income taxes 2007

Due to the complex nature of my taxes this year (sell a house in Ithaca, buy a house in Fort Collins, spend part of the year in NY, part of it in CO), I decided a long time ago I would hire an accountant to do my income taxes for 2007. I chose an accountant yesterday and had an appointment this morning. I had most of the stuff together already, but last night had to find a few folders.

Much to my embarrassment, upon going through my folders, it turns out my W2 for CSU is misplaced.** Further, I did my taxes with software in 2006, and I never made printouts. Bleah.

On the plus side, I asked the accountant which papers I could pitch, and there's a tidy little pile to be shredded. Less paper! Woo hoo! I also already found my tax files on my external disk drive and converted them to PDF and sent them on.

** A few of you already know the story of my missing W2 a few years back. I had left my taxes until the last minute (April 15!), but was confident because I had all the papers in the 200x tax folder. When I started entering the data into the software, I couldn't find my W2. Anywhere. I had to call Cornell payroll and go out to East Hill Plaza by bus to pick up a duplicate.

Yes, I did file on time.

And a year or so later I found the W2. It must have slipped off the bench (or Shindy, agent of entropy, shoved it) and was wedged behind the baseboard heater in my entry. I didn't think to look there -- that was the one and only paper to end up in such a place.

packing materials

I've gotten wonderful boxes from the shipping room at the library; libraries receive a lot of books and other clean shipments. But now that I'm getting close to packing breakables like vases, dishes, glasses, I need packing material. Styrofoam peanuts are good, but when you unpack they stick to everything, often shedding little tiny pieces with a lot of static cling. Newspaper is fine if you want to wash the ink off of everything when you unpack. Bubble wrap has it's uses, but it's expensive ... and who would have tons of it around?

The professional movers use blank newsprint -- they have stacks of it and they wrap stuff in it, they crumple it up for padding. When I packed to come out here, a friend had a bunch of it, and then the movers used a lot more to finish the packing I didn't do. But I gave my giant stack of it away, and i've been dreading buying it.

Well, today I remembered to look for packing material in the shipping room. I asked the shipping dude, and we found a giant plastic bag (significantly larger than a 40 gallon leaf bag) of plain newsprint. Plus some boxes full of the stuff. It won't be enough, because it takes up a lot of space when it's already crumpled ... but it's a great start.

Excuse me while I go spray Shindy cat, who is chasing Delilah all over the place.

inspection results, and some stanford links

Dave-the-great-realtor called this morning and said the buyer's inspection only turned up two small problems, and they're not going to ask for anything. The title had a wrinkle that has been ironed out, so now it's only the appraisal.

Much to my surprise, I discovered yesterday that I'm already in the org chart at Stanford:

http://library.stanford.edu/depts/dlss/about/organization.htm

Notice the vacancies in my group and the DL applications group. I'm not sure if these are posted openings, but talented programmers pay attention to:

http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html

I find it easiest to do a keyword search on "library".

To find out more about what my new division is doing, click around. The overviews:

http://library.stanford.edu/depts/dlss/services/serresearch.htm
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/dlss/about/units.htm

whatever happened ...

to Baby Jane?

That's the title of a classic movie I started watching last night. It's excellent, and aged quite well IMHO. Bette Davis is delicious as a disturbed, wicked woman. Found myself pondering who she was outside of the theater -- was she sweet and mild mannered?

Apparently not. Wikipedia says she was often described as "feisty" and her daughter made some awful accusations in her memoir.

I am soooo glad I'm not a famous actor.

As if that's been a big worry for me.

the fun never stops!

Got this today from the CSU Libraries building proctor:

"Last night we had a patron throw a laptop over the Loan/Reserve Desk counter (it was caught mid-air!) and the same person is suspected of punching a hole in a wall on 2nd floor (NW corner). Somewhere along the way, the revolving door broke down."

I've also heard that there's a poltergeist in the CSU Libraries annex: the panic alarm has been going off every four days. Nobody is panicking until after the alarm goes off.

No, I haven't heard anything about the results of the house inspection or about the appraisal -- I wonder when that will happen. Dave-the-great-realtor says that it's probably good news we haven't heard about the inspection. He thinks if there were any significant issues the buyers would squawk sooner rather than later.

Packing is proceeding. Tic toc.

inspection

The buyers' inspection of my Fort Collins house is happening tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. I'm thrilled for this to happen, as it's a major hurdle for selling the house. But I have to get up early on a Saturday (no, I haven't been a morning person lately), make sure the house is showing-ready, and then make myself scarce for a few hours.

My realtor suggests I take Shindy cat with me, since the inspector is likely to be in and out of the house quite a bit. Wouldn't want Shindy to have an unsupervised outdoor adventure. Actually, he suggested I take both cats, but since Delilah will be hiding in the wall behind the shower, I'm not worried about her getting out.

If I didn't have Shindy, I would come in to work and do some reading. Maybe I'll go park somewhere.

Let's see: I have the mover scheduled; I have the plane tix for me, a friend, and the two cats. I have the car shipping in motion. I have the vet appointment for the cats. What's left? Oh, right: PACKING. Which I could be doing Saturday morning if I didn't have to vacate the house. Oh well.

You'd think I would be cleaning like mad tonight ... but I have plans. A friend is in a play, and we're going to dinner and then the theater.

under contract

Wow - I had an offer on my house yesterday. I counter-offered, and now my house is under contract. It had been on the market approximately 11 days (depends when you start counting). The offer is for a little less than what I paid for the house ... but if everything works out, it will resolve a huge worry. Not to mention free up my equity so I can pretend I might buy a lean-to in California. The closing date is March 21; if the contract falls through for some reason, I haven't missed much of the prime time for moving real estate. Woot woot!

Is my realtor great, or what?

Now, I did leave the listing open for backup offers, meaning I still should live in the furniture showroom in case someone wants to look. However, the likelihood of buyers coming through is vastly reduced.

a box a day

Packing this time isn't as daunting. Maybe it's because I already had to box up all my books, horn and piano music and games, since my realtor didn't want anything like that on any of my shelves. But of course, there's still plenty of packing left to do.

I've decided on a quota of one box a day until everything left is needed for day to day living or for the staging of the house. As always with boring or unpleasant tasks, it helps if I can multitask. With my stereo dissembled, I pack while watching DVDs whenever possible.

For practicing horn, I have to choose DVDs with English subtitles. I can watch, but not hear. Also, because I'm a little more detached, I can watch more intense movies than I normally am comfortable with.

For packing, I have to choose DVDs that don't require eyes on the screen at all times. Most TV shows lend themselves to this ... and there are no interspersed commercials on DVD. ER anyone? Battlestar Gallactica? Lost? Hill Street Blues? Firefly? Six Feet Under? (Should I be embarrassed about these choices?)

why must it be boring?

I'm not surprised to learn that a purple house has sub-optimal saleability. But why must the new paint job be white, with black trim? BORING. My house in Ithaca was painted thus when I bought it ... and it had cream siding. Bleah. My house here has a brick facade up to the windows. Bleah bleah bleah.

I've been fortunate because the guy who did my exterior paint job last spring is available and will be repainting the exterior as soon as the weather is cooperative ... which is likely to be this week.

Funny story about getting in touch with him. I had him in my cell phone's "contacts" but once the painting was done, I deleted his info -- I figured it would be such a long time before I needed an exterior paint job, there was no point. Well, I couldn't even remember his last name. I originally had hired him as an employee of another painting guy, but I knew he was going to set up his own business. I did a web search - no luck. Then I remembered that I had worked with Mike directly to paint the back door I had installed in late summer. I thought of looking through my duplicate check stubs ... but had I already packed them? Luckily, they weren't packed yet and I found his last name.

More web searching: no luck. Sigh.

Then I remembered I should have his number in my cell phone records. I hadn't packed those yet, either. Found the bill for the time period when I wrote the check. But I had to pour over that bill, looking for numbers that were in the correct week that had both incoming and outgoing calls. And then I had three or so candidate numbers. The first one I dialed was a friend of mine. The second was the landscaping guy. The third was a completely impersonal voicemail. My message ran something like "Hi. I'm looking for Mike. If this isn't Mike's number, you can ignor this message. If this is Mike, hi, it's Naomi and I would like to talk to you about painting my house."

He called back within the hour.

Fort Collins house

So I never got around to posting pix of my Colorado abode. Well, here's a "virtual tour" my realtor put together.

And yes, I'm using the same best-in-the-world fabulous realtor to sell. He's just an above-and-beyond kind of guy. He staged the house himself, helped me pack, helped me move stuff around ... he even vacuumed! He got at least 12+ realtors to walk through the house before it was on the market, and brought two people over before the sign was out front.

By the way, I now live in a furniture factory showroom. Living like an ultra-neatnik is ... different. I feel like I'm constantly vacuuming, doing laundry, dusting (!!), taking projects from cupboards and putting things back into cupboards to keep surfaces clear, taking out the trash. Golly, what a great adventure ...

my new apartment: photos, etc.

So as I said, my apartment is in a 5-plex. Mine is an end unit on the second (top) floor. My landlady is in the process of redoing the kitchen. New dishwasher, new sink, new disposal, new countertop (marble tiles), new floor (laminate replacing vinyl). Unfortunately, I think the pink tile backsplash is staying.

[For Mr. Rogers fans: Can you spot me in one of the kitchen pix?]
[I knew you could.]



View a larger version

View the floor plan

The apartment also comes with a carport, a storage area, a patio, and another dedicated parking space. I'll have to figure out where I'm going to park my bike - something in the carport or stairway.

Shindy will be able to chase Delilah around the loop: in one kitchen door, out the other, up the hallway behind the dining area, through the living room and back into the kitchen. Delilah will find hiding places, I am confident. Lots of nice windows for the cats to look out, and there should be interesting comings and goings in the trees.

I think I'll be happy t/here. The hardwood floors, the beautiful light, the sense of spaciousness. (I'm broke!)

Hope you come visit.

my first bay area digs - overview of location

Menlo Park, CA 94025

View Map

If you switch to satellite view, it's the building on the south west corner of Waverly and Linfield. My apartment is the top floor end unit on the right side, with a view of Linfield street, and runs the full length of that piece of the building. There are only 5 units total: one up and one down on each end, and a two story unit in the middle of the U. The extension to the west of the left side is the carport. Notice the big trees to the east and west of my apartment.

If you switch back to map view, look about 1.5 miles further south on the map and you'll see Stanford's campus: south of the Stanford shopping center (built on Stanford owned land) and south of the Stanford University Medical Center.

My office will be in Meyer Library (here is a map of all the libraries on campus, which is a better way to view Meyer in context of the campus), which houses student oriented computing (academic, student residential), a cataloging group and part of my group -- Digital Library Systems and Services. Oh, and the East Asia Library. Meyer is right next to Green Library - the main branch of Stanford U Libraries. The other part of the DLSS group is in offices at Page Mill Road - an outpost short bike ride away. (Once I had an address, I asked to be in Meyer, since it's significantly closer to my apartment.)

For those that don't know, University Ave is the pedestrian friendly main drag of Palo Alto: lots of chichi shops and good restaurants. My apartment is close to University ave, and also close to the Menlo Park Library. It's about a mile away from both the Menlo Park and the Palo Alto Caltrain stations. There's a creek that runs between Willow Road (Creek Drive, even) and Palo Alto avenue, with two bike only bridges. The intersection between Sand Hill Road and El Camino Real only allows bicycles to go straight across. So it's a bike friendly area. (Stanford has so many bikes that bike crashes happen frequently -- I'll be careful.)

As far as driving goes, it's about equidistant from 101 and from 280, and it's in line with the Dunbarton bridge across the bay to Fremont, where I already have a new pal.

Certainly a location I can live with for at least a year, while I get my bearings in the area and sort out my living location priorities.

California, here I come!

Surprise! I'm taking a job at Stanford University.

Sure surprised me. Sure surprised my bank account ... and those financial wonders keep on coming. Anyone want a great house in Fort Collins? Good location, spacious, lots of light, hardwood floors, unbelievably fabulous kitchen.

The backstory: I was collecting library programmer job descriptions to update the ones for my staff. They were obviously written by administrators and I surmise they have less than ideal appeal to a programmer. So in trolling for posted jobs on some email lists I belong to, I found a posting for a Stanford Libraries programming position. By the time I finished reading it, I thought "that sounds FUN!" I chewed on it for a bit, talked to my boss here, decided to apply. Turned out they had another position posted, and a third about to be posted. I applied for the other posted job as well, went out in October for an interview. Stanford has HUGE digital library efforts going on, with a great deal of cutting edge digital library programming required. For example, they are one of the original universities to sign up with Google for book scanning. They have no new space allocated for their on site stacks to grow -- they are that committed to digital access.

In the end, they posted a new position tailored to me. This got posted on Friday December 20, 2007: the Friday before Christmas vacation. I formally applied within 90 minutes. I had a verbal offer in mid-January. Then there was a long stretch negotiating a start date, a CSU end date and so on.

I just got back on Thursday from a trip to find housing. (Thank goodness for craigslist!) Luckily, I had already done some research before I got out there, so I was over sticker shock. My bank account isn't over it, but I suppose I am. My offer letter in the mail crossed my trip, but we managed to do all the paperwork.

End date at Colorado State: Friday, March 14, 2008. This allows me to avoid paying back my moving allowance from CSU.

Start date at Stanford: Monday March 24, 2008. While I was in town to house hunt, I essentially "worked" for a couple of days; they are eager for me to start. Me too.

I hope to post details about my new digs a little later today.

Do you hear that? It sounds like a toilet flushing -- must be money from my Fort Collins house being flushed away. The sticker price hasn't gone down ... but the closing costs, assorted money spent on landscaping, a new washer/dryer, etc. Ooomph.