We have a wonderful accountant who tells us exactly how much to pay and when to pay, and even sets up direct withdrawal so we don’t have to take the step of going to the state/federal website and actually doing the act of paying our taxes. This sounds like something you couldn’t mess up, but I did. So we’ve owed the state of New York some monies—that’s the plural of money, which I did not know until we started this business and still makes me laugh every time I read it; there’s something very Scrooge McDuck about the word I think?—since mid-March. I tried to pay it after I realized my mistake, spending multiple hours on hold with various agencies, and got hung up on a few times. You haven’t lived until you’ve made it from 40th in the queue to first, only to get transferred to a black hole and then the line goes dead. After this happened three times, I gave up and we decided we’d figure it out at a later date.
Earlier this week, we got a letter from New York State saying we owed them monies and also $120 in interest and fees, so we paid it and the great tax paying saga of 2022 was over. Running a small business is very exciting.
A Book
Good book. Read it in a day. Both small and expansive in all the right ways. Ties up satisfyingly and beautifully at the end. Might lose something without having first read The Glass Hotel, which features some of the same characters, but also probably not. Sea of Tranquility is a great name for a book and also a lunar landscape feature. Very much enjoy characters based on the author, like this one who has a writer of a book about a pandemic on a book tour during a pandemic.
All that said, I’d watch Station Eleven before I read this book.
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A Movie
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was recently in a position to spend a weekend indoors watching all five Jurassic Park movies. I’m sure it’s a little bit of nostalgia talking but the first one holds up remarkably well. There are some fun Easter eggs from the first three movies sprinkled in the new ones, which you might not notice unless you were really paying attention and/or watched all of them over the course of 72 hours.
Rough rating from best to worst: 1 [velociraptor-sized gap], 4, 2 [trex-sized gap], 5, 3.
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A Project
Daisy Alioto and Kyle Chayka raised $1.2 million for Dirt, a culture newsletter funded entirely by NFTs (and now, I guess, VC money). We had nothing to do with this but we are fans of new and creative business ideas for media, and big fans of Daisy and Kyle, so it’s getting a plug. Take that, cryptopocolypse.
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An Article
This comprehensive Peter Hessler piece chronicles the 20 years he spent teaching English in China. Quite a tale, and an inside look at how things have changed: slowly and rapidly and in fits and starts. Professors getting fired for ridiculous reasons: not just for America anymore.
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A Run
All of my runs look more or less like this these days. There are only so many directions one can go from one’s apartment, especially when there’s water on two sides and a largish hill in another direction. I have started doing what I call Pier Repeats in Brooklyn Bridge Park where I run the first pier, run the second pier, run the first pier again, run the third pier, then run the second pier, then run the first pier. I haven’t made it all the way through five piers yet. Don’t want to accomplish too much, too quickly. I did recently purchase a running hat with my name on it, so I have that going for me.
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What will Bill think of next? Find out in two weeks.