recall ever having to stop a budget meeting to ask one of the reporters to “please stop turning your ears inside out.” On the other hand, well, wow.
Overall, the first “charity tax-saving meeting” wasn’t all that different from the “real” newspaper meetings of my past. A couple of reporters flirted with each other and had no new ideas; another refused to share a byline on the new principal story; another admitted he hadn’t even started the interviews on a story due in two days; at least six showed up with no pencil or paper. Yes, it was very much like old times only everybody was shorter and better dressed.
Even though I wasn’t being paid, I enjoyed it immensely. The kid-reporters asked great questions. One was doing a story on the death of the school science lab’s ancient chinchilla. It was a real tear-jerker and she’d even gotten a picture.
“Is it OK that even though he’s technically dead, he’s alive in this picture?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Let’s remember him as he was, a big, fat, furry rodent that fathered more offspring than Mel Gibson.”
“Huh?”
“No dead animal pictures, sweetie.”
“Right, chief!” she said.
This was so much fun, I wanted to pay them for letting me do it! I was so ripping off the government with these “charitable” hours.
Next up was an earnest young man needing help with his new-teacher-profile questions.
I looked them over and had to laugh at No. 5: “Are you married? If not, why not?”
Probably the only real difference between the newsrooms was that, in this one, I was the only one drinking coffee. I resolved to do something about that the next week.
“Could I have decaf?” asked the smart Indian girl.
“Well, duh, that would kind of defeat the point, now wouldn’t it, Syri?”
“It’s Sneha.”
“Whatever.”
With charitable “work” to deduct, we just had to get busy on those additional eleven children. Gawd, where was K-Fed when you really needed him?
Look, I hate to belabor the point but the man is a baby-making machine. I envision dozens of female baristas finding themselves inexplicably pregnant mere moments after serving K-Fed his double-whammy-hotsie-totsie mocha latte with a shot of Boone’s Farm Strawberry to go. He’s like the superhero of impregnation. As women around the globe pat their tummies and smile gratefully toward the tiny corn-rowed wonder growing within, K-Fed has, like Steve Martin discovering sex in The Jerk, finally found his “special purpose.”
Age wasn’t on my side though. And it seemed that the IRS was changing its mind daily about the “true definition of a child.”
I define a child as the height-challenged person living in your home that eats all your Toaster Strudels, even the ones you hid behind the bag of chicken livers, and reprograms your phone to ring “SexyBack” while you’re not looking.
But no! The IRS definition of a child changed from code section to code section until there was so much complaining that, in an unprecedented showing of common sense, they decided to go with the Toaster Strudel definition after all.
With volunteer “charity” work under way and a “child” at home, I began to think that I could pull off this whole tax thing and maybe even get a refund.
Dreema Fay, my tech-savvy friend and Web designer, reminded me that I should be sure to document all the costs of maintaining my Web site.
Dreema Fay knows I don’t like talking about computer things. Technology alternately fascinates and repels me. It’s that familiar push-pull of emotions that you feel while watching a Discovery Channel show where the bunny rabbit becomes some snake’s McLunch or seeing photographs of Tori Spelling’s second wedding.
That said, I’m grateful beyond words for Al Gore’s Internet invention not only because it makes research for my “work” so easy but also because where else can you learn, via forwarded E-mail, if you boil a Western omelette in a
Overall, the first “charity tax-saving meeting” wasn’t all that different from the “real” newspaper meetings of my past. A couple of reporters flirted with each other and had no new ideas; another refused to share a byline on the new principal story; another admitted he hadn’t even started the interviews on a story due in two days; at least six showed up with no pencil or paper. Yes, it was very much like old times only everybody was shorter and better dressed.
Even though I wasn’t being paid, I enjoyed it immensely. The kid-reporters asked great questions. One was doing a story on the death of the school science lab’s ancient chinchilla. It was a real tear-jerker and she’d even gotten a picture.
“Is it OK that even though he’s technically dead, he’s alive in this picture?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Let’s remember him as he was, a big, fat, furry rodent that fathered more offspring than Mel Gibson.”
“Huh?”
“No dead animal pictures, sweetie.”
“Right, chief!” she said.
This was so much fun, I wanted to pay them for letting me do it! I was so ripping off the government with these “charitable” hours.
Next up was an earnest young man needing help with his new-teacher-profile questions.
I looked them over and had to laugh at No. 5: “Are you married? If not, why not?”
Probably the only real difference between the newsrooms was that, in this one, I was the only one drinking coffee. I resolved to do something about that the next week.
“Could I have decaf?” asked the smart Indian girl.
“Well, duh, that would kind of defeat the point, now wouldn’t it, Syri?”
“It’s Sneha.”
“Whatever.”
With charitable “work” to deduct, we just had to get busy on those additional eleven children. Gawd, where was K-Fed when you really needed him?
Look, I hate to belabor the point but the man is a baby-making machine. I envision dozens of female baristas finding themselves inexplicably pregnant mere moments after serving K-Fed his double-whammy-hotsie-totsie mocha latte with a shot of Boone’s Farm Strawberry to go. He’s like the superhero of impregnation. As women around the globe pat their tummies and smile gratefully toward the tiny corn-rowed wonder growing within, K-Fed has, like Steve Martin discovering sex in The Jerk, finally found his “special purpose.”
Age wasn’t on my side though. And it seemed that the IRS was changing its mind daily about the “true definition of a child.”
I define a child as the height-challenged person living in your home that eats all your Toaster Strudels, even the ones you hid behind the bag of chicken livers, and reprograms your phone to ring “SexyBack” while you’re not looking.
But no! The IRS definition of a child changed from code section to code section until there was so much complaining that, in an unprecedented showing of common sense, they decided to go with the Toaster Strudel definition after all.
With volunteer “charity” work under way and a “child” at home, I began to think that I could pull off this whole tax thing and maybe even get a refund.
Dreema Fay, my tech-savvy friend and Web designer, reminded me that I should be sure to document all the costs of maintaining my Web site.
Dreema Fay knows I don’t like talking about computer things. Technology alternately fascinates and repels me. It’s that familiar push-pull of emotions that you feel while watching a Discovery Channel show where the bunny rabbit becomes some snake’s McLunch or seeing photographs of Tori Spelling’s second wedding.
That said, I’m grateful beyond words for Al Gore’s Internet invention not only because it makes research for my “work” so easy but also because where else can you learn, via forwarded E-mail, if you boil a Western omelette in a
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