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Let’s be honest…there is very little exciting or interesting about tax season. And with Turbo Tax, the entire process has become rather mechanical, with none of the last-minute drama commonly reported on TV…at least not in our house.

But I did want to report on one curiosity that shows up deep within the California tax forms…an adjustment for income from “Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement Payments”. (The Ottoman Empire was a powerful state for over six hundred years until it dissolved in 1922.)

Unfortunately, Turbo Tax offers none of its usual helpful explanations on this line item (in spite of the deceiving “Explain This” link.) But how could I let this one go 🙂

A little Googling reveals lots of other bloggers noting this item…so shoot, I’m not blazing new comic territory here. But still…no good explanation.

According to a 2004 press release on the New York Life Insurance website, these payments were part of a class action suit settlement to “resolve more than 2,000 insurance policies issued to Armenians in the Turkish Ottoman Empire prior to 1915”. The total value of the settlement was $20 million.

Damn. I guess I don’t have to check THAT box on the tax form.

We decorated eggs this morning…a colorful Easter shout-out to all of our nieces and nephews. We invited Chris over for a champagne Easter brunch, for which I made one of the recipes from our Kitchen on Fire cooking class. I made a flavorful mushroom, asparagus, and three-cheese frittata…with fresh rosemary from our garden. (The frittata was my first…made possible by a new frittata pan…Jeff’s Easter present to me 🙂

Happy Easter, everyone.

Last Sunday, we visited the annual San Francisco Flower and Garden Show at the Cow Palace. I believe this was our fourth year in a row, but the inventive gardens never fail to inspire us with ideas for our own garden.

Last Saturday, Jeff and I participated in a unique volunteer event sponsored by my company. We call it Cooking for a Cause…basically a group cooking class where we prepared food for 40 and delivered it to a local shelter.

The event was held at a hip cooking school in Berkeley called Kitchen on Fire…a fantastic, interactive environment started by two inventive foodies, Olivier Said and Chef MikeC. KOF is in the heart of the famed Berkeley “Gourmet Ghetto”…two doors down from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse…THE epicenter of California cuisine.

During my trip to Northern Virginia a couple of weeks ago, I stayed at the McLean Hilton…an ordinary business hotel…nothing to write home about. Still, on this trip, the Hilton very much frustrated me.

On this trip, the air conditioning in my room wasn’t working properly, the high-speed Internet wasn’t functioning, and the two phones were inoperable. So, not only was my first night uncomfortable, but I could check email, and I couldn’t get a wake up call.

In the morning, I reported the problems to the front desk. I arrived back in my room around 10pm that night to find the room a bit cooler, but the phone and Internet still inoperable.

Same the next night.

Frustrating.