wherein Liz ticks off another step in her yearly tax prep requalification

Annnnnnd... my NY tax prep continuing education requirements are DONE! \o/

Hmm. I should probably try to get some of the Not the IRS internal company-required stuff out of the way this week. I mean, I actually get paid for that bunch of 90%-useless nonsense, unlike the federal and state requirements, and I may end up with time to kill on Wednesday and also Friday evening.

Or, you know, Saturday when I will be the only person at the rental company office during Cornell's Thanksgiving break and I fully expect to be bored out of my mind without a project of some sort. Might as well be tax stuff.

scheduling!

So, the Thanksgiving plan is as follows:

Tuesday morning I pack the car, tidy my apartment, deposit a check, and then drive down to New Jersey. Tuesday evening is for family dinner. Possibly I do laundry? Unless I decide to bring clean clothes with me, which is an option since I did my actual bi-weekly laundry chore yesterday.

Anyway, Wednesday is for socializing with my family, and possibly dropping in on Susan for a short visit. Details TBD. For dinner I think Mom's plan is that we eat out at a local Italian restaurant. (My hometown is lousy with Italian restaurants and pizzerias, which is par for the course in northern New Jersey. True fact: until I went away to college, I didn't realize that most Americans can't reel off two dozen Italian family names at the drop of a hat, nor that the majority of Christians in America are Protestants rather than Catholics.)

Thursday is Thanksgiving, obviously. Mom, Nick, and Aunt Cara will do the cooking. Dad and I will stay out of the way and possibly watch football, though we may get roped into making a salad and/or moving things in and out of various ovens and microwaves. Dad and Nick will carve the turkey. I will do the bulk of clean-up, and in the evening Dad will strip the turkey carcass for scrap meat and soup-makings. (My bargain with my family is that in return for being excused from cooking, I will clear everything off the table, rinse and scrape dishes, and package leftovers so everyone else can chit-chat at the table instead of getting up to do post-dinner work. This plays to our respective strengths and everyone is made happier thereby.)

Thursday is also when my Uncle Charles, Aunt Ji-lan, cousin Ben (but I think not my cousin Michael, who is sensibly staying in Toronto) drive down from Dartmouth, crash my parents' house for the Thanksgiving meal, retrieve their dog which my parents have been dogsitting for the past three weeks, and then drive down to DC in the evening. I think this is an absurdly ambitious plan, but whatever, they're all adults and it's not my problem. *wry*

Friday I pack up and drive back to Ithaca, after which it's back to my regular schedule.