Note to self: do your taxes ahead of time next year! Managed to get them in on time...barely.

So yeah. I did my taxes for the first time myself this year, which was...annoying, but doable. I spent an hour reading the instructions for the federal ones, and two hours trying to figure out my Oregon ones. Thankfully I didn't make enough to pay taxes on last year, so there wasn't much to actually fill out. Instead, I spent all my time attempting to understand things that didn't apply to me. Not too terrible, though I was mildly disappointed that I only got a measly $13 return from Oregon. Federal was a bit better

I finished the taxes last week, around Thursday, with plenty of time to spare. Then, on Saturday, I discovered that my Oregon employer flipped two digits of my W2, so I had to wait until Monday to call them. After getting ahold of them, we established that there was no way to get the new one to me in time for filing, so I just went ahead and made the correction on mine. Not a problem.

However, I couldn't file them Monday, as I didn't have the flash drive with the files on it to print them. Then, on Tuesday, I was very busy and couldn't file them that night. Still not a problem--I'd just send them out at the post office today.

I set three notifications on my phone during the morning. I was planning to take my lunch break and walk over to the post office. 20 minutes before my break, I even mentioned I would do that to my coworker. Then comes lunch. Somehow, I managed to completely space on the one thing I was trying not to forget, that I was thinking about all morning. I had a delightful lunch in the shade on campus, reading Piketty's "Capital In the 21st Century" (an excellent book, btw). When I got back, I was...mildly annoyed with myself, to put it lightly.

Now, I still had time. The Post Office closes at 5:30 (though the hours might have been extended today, I couldn't find anywhere saying so) and my boss was nice enough to let me off at 4. I headed to the library to go print them, only to discover I left my flash drive at home. I sprinted, in full dress clothes, in the sun, all the way back to my house, about a 40 minute walk normally. I stopped by the bike shop near my home to pick up my bike that just had a new wheel built (freaking idiot ran a stop and forced me into a pole at decent speed), and then got home.

Only to discover my flash drive wasn't there. It was at work (I think...gonna have to find it tomorrow).

So I had to dig through all my stuff until I found my harddrive, copy the files over, change clothes, hop on my bike, and sprint back to the library. I printed my forms, signed them, and got them all in order only to discover that I needed to attach a copy of my federal return to my Oregon one. So I went back to the computers, printed another one, and then stapled everything together.

By this time, it was 5:10, and the Post Office was a good 10 minutes away. I finally got everything in order, only to get stuck behind some drivers who could not for the life of them go faster than 15 miles an hour. It was nuts.

However, by 5:20 I did manage to get in, find an envelope, put the forms in, address them, and get through the line by 5:27, so they were postmarked today.

Never. Again.