And now what did you do TODAY?

[grawk]

I agree with what Dinny said, there.

I threw out an upright freezer full of food. It's out in our garage, which was over 100 for the last couple of days. Yesterday, someone didn't close it all the way after getting something out of it.

[Voltron]

I agree with what Dinny said, there.

I threw out an upright freezer full of food. It's out in our garage, which was over 100 for the last couple of days. Yesterday, someone didn't close it all the way after getting something out of it.

It wasn't the freezer's fault so I don't think you should have thrown it out.

[CarlSeibert]

Jazz scared the bejeebers out of me. We couldn't get her to eat or drink since her injury on Saturday. By this morning, she was not looking great. I got her in to an emergency appointment with our vet and spent the afternoon being a cat nurse. She seems on the mend now. Once she started to perk up it was clear that she was one scared little kitty. She seemed very grateful, which made three of us, and also impressed the heck out of me since gratitude is kind of an advanced concept for a cat. (And Jazz, frankly, isn't usually the sharpest knife in the drawer.) I was able to stay home with her almost until Bonnie got home from her work in West Palm.

[HeadphoneAddict]

Sounds like a good way for a company to get out of a financial hit by shifting it to its own employees. It's very generous of your wife, Larry, but a ridiculous policy. The Company should step up and do that itself.

Make sure you take an appropriate charitable deduction on your taxes.

I didnt know that it could be deducted. I guess in a sense it's earned wages even if not collected. There are 15 employees that lost their homes in the fires, and those without any vacation time available can take an unpaid leave without repercussions. But it's not a policy to give them extra PTO for their suffering. I suppose they could have pulled a "nudge nudge wink wink just call in sick instead" policy, but that didn't happen either. The employees also seem to have high enough standards to not lie about being sick either.

The whole community is pulling together to suport each other, and over 1 million pounds of food has been donated in just a week. We gave to Red Cross and to some local church relief funds, as well as food donations, but didnt feel it was enough. We also offered our house as a place for employees to stay if they needed somewhere to crash. As a community, the general public opinion is that the peeps who looted 24 homes that were evacuated should be strung up and shot. There's a lot of outrage over that.

[HeadphoneAddict]

Jazz scared the bejeebers out of me. We couldn't get her to eat or drink since her injury on Saturday. By this morning, she was not looking great. I got her in to an emergency appointment with our vet and spent the afternoon being a cat nurse. She seems on the mend now. Once she started to perk up it was clear that she was one scared little kitty. She seemed very grateful, which made three of us, and also impressed the heck out of me since gratitude is kind of an advanced concept for a cat. (And Jazz, frankly, isn't usually the sharpest knife in the drawer.) I was able to stay home with her almost until Bonnie got home from her work in West Palm.

Glad things are looking up. And you apparently didn't get infected either.

[jp11801]

Carl glad to see Bonnie and Jazz are doing better

[CarlSeibert]

strung up and shot.

One or the other should suffice.

Looters suck.

[Grahame]

Left Work Early. The Boss closed The Office early at 2 PM to allow everyone to get an early start on the 4th. Yay!

[morphsci]

Put this

In this

Vroom! Vroom!

[Augsburger]

We also donated 40 hours of my wife's "paid time off" to give to her co-workers who were rendered homeless by the Colorado Springs fires and need "vacation" time to get their affairs in order. I wasn't going to post this, but I thought others would like to know that something like this can be done if they are in a position to help others in need. I really didn't know this was possible until my wife brought it up to me today. I don't know if this is only a policy at her job, but had never heard of it before.

Sounds like a good way for a company to get out of a financial hit by shifting it to its own employees. It's very generous of your wife, Larry, but a ridiculous policy. The Company should step up and do that itself.

Make sure you take an appropriate charitable deduction on your taxes.

Mary does this all the time for employees at her hospital that find themselves in a difficult financial situation. Like the time one of her coworkers lost everything in the Malibu fire so the whole hospital donated a bunch of hours for this employee to try to salvage her personal items, find a new place to live and deal with the insurance adjuster. Then again she is in health care, and her hospital doesn't make any money, so giving and charity come with the job. Perhaps for profit businesses have the margins that hospitals don't and should fund these emergency programs.

Dinny, I am not sure that deducting a gift of ones personal vacation time is allowed by the rat bastards aka IRS. I recall years ago that I was told it was not unless you could come up with some convoluted valuation for the vacation hours and somehow tie it to a 501C3. or somethin'.....I could be wrong.

[HeadphoneAddict]

Mary does this all the time for employees at her hospital that find themselves in a difficult financial situation. Like the time one of her coworkers lost everything in the Malibu fire so the whole hospital donated a bunch of hours for this employee to try to salvage her personal items, find a new place to live and deal with the insurance adjuster. Then again she is in health care, and her hospital doesn't make any money, so giving and charity come with the job. Perhaps for profit businesses have the margins that hospitals don't and should fund these emergency programs.

Dinny, I am not sure that deducting a gift of ones personal vacation time is allowed by the rat bastards aka IRS. I recall years ago that I was told it was not unless you could come up with some convoluted valuation for the vacation hours and somehow tie it to a 501C3. or somethin'.....I could be wrong.

Yeah, my wife works at a hospital too, and many people pitched in to donate some of their paid time off. This one is a city owned hospital and doesn't have a lot of leeway to fund the program without a vote.

Now, if my wife left her job and they paid out all her vacation time in her final check, it would be income. And if the recipient collects the money it is their income. But right now I think it's only "potential income" and may not be deductible. I use H&R Block, so maybe we'll call them.

[edit - now that I think about it, this may be more like an "accounts receivable". When I would see a patient and they owed me money, it went into accounts receivable. If they couldn't pay me and I wrote it off the books I could not use it as a tax deduction because it wasn't really money that I owned and in my pocket. It was my time that I gave up, not my money.]

Edited July 4, 2012 by HeadphoneAddict

[jpelg]

I always thought that "write-offs" were effectively tax deductions by balancing against actual income. But then again, I am basing that on the Kramer School of Finance:

Regardless, a nice thing for your wife to do HA.

[grawk]

You can write off unpaid accounts if you've given up on collecting them:

Direct Write-Off

The Internal Revenue Service requires the direct write-off method for writing off accounts receivable. You can’t write the receivables off until you give up on collecting the debts. You can base your IRS write-offs on aging of accounts, which means counting how long they've been outstanding. If an account is more than six months old, the likelihood increases that you won't collect the debt without a collection agency or lawsuit. Use the allowance method for accounting for purposes other than income taxes, estimating a percentage of expected unpaid receivables based on earlier years' losses. Adjust the allowance estimate percentage and the balance each year as you gain more knowledge and historical figures for your business.

But yah, it was a nice thing to do, and I'm sure the recipient appreciated it. I can't imagine how much that'd suck.

[shellylh]

Played tennis (poorly) for the first time since surgery. My hip feels pretty good too.

[Voltron]

Good to hear, Shelly!

[Augsburger]

Keep up the good work Shelly!

[mikeymad]

I miss tennis...

[boomana]

Great news, Shelly!

i don't miss tennis and tennis doesn't miss me.

[shellylh]

Thanks for the support!

[grawk]

rearranged my room to make better use of the space, then went and grilled burgers and dogs with some friends. Capped the evening off watching the fireworks display in hanover pa. Was a good day.

[The Monkey]

After looking into it for about 30 seconds, it seems there's a revenue ruling out there somewhere that states PTO deductions are not deductible by the donor, but I guess there are also a lot of ways to set it up. Obviously, it is a kind thing for people to do for each other, but the cynic in me thinks it's a convenient way for corporations to shift the burden of the well-being of their employees to...other employees, all while dressing it up as a "benefit." Sort of reminds me of back in the day when my law firm listed subsidized blackberries as a "perk." Whatever. I just hate working for the Man.

Nice day today. Played some baseball with the Little Monkey. Celebrated my sister-in-law's birthday. Celebrated America's birthday. Watched fireworks. Sweated. Drank some beer.

[grawk]

yah, it's certainly a fucked up "perk". The company should step up for their employees in situations like this. That said, when they don't, it's cool that people step up for their coworkers. I know that should anything shitty happen to me, I'm fucked, work wise, because I'm an independent contractor.

[skullguise]

A lot of things rely on the generosity of friends and strangers....but it's nice to see the generosity happening.....

Me: just paid a plumber to replace my dead and leaking water heater. I should have checked the age, thought it was maybe 7-8 years old, but it was over 11! Time flies.......

Edited July 5, 2012 by skullguise

[Dusty Chalk]

Me, yesterday: had a wedge of cheese the prior day, so spent the first half of yesterday lying in bed with a stomach ache -- remind me never to eat an entire wedge of cheese in one day, ever again.

Spent the second half moping -- my fucking hard drive in my laptop crashed! (I think it had a delayed heat stroke from Monday -- it felt hot, but I had the A/C on, so I just assumed I was having a sinus infection something or something.) Fortunately, I still had the old one, and I managed to save my resume' and some java work that I was in the middle of. Still, very frustrating. Lost at least one FLAC file.

Today: Forgot my password on my old hard drive, so reset it, ran all the upgrades on the linux partition, installed Eclipse. Need to find me a local Bánh mì place. Or Shawarma.

EDIT: Man, I hate when that happens. I go to maps.google.com, focus on my immediately surrounding area, then enter "shawarma" or "banh mi", and it zooms out the map, and shoves my house in the lower left hand corner of the screen -- the closest of either of those inside the beltway. Chinese it is. I have found an excellent cheap Chinese place, and an excellent Pilin-priced [$10 to $15] Thai place. And of course, Subway.

The company should step up for their employees in situations like this. That said, when they don't, it's cool that people step up for their coworkers.

This. I had a diabetic friend who had an accident and didn't have the time off, and was going to take too long to heal, and people stepped up (especially people like me and my boss Jeff, who always 'lost' at the 'use or lose' point of the year anyway).

[skullguise]

^^ Next time mix that cheese with some bacon, and all will be well.....

Glad today is getting to be better than yesterday.