pen-and-paper method.
As an aside, I recently discovered that taxes are the source for an interesting idiom, Morton's fork.
Like most people (almost everybody, I guess), I hate paying taxes. For most of the year, I am pretty much apolitical. I haven't voted since I voted for Ross Perot when he ran the second time in 1996 (which was a much worse performance than in 1992 when he withdrew and then reentered the race). However, the day that I work up my tax returns is the one day that I am a hard-core conservative Republican, perhaps even... (gasp!) a teabagger! On that day, I appreciate family values like the (financial) benefits of getting married and the true purposes of spawning deductions... err... kids and buying a tax break... I mean a house.
As the credits roll on this post, let's cue The Beatles.
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