Sadly, I do not get as much back in taxes as I had hoped. I can't deduct the IRA (my tax guy looked at the wrong w-2 to see if I was eligible). Ah, well; I still get a refund and it's still a useful amount.

This does mean, however, that I really need to look into getting hired on somewhere or being truly self-employed. My income is too high for w-2 contracting to be a good financial move any more.

Today, a handyman came over in the morning and did something I've been meaning to do for years: put up cat shelves. I have lath-and-plaster walls that I have trouble making things stick on, and was too nervous about doing them myself; no big deal if the shelf fell, but I didn't want it to take the wall with it! Finally, I hired someone, and here they are!

( Cats on shelves )

At some point, I may take them down and spray-pain the brackets black. The silver doesn't quite go with the house, but it was the only color they had. And tacking some carpet on top of the shelves might be nice! Still, the hard part -- getting them into the wall, sturdy and level, is done, and he said it should be no problem to take them down and put them back up.

The handy man also re-caulked the bathtub, put up a coat rack and shelf into another part of the lath-and-plaster, and mounted my new tv in the basement (which is not lath-and-plaster, so I could have done it myself, but since he was there he might as well). It's really great to have gotten all of this done.

The next home project is to set up the tv (very exciting and strange!) and find sturdier grills to cover the cold air returns (they're currently wood, which I have stepped on, oops).