wherein Liz sews stuff (and gets rid of some junk in the process)

Tonight I looked through my old bags of 'repair this maybe?' clothing and threw most of the items out. It is not really cost-effective to repair underwear (except if the tears are right along the seams), nor is there much point in repairing bras that don't fit anymore. I couldn't figure out why one pair of pants was in the repair queue, but I will be donating them to charity anyhow.

I will also be donating the brown shirt with the useless sleeves that I suspect I got from my Aunt Cara after one of her bargain-hunting sprees -- instead of proper cuffs, it has these five-inch slits on each arm down at the wrist end. I do not like the fit or the fabric well enough to put in the effort of sewing those closed, but it is a nice shirt and somebody else might like it fine. (Designer clothes are weird, is all I'm saying.)

Once I'd dealt with all that, I made some progress on the few items I'm keeping. I reattached the straps of my shoulder/tote bag to the bag itself, I closed a tear in my cheap nylon laundry bag (it was along the seam, so it was worth fixing; when it inevitably gets holes elsewhere, I will toss it), I put some tucks in the waistband of a black skirt so I can still wear it even though the elastic has gone stretched and mostly useless, and I hemmed one leg of a new pair of black pants.

That is quite enough for one day!

I occasionally think of investing in a small sewing machine just so hemming wouldn't be such a production, but I have never been able to justify the expense to myself when I so rarely need to sew anything and I can hand-stitch perfectly well when necessary. This does not stop hand-stitching from being a massive pain in the neck, particularly when I'm using back-stitch rather than running stitch. *sigh*

Yuletide nominations

Yay, my Yuletide noms got approved! I suspect some of them might be duplicates, but they weren't listed on the nomination-coordinating spreadsheet and I have had years where I skipped nominations on the theory that "Fandom X always gets nominated anyway" and then had Fandom X not actually be nominated, so. There's also the issue of making sure the characters you want are available to request, which is sometimes irrelevant but other times matters a great deal; this year falls into the latter case for me.

Basically I made sure I could make my perennial The Lions of Al-Rassan prompt (will this be the year it finally gets filled???), my Karla-gets-a-happy-sex-life prompt, and a new idea for Darkangel fic that occurred to me recently and which I would love to read: namely, something about Syllva and Eryka and their relationship as sisters, travelers, and sometime-rulers of Isternes and various points west, because sisters are awesome and I want to know more about them as the heroes of their own stories rather than background figures in their children's stories. (That nomination took longest to approve, probably because Syllva and Eryka did not previously exist in AO3's tagging system.) I will doubtless make one or two other requests as well -- I am always up for fic about The Dispossessed, for example, or maybe Daredevil (616 version) if that makes it through, because I want someone to properly develop Milla Donovan beyond her love for Matt, dammit! -- but other people were already taking care of those fandoms so I didn't need to bother. :D

wherein Liz thinks about taxes (what else is new?)

One funny (for certain values of funny) thing about taking this tax course is that I get Official Instruction in how to handle stuff that's going to show up on my own return this year. Unemployment compensation? Yup. Tuition adjustments? Haven't hit that yet, but yup.

I already knew how to do interest and dividends and the stupid Capital Gains tax worksheet which I have to use every single year because ( some blather about Liz's personal financial history )

I had someone at Not the IRS do my taxes last year, but I am unsure whether I'll do them on company software again this year. If that gets taken out of a paycheck, which is what happens to receptionist types (I mean, it's pre-tax rather than post-tax, but even so), then I think I would rather do them at home in pencil and paper as I'd always previously done. I am quite sure I could have figured out unemployment and tuition stuff on my own if I'd wanted to last year. I just got lazy and decided not to download a twenty-zillion page PDF with the relevant instructions. But I think tax preparers get some discount certificates and stuff, and in any case I would be doing my own taxes rather than getting a coworker to do them for me, so perhaps this year doing my taxes through the company would be free. And in that case, you damn well bet I'll let the software do all the writing for me.