five days' worth of updates

* let me begin by saying: i canNOT be getting sick. this coming friday is the annual pysanky party, and i don't want to miss it because of cooties. i'm hoping all the sneezing i've been doing today, and that weird burn-y feeling in my nose and throat, are a result of allergies or all the salt dust in the dry air.

* i was offline for most of the past four days, which is why the blog went unattended.

* on friday, i went to my parents' place to do my taxes. i've done them there, myself, ever since i first started filing. every year, it's the same routine, the same calculator, the same pencils and the same eraser. i sit at the dining room table, surrounded by all my organized receipts and collated forms, and work out how much i owe or am owed. this year was my most profitable ever -- like, ever ever. even when i worked full-time, i never made as much as i did in 2012. fortunately for me, i came in juuuust under a tax-bracket limit -- had i earned just $600 more, i would have been bumped up a bracket and would have had to pay thousands of dollars more in taxes. as it was, i cut the government a hefty cheque. this year was also my most-complicated year, which is why my taxes took approximately nine thousand hours to complete.

* i stayed over at YB's on saturday. we had a great day: shopping in the morning; lunch and samples at whole foods; dessert and a plethora of fancy samples at mcewan; a 90-minute hike through the don valley; portuguese stir fry for dinner; and we capped off the day by watching Looper (emily blunt kicking ass!).

* sunday, trix and i went shopping in the morning but were pooped by noon. so, we headed to my parents' house where she napped and i made cookies (under mom's supervision). after dinner, YB headed home and i decided to stay over. watching All-Star Celebrity Apprentice has become a sunday-night routine for mom and me.

* today, i'd planned to work on a couple of stories i have due -- one is a small-business profile (due wednesday), the other is a james franco story (due next monday) -- but wound up doing neither because i spent almost the entire afternoon editing my colleague's sub-par work. it was incredibly frustrating, to say the least. so, i'll get to my stuff tomorrow. i hope.

* this morning, i picked up Magic Mike, The Perks of Being a Wildflower and 10 Years at the library. i'd planned to watch one tonight but, instead, will be watching this on PBS at 9pm.

* tomorrow, i have a bunch of errands to run -- pick up vegetables, mail tax return, buy subway tokens -- and then work to do. i'm back in the office on wednesday, and i'd like to be ahead of the game.