(Note: I am re-posting some of my Iraq-related posts from the old blog as a prelude to my some of my current thoughts about Iraq, which I will be posting here in the near future. The old posts are to provide some background on my thoughts about Iraq before the war and during the initial stages of the war.)

The following post is from January 28, 2003. I don't believe any introduction is necessary to this post, so let's get right to it.

Up until recently my opposition to attacking Iraq was based mainly on the one point that we have been shown no proof that Saddam Hussein has the weapons we've been told he has. We're being spoon-fed exactly what the administration wants us to believe, and most of us have been believing it. Until just recently, I had not confronted the idea that he may very possibly have those weapons, and how would I feel if I were shown conclusive proof that he had them?

This possibility really blurs the lines between what I previously saw as the right side and the wrong side. One characteristic of myself that I always take pride in, is that I am always able to see both sides of an issue, and understand why someone is taking the stance that you do. I may not agree with that stance, but I can understand why they are taking it and why they believe it is the right stance. With the situation on Iraq, I can completely understand both sides of the issue - I thoroughly understand why most of the pro-war people hold that position - but I, nonetheless, have taken a specific side of that issue decided that I believe it to be the right side in my mind.

When I view the issue from a new light - knowing (hypothetically) that Saddam Hussein has many evil, despicable, hellish weapons in his possession, and that he will use them against us (also hypothetically) - the moral difference between the "right" stance that I hold and the "wrong" stance that many others hold narrows to a miniscule size. A preemptive strike against Iraq has a very real chance of suceeding in preventing Saddam Hussein from launching some sort of attack against our people. I cannot deny that. If that's the only point I'm going to consider then it becomes quite clear that we should, nay, we must, attack Iraq.

However, the realities of life dictate that there can never be just one main point to an issue. Never. Iraq and its puported weapons are no exception. We must also consider the following points:
- The Middle East is a highly volatile region and there is a very high posibility of a preemptive strike on one of its nations igniting a spark in the entire region that will quickly turn into a hellish multi-nation conflict. Is that really what we want?
- The U.S. has a proven history of not caring about civilians on the other side of the war. We say we care about them, but our actions prove otherwise. We can safely assume - we have to assume - that any strike against Iraq, preemptive or not, will directly kill thousands, if not more, of Iraqi civilians. We also have to assume that hundreds of thousands more will be indirectly killed or maimed by our actions. That's a horrendous price to pay just to get rid of the possibility that Saddam Hussein will attack us.
- A preemptive strike against Iraq will send a message to every other nation in the world that if your ideas and policies tell you that you have sufficient reason to attack another nation, then by all means go ahead and do so. We will not have a proverbial leg to stand on if some other nation follows our move and we subsequently condemn then. This is a completely different can of worms we're talking about here.
- There are many other highly consequential possibilities that need to be considered, none of which I have time to elaborate on right now. The three above should give some inkling of what might happen if we preemptively strike Iraq.

If I did know positively that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had possession of weapons of mass destruction, I still could not, in good conscience, support a preemptive strike against Iraq. I can't, and I won't. And no, I am not going to apologize for that view. Call me what you will, but I hold to my beliefs.

The sun is shining, and Detroit Tigers baseball is back on the radio after a 149-day hiatus! First day of Spring Training games! It's a beautiful day!

You may be thinking to yourself that "Anemic Slime Stew" is a rather odd name for a title. You may be wondering what, if anything, it means. No need to wonder any longer.

Q: What does "Anemic Slime Stew" mean?
A: Absolutely nothing.

Q: Then why is it your blog title?
A: One thing that I am utterly deficient in is creativity in naming things. When I started the first version of this blog some years ago I wrestled with trying to find a title for way too long. I finally gave up on thinking of one myself, and turned to Microsoft Word to help me. I typed in three blocks of jumbled characters, then looked at Word's spell-check suggestions for fixing each block. A couple didn't have any spell-check suggestions at first; I modified each block of characters until I got some spell-check suggestions, then further changed each block a few more times until I got a decent spell-check word from each block that I thought would combine together into a usable blog title. The end result was "Anemic Slime Stew". I then decided to adopt "Anemic" as my moniker for this blog, since I didn't care to publish my real name.

So there you have it. The title, while rather odd, means absolutely nothing, and exists because of my lack of creativity.

My wife has allergies. Not your typical allergic-to-a-certain-few-things-at-certain-times-of-the-year allergies; it's more of the allergic-to-seemingly-everything-under-the-sun type. One example: when she was a child, a doctor told her mother that she was allergic to nighttime air. I'm not an expert on allergies, but I don't believe an allergy to nighttime air is very common. (Please correct me if you know otherwise!)

Her doctor has her on Zyrtec-D, a prescription allergy medication that includes a decongestant to help with nasal congestion caused by allergies. She's been taking it since mid-2006, at least - possibly longer, but that's as far back as our prescription records are available online. We've been with the same prescription insurance company (Caremark) the entire time she's been taking Zyrtec-D. Our prescription coverage copay for a month's supply of Zyrtec-D was $21.46 at a retail pharmacy. If you choose to utilize our insurance company's mail-order pharmacy then you can get a 3-month supply of your prescription for the cost of a 2-month supply at a retail pharmacy. So we were looking at paying roughly $172 for her Zyrtec-D for the entire year. Calculating the estimated costs for the year is fairly significant when it directly factors into how much you contribute to your Flexible Spending Account for the year, since you have to set your FSA election before the year starts and cannot change it once it is set.

We had been getting all of our prescriptions locally at a retail pharmacy. This year we decided to switch most of them to the mail-order pharmacy to save money. My wife's Zyrtec-D was one of the prescriptions that I tried to switch to mail-order in January. A little more than a week after I mailed in the prescriptions, we received an envelope in the mail from the mail-order pharmacy. I opened it to - surprise! - a letter informing me that Zyrtec was now an OTC drug and no longer available by prescription. There was also a coupon of some sort that I saved somewhere, not really expecting it to ever be useful.

My wife still had one or two refills left on her Zyrtec-D prescription at our local pharmacy, so at that point I just requested a refill from them, curious to see if it would go through. Somewhat surprisingly to me, the pharmacy did fill it and the insurance covered it at the usual rate. When I queried the pharmacist about Zyrtec switching to OTC, she informed that Zyrtec-D was indeed available OTC now, but said to continue trying to fill it via prescription in the future since our insurance wasn't fighting paying for it (yet). I didn't think much more about it until today.

I did a little bit of research today and discovered two key facts:
1) The manufacturer of the prescription version of Zyrtec-D has stopped producing it. Thus, the supply of prescription Zyrtec-D is limited and will likely be exhausted before too long.
2) The cost for the OTC version of Zyrtec-D is $19.99 for 24 pills. Each pill is a 12-hour pill, so 24 pills will last for just 12 days.

So we've suddenly gone from paying $21.46 for a 1-month supply to paying $19.99 for a 12-day supply. Factor in the mail-order pharmacy price that we had planned on getting, and it's a $14.31/30 days to $19.99/12 days difference. In other words, our yearly costs for Zyrtec-D just skyrocketed from the $172 that we had planned on up to $608. That's a significant jump, and it threw a huge monkey wrench into our FSA plans that were already in massive disarray from some other unexpected medical expenses early in the year.

This bothers me on two different levels. The first is all of the advertisements and news stories that talk about how consumers will save money because Zyrtec is switching to OTC. Just about every ad and news story that I have read about the switch likes to trumpet the fact that this is a big win for consumers because 1) they will save money on Zyrtec, and 2) Zyrtec will be easier to buy. Lost in all the hubbub is the fact that people with insurance that covered Zyrtec with a modest copay are probably not saving much money, and in many cases are actually losing money on the deal - sometimes substantial amounts. Ads/stories that tell me I'm going to save money really rub me the wrong way when in reality my costs more than tripled.

The other aspect that bothers me is that our insurance company did not notify us of this change until late January when we tried to order Zyrtec-D from their mail-order pharmacy. Were they obligated to inform us earlier? No, certainly not. But they knew about this change months in advance, and their records clearly reflect that my wife has been taking Zyrtec-D very consistently for more than a year and they've been paying for most of the cost. Couldn't they have informed us of this back in October or November? "Hey, we know you've been taking Zyrtec-D consistently for more than a year, and we thought you'd want to know that in a couple of months you'll only be able to get it OTC and we won't be covering the costs any more. We don't know what the OTC costs will be exactly, but it's safe to assume they will be higher than your current prescription copay. You might want to plan accordingly for the coming year." I still would have been very unhappy with the switch, but at least I would have been able to plan accordingly when figuring out our medical expenses for this year.

You could make the argument that as consumers we should have been more aware of the news about our prescriptions, and on some level you'd be right. As I said previously, I don't feel that our insurance company was obligated to warn us about this. I don't think it was necessarily their responsibility to give us advance warning, but as a company that likes to pride itself on customer satisfaction I would have thought they would have given advance warning to their customers that would be seeing a price increase once they stopped covering the prescription version.

I'm happy for all of the people that now have easier and supposedly cheaper access to regular Zyrtec. Really, I am. But no matter how hard I try I can't shake the feeling that we got royally screwed in this process.

I finally got around to replacing the snubber ring on our washing machine yesterday. It's a circular part made out of plastic, and it sits between the base of the washing machine and the entire tub assembly above it. I'm not positive of the exact purpose of this part, but I believe it servers as a buffer between the metal base of the machine and the metal part of the assembly that sits beneath the tub. Anyway, there's a raised lip around the edge of the snubber ring, and over time it tends to wear away. The reason this is a problem is because as that lip wears away, the entire tub assembly drops slightly closer to the base of the machine (the ring is a buffer - as the ring gets smaller the buffer subsequently diminishes in size). It's not a big drop - about 1/4" I think - but that small of a drop is enough to throw a monkey wrench into the way the balancing springs work. With the spring pressure decreased by that 1/4", the springs are no longer able to adequately balance the tub. This results in numerous problems with unbalanced loads, with the tub banging into the sides of the machine and trying to walk across the floor. It used to just be a problem with loads that were prone to being unbalanced from the start - blankets, heavy jackets, stuff like that. But it got worse over time, to the point where lately even relatively normal loads get unbalanced way too often.

I found some pretty decent instructions online for how to replace this part. It didn't sound too difficult, but it sounded like it could take awhile so I wanted to make sure I would have a full day to work on it before attempting it. I ran into some problems right away, because the first step is to remove the entire outer cabinet of the machine, and I discovered that two of the screws holding on the cabinet were very rusty and the heads stripped down to nothing almost immediately. Unable to take the cabinet off, I resorted to removing just the top of the machine, and lifting the entire tub assembly out of the washer from the top. It was a bit of a pain, but I managed it. I replaced the snubber ring, got the tub assembly back in the washer, and ran into a problem that I have yet to solve. Now that the tub is sitting higher where it belongs, the balancing springs have to be stretched even farther to reconnect them. The one in front - where I was able to get the front of the cabinet off - I can do because I can tilt the tub far enough towards me to decrease the distance that the spring has to be stretched. The other 5 springs are giving me fits, though. First, because the back and sides of the cabinet are still on I can't lean the tub towards those springs nearly as far as I can lean it towards the front spring. And second, I can't reach those springs well enough to both grip them firmly with pliers and also have enough leverage to stretch them far enough to connect them - again, because the walls of the cabinet are in the way.

I'm still trying to figure out how to solve this. I'm going to have to either get the cabinet off somehow, or figure out some way to stretch the springs and lock them into the greatly stretched position before putting them in the machine, then just connect them and release the lock once they're connected. The only way I can think of getting the cabinet off is to drill out the two stripped screws. Problem is I've never had any luck drilling out stripped screws - probably due, at least in part, to the fact that I don't really know what I'm doing. I like the idea of having the springs stretched and locked outside of the machine, but I can't figure out how to get them stretched far enough and then temporarily locked in that position.

I've been taking some pictures, and will post full instructions and pictures once I get everything put back together and working, in case anyone else doing this type of replacement in the future will find them helpful.

(Note: I am re-posting some of my Iraq-related posts from the old blog as a prelude to my some of my current thoughts about Iraq, which I will be posting here in the near future. The old posts are to provide some background on my thoughts about Iraq before the war and during the initial stages of the war.)

Almost two months went by before I mentioned Iraq again in one of my posts. I remember paying some attention to what was going on during that time, but I don't think I had fully involved myself in what was going on just yet. I think the time of this post was right around the time when I really started paying full attention. This post was just to comment about something that was said at a White House press conference, but my comments indicate that I was strongly leaning towards opposing the war at that time - somewhat significant considering the tone of my post two months ago. (Also, my cynical side comes through loud and clear in this post.)

"The White House said Thursday it possesses solid evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction...White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to say what evidence the administration has...'The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it,' Fleischer said." Read the full story here. (link no longer valid)

Actually, yes, the president and secretary of defense would "assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true" because they know that the American people are by and large ignorant, naive, stupid people who will believe anything their government tells them. Duh.

Maybe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction; maybe they don't. But I don't buy the bull**** the government keeps feeding us. If you have evidence, show us. Otherwise, keep your trap shut.

Oh, and by the way, if I understand all this correctly...Bush keeps accusing Iraq and Hussein of violating the U.N. resolutions. If I understand it right, Bush cannot go to war with Iraq unless the U.N. first passes another resolution authorizing it. If he goes to war without a new resolution then Bush is in violation of the U.N. resolution also. Correct? It won't stop him. I just found that semi-interesting for some reason.

Well, in the process of recreating my old site layout - which I liked and wanted to mostly re-use - I discovered that some of the things I want to do can't be done with a Blogger classic template. Some of the newer features only work with the new layout designs. So I guess I'm going to scrap this still-mostly-empty design and start over with a Blogger "layout". It'll probably look quite different at first, and will probably be changing a lot as I figure out what I'm doing. So please bear with me for a bit as things change!

(Note: I am re-posting some of my Iraq-related posts from the old blog as a prelude to my some of my current thoughts about Iraq, which I will be posting here in the near future. The old posts are to provide some background on my thoughts about Iraq before the war and during the initial stages of the war.)

This is the first post I ever made about Iraq. I posted this on 8 Oct 2002, two days before the United States House of Representatives passed resolution H.J.RES.114, "To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq." My attitude at the time of this post was that I understood both sides of the Iraq war argument, but I wasn't ready to personally take one side or the other. It didn't take very long for that to change.

So we've got this whole Iraq mess on our hands now. I personally don't know what to make of it. I'm on both sides of the argument, if that's possible. One thing I know for sure though - I'm glad I'm not in the shoes of someone who actually has decisions to make in this area. What an awesome responsibility. Not awesome-cool; awesome-heavy, huge, great, mind-boggling.

I understand to some extent the argument that Hussein is in possession of, or creating, these insane weapons. He's pretty screwed-up himself and I think there's a legitimate possibility of him using them against us. Because of that I can understand the logic that says we should take him out before he has a chance to do anything to us.

However, I also understand the other argument. I don't know if we have any proof that he has all these weapons. I haven't heard of or seen any. That's not to say that our government doesn't have the proof; but if they do they're not showing it to us. Well, if we don't have proof then essentially we'd be attacking another country because we don't like them and we think they might attack us. I don't want to even think about the can of worms that will open up. We'd no longer have a leg to stand on when we condemn other countries for attacking people. We'd be guilty of it ourselves.

There's also the issue of the humanitarian situation. If we follow through and attack Iraq it will throw the whole region into turmoil. Will we follow through and provide humanitarian aid to these people, or will we just stand by and let them be uprooted from their homes and die? We started helping out in Afghanistan after the war there. Here's what's happening now. (link no longer valid - was a link to an MSNBC article talking about the conditions in Afghanistan at the time)

I just don't know. I won't be surprised if I wake up some morning and find out that half the country of Iraq is gone. Everyone keeps throwing around these "plans" for how we're going to do this, and when it's going to happen. They're not stupid. You don't throw out plans for a war and then actually follow them. That's insane! Things are not going to go the way we're being told. Watch and see.

I've been in a funk, more or less, for quite some time now. At times it crosses the border into what I can only imagine is depression. I've never really felt like I was depressed for any length of time before, until recently. Occasional - sometimes frequent - moments where I'd feel quite sad, sure; but not depressed. Lately, though, I've been feeling quite depressed for days on end. I can't imagine what it must be like for people that have depression much more severely than I've been feeling, and who have it all the time. My own little version of it is bad enough, but at least I don't have it for weeks/months at a time, and it's not so bad that I can't motivate myself to still function relatively normally. Anyway, there are a multiple reasons for why I've been feeling this way. Most of them I am aware of; some I probably have yet to discover. More on that later perhaps - just wanted to mention it briefly now as a precursor to the following.

Before I wiped out this blog to start anew, I saved a complete backup of all of my old posts. Just a little while ago, while in one of the aforementioned blue moods, I decided to skim through some of my old posts. Why? Well, I was under the misguided impression that reading my posts from a time when I was posting regularly and had at least a handful of readers might help cheer me up a little bit.

If only it had. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. Reading some of my old posts depressed me even more, especially the ones that talked about my personal life. They were depressing posts, for the most part, and reading them now made them even more depressing as I realized that most of the problems I was struggling with in my life at that time are still very much present and alive in my life today. You'd think that in 4 or 5 years time I'd be able to do some self-improvement and resolve some of those issues. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. I really need to get my act together.

Edit: Iraq has been on my mind again quite a bit lately. I'm going to try to transfer some of my thoughts to the screen over the next couple of days and post them here. In the meantime, I will be reposting some of my posts about Iraq from the old blog, to form a background to the new posts that will be here in the next few days.

What should you expect from this blog? Nothing. That's the only way you won't be disappointed.

The original Slime Stew contained a lot of posts about the situation leading up to the Iraq War and my thoughts about everything that was going on, thoughts about issues I was experiencing in my life at that time, and random other stuff. Many of the posts were of a serious nature, talking about my thoughts on current events and so forth. (At least that's what I remember now - I might not be remembering everything correctly though.)

I don't know what I'm going to do with the reincarnated version of the Slime Stew just yet. I'd like to return it to its old self, with most of the posts being about more than just "this is what's going on in my life today." That stuff can get boring pretty quickly, if you ask me. I'm not going to promise anything though. I don't even know if I'll stay interested in this long enough to post on a semi-regular basis, let alone create thoughtful, in-depth posts. I hope I will.

Spring training is here! Today was the reporting date for the Detroit Tigers' pitchers and catchers. Full squad reports on January 20, although many of them are already there.

Want to keep tabs on what's happening in Spring Training, but can't make it down to Florida to visit in person? These links will help:

MotownSports.com - Spring Training 2008 in photos and thoughts

Lakeland Flying Tigers Blog

Roger DeWitt's Flickr page

These past few weeks it has seemed like spring would never arrive, with all of the crazy winter weather we've been experiencing here in Michigan. Winter seemed to stretch out into the future indefinitely with no end in site. Knowing that the Tigers are now in Spring Training and seeing pictures of them working out in warm and sunny Florida is like a shot in the arm. In some crazy way, it's proof that spring will be here eventually. Winter no longer stretches out into the distance - the end is in sight!

Important dates:

First Spring Training game - February 26, an exhibition game against Florida Southern College.

First opportunity to watch the Tigers on TV - March 17 @ Cincinatti, on FSND

First opportunity to hear the Tigers on the radio - February 25 vs Mets on WXYT 1270 and some affiliates

Full Detroit Tigers TV/radio broadcast schedule

I woke up this morning to the clock radio; the morning guy was giving a quick rundown of the weather before playing the next song and he finished by saying, "Currently, the temperature is minus 17 degrees." I thought that surely I must have misheard. After all, I thought the overnight temperatures were supposed to hover right around the high temp for the previous day (1 degree) before starting to slowly climb to 12 degrees once daylight hit.

I went downstairs, immediately noticed how chilly it was inside, got the coffee started, and turned on the TV to The Weather Channel. They quickly dispelled any doubts I still had about the temperature outside. Air temperature of -17 degrees. Thankfully the winds had stopped, at least, so there was no lower windchill to worry about. Our poor furnace couldn't keep up with the arctic temperatures. We had it turned all the way up all night long, and the temperature on our main floor when I got up was around 65 degrees. I turned the oven on and opened the oven door for awhile to help get the place warmed up a little bit. Unorthodox, perhaps, but it certainly helped!

Almost two hours later as I was getting ready for work I checked the temperature again. -18 degrees! What?! It's going in the wrong direction!!!

The temperature did eventually start to slowly climb, but you couldn't really tell without a thermometer.

That was definitely the coldest temperature I remember ever experiencing. I've been in windchills that low before on occasion, but not actual air temperatures. Suffice it to say that I'm now more convinced than ever that Alaska is not a place I ever want to call home.

Everything you could possibly want to know about the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. Well, probably not everything...but enough to keep you busy reading for a few minutes, at least. :-)

On February 7, 2008, the House and the Senate agreed on a version of the economic stimulus bill, and the President has said he will sign it next week. The bill is H.R.5140, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.

The bill establishes "recovery rebates" for individuals, to be sent to people in advance via check. These so-called rebates are established as refundable tax credits. (A refundable tax credit is a credit that can result in you receiving money from the government that you never paid them. The Earned Income Credit is a refundable credit. A non-refundable tax credit can only reduce your tax liability to zero; in other words, it only affects money that you already paid/owe the government. The Child Tax Credit is a non-refundable credit.)

Eligible individuals receive a basic credit that is the greater of the following 2 amounts:
-Their net income tax liability for 2008, up to $600.
-$300, if the individual has at least $3,000 in earned income.
(amounts are doubled for joint returns)

If your adjusted gross income (AGI) is greater than $75,000 (double for joint filers), then the amount of your credit will be reduced by 5% of the amount of your income over the limit. So if you're a single filer making $80,000 your basic credit will be reduced by $250 (($80,000 - $75,000) * 0.05 = 250).

Individuals who are eligible for any amount of the basic credit are also eligible for the qualifying child credit. This is a $300 credit for each qualifying child. The definition of a qualifying child is the same as for the child tax credit. (Again, this is based on 2007 tax returns.)


The rebates are structured around a tax cut. Yes, a tax cut. This isn't stated anywhere in the actual text of bill, but it is stated in the following locations:
-A Fact Sheet from the White House

In 2008, taxes would be cut from 10 percent to zero percent on the first $6,000 dollars of taxable income for individual taxpayers and the first $12,000 of taxable income for couples.

-The Congressional Record for the House of Representatives, January 29, 2008

Quote from the Honorable Spencer Bachus

The tax element of this package has been called a rebate, but in essence, it's a tax cut, a tax cut for millions of low- and middle-income Americans, those who need it the most, those with a moderate income. link

Words from the Honorable Rahm Emanuel

I enthusiastically support the middle class of this country, and we are doing it in this bill. Thirty-seven million Americans who were left out of the 2001 and 2003 tax cut will get close to $28 billion of this tax cut. I enthusiastically support that type of economic prosperity. link

Words from the Honorable Ron Paul

Another disturbing feature of H.R. 5140 is that, instead of taking the fiscally responsible course and pairing the tax cuts with spending cuts, this bill simply adds to the national deficit. Madam Speaker, unless Congress acts soon to reign in its excessive spending the American people will face confiscatory tax rates or skyrocketing inflation. link

If I'm understanding all of this correctly, then here is what is happening:
-The government cuts a specific section of taxes for the current tax year.
-This means that many people will have a smaller tax liability when they file taxes next year (for the 2007 tax year).
-If you know that people are going to owe less money in taxes, what is the logical solution? Decrease the amount of money that you withhold from their paychecks, right? Wrong. Send them the extra money that they will be receiving in their tax refund next year. But wait! They haven't actually paid this money yet. Oh...hmm...well, we'll just keep taking the same amount out of their paychecks, and it'll all add up by the end of the year.

The checks are an advance on next year's refunds, and most, if not all of the money, will be deducted from taxpayers' refunds in 12 months' time. CNN article

If the amount of your rebate is greater than the decrease in your tax liability because of the temporary tax cut, you won't be required to repay that rebate.

The Joint Committee on Taxation

Taxpayers will reconcile the amount of the credit with the payment they receive in the following manner. They would complete a worksheet calculating the amount of the credit based on their 2008 tax return. They would then subtract from the credit the amount of the payment they received. For many taxpayers, these two amounts would be the same. If, however, the result is a positive number (because, for example, the taxpayer paid no tax in 2007 but is paying tax in 2008), the taxpayer may claim that amount as a credit against 2008 tax liability. If, however, the result is negative (because, for example, the taxpayer paid tax in 2007 but owes no tax for 2008), the taxpayer is not required to repay that amount to the Treasury. Otherwise, the checks have no effect on tax returns filed in 2009; the amount is not includible in gross income and it does not otherwise reduce the amount of withholding. link

These advance payments will be based on 2007 tax returns, and will start being sent out in May. If you file your return late, or file an extension, you'll probably receive your payment later than most people.

MarketWatch article

The rebates would be based on taxpayers' 2007 tax returns. Those who file extensions or file late would likely receive their checks later than regular filers, a U.S. Treasury spokesman said last week. The checks will be sent out automatically; taxpayers don't need to apply. link

Regarding the question of whether this is "free money", I guess that depends on the specifics of your individual situation. If your net tax liability for this year is less than the amount of the rebate that you receive, then I guess the difference between the two amounts would be free money, because you'll have received money that was never yours to begin with. But if your net tax liability is more than your rebate, then your rebate isn't free money - it's just an advance refund of money you'll be sending to the government for the rest of the year.

(To the best of my knowledge, all of the above information is correct. However, it's always possible that I'm misinterpreting something somewhere, so believe everything at your own risk!)

Update: I originally typed and posted this before the IRS had a decent Q&A page about these stimulus payments. They have since posted a FAQ page, and I would encourage you to check it out as well.

I take a couple of prescription medications for my narcolepsy, to enable me to be awake enough to drive, work, etc. The company that handles our prescription insurance coverage (Caremark) also has a mail-order pharmacy that they run, and they will fill prescriptions in 3-month supplies for the price of a 2-month supply. I decided to transfer my prescriptions from our local pharmacy to the Caremark pharmacy so I could get them at a lower cost.

Because my medications are considered controlled substances, they cannot be called into the pharmacy; they have to be written on a paper slip and then mailed to the pharmacy. I obtained the written prescriptions from my doctor's office, filled out the necessary forms for the Caremark pharmacy, and sent the prescriptions and order off to Caremark. After receiving the prescription slips from my doctor's office, I waited too long to send the order to Caremark. By the time I sent the order I was getting very close to running out of my existing supply. Caremark's website says that customers can expect to receive their order 10 to 14 days from the date Caremark receives the order. I sent the order via USPS Priority Mail on January 14, so they had to have received it on January 16.

Late in the afternoon of January 18, their website was still not showing my order in my account section. I called them to inquire about it. They were rather unhelpful, although they did offer to call my doctor's office to obtain the prescriptions over the phone - that effort quickly fizzled into thin air once they realized my medications are controlled substances. They had no answer to my question of why my order wasn't yet showing in their system if they had received it 2 days prior. Towards the end of the phone call I finally directly asked them, "How long does it take for an order to show up in your system once you receive it?" They answered that it sometimes takes a couple of days. Well that would have been nice to know 20 minutes ago when I first asked why my order wasn't showing up in your system!

When I filled out the prescription order form I selected the 2-day expedited shipping option, since I knew I would be running out of my current supply very quickly. I figured if 10 to 14 days was the normal delivery timeframe, then 2-day shipping would surely bring the timeframe down to 8 to 12 days, if not better. They eventually shipped my order on January 26 - 10 days after they received it. Since it was a weekend, the 2-day shipping actually resulted in a delivery date of January 29 - 13 days after they received my order. So much for trying to get the order quicker by paying extra for faster shipping.

Anyway, that brings me to the FedEx part of the story. The tracking page for the shipment showed that a signature would be required. It was scheduled to be delivered at my home on January 29. Unfortunately, nobody would be home to sign for the package. I would be at work, and my wife and son would both be at school. On the morning of the 28th, I noticed that the package was at a local Kentwood facility, just minutes away from where I work. I decided to call them and see if there was any way I could possibly just pick up my package from the FedEx facility. I wasn't really expecting this to be an option, but I was getting desperate and I decided it wouldn't hurt to at least ask.

I called their toll-free number, selected the appropriate options to get routed to a representative, and my call was answered after less than 1 minute on hold. (Pleasant surprise!) I briefly explained the situation regarding my package, that it required a signature for delivery, wasn't scheduled for delivery until the following day, but that it was waiting at a nearby facility.

"...so I was wondering if there's any way I could..."

The representative interrupted me with, "just pick up your package from the facility?"

"Well, yes!"

"I don't see why not. Let me check and see if the package is off the truck and available to be picked up."

Come to find out, the package wouldn't be available for pickup at all that day, but it would be the following day (the scheduled delivery date) if I wanted to pick it up then. I confirmed that I wanted to do that. She proceeded to put a note in the system instructing that the package was not to be put on a truck for delivery, but held at the facility for pickup. Then she asked for my phone number so they could contact me if there were any issues, confirmed the address of the local facility, and gave me their hours.

At this point I'm feeling very positive about FedEx. I was expecting my request to be denied. Instead, it was not only granted, but also anticipated, and processed in a prompt, smooth, friendly manner.

The following morning my cell phone rang as I was getting into my car to leave for work. It was an automated call from FedEx. "Is this [my name]?" "Yes." "You have a package waiting for you at [this facility]. You may pick it up anytime during normal business hours, which are 9am - 8pm. Please bring a government-issued picture ID with you."

Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that! That was a very helpful call! (Ok, so it wasn't all that helpful because I already knew all of that info, but I still thought it was a rather impressive feature. It would have been extremely helpful had I not already had all of the information about the shipment.)

I stopped by the FedEx facility later that afternoon to pick up my package. That also went very smoothly. The lady staffing the counter was very cheerful and friendly, and she retrieved my package within a minute or two.

This was quite a different experience then my previous FedEx experience with their SmartPost shipping option. This experience left me feeling very satisfied and impressed with FedEx' customer service and their willingness to allow customer's to intercept their packages at a FedEx facility. Huge kudos to FedEx for this one!

A few weeks ago, I ordered some replacement washing machine parts from RepairClinic.com. They are located in Canton, Michigan, only an hour or two away from our house. I didn't want to pay a lot for shipping, so I selected the FedEx Economy option, which listed "estimated 7 business days" for delivery time. I knew from past experience that this was a special shipping service that utilizes the USPS for the final delivery stages. Since we live so close to the shipping location, I figured it would take 2-3 days to reach us, at most. I assumed that the package would be picked up by FedEx within a day or two of the shipper having it ready.

SmartPost - the shipping service's actual name - has a tracking website, somewhat similar to FedEx's regular tracking website. Upon being notified by RepairClinic.com that my order had shipped, I checked the tracking information and saw that the only entry listed was "Carrier Notification Made". Several days went by, and this was still the only entry listed. I then assumed that due to the cost-savings nature of this shipping option, the tracking entries would be few and far between. Several more days went by - no package - no additional tracking entries. A couple of quick web searches yielded the information that SmartPost shipments could take up to 7 to 10 business days to arrive. I wasn't happy to read this, but I figured my package must have fallen into that lengthy time frame.

On the Saturday following the 9th business day since the package had supposedly shipped, I tried calling SmartPost customer service. No luck; they're closed on the weekend. Then I called RepairClinic.com to see if they had any way of checking if the package had ever actually left their facilities. The woman who answered my call was very helpful, and after putting me on hold for a couple of minutes to look into the matter she returned and, in a slightly perplexed voice, said, "It looks like your package was delivered to another customer."

I responded with a perplexed, drawn-out, "Ohhhhh-Kaaaayyyy???"

She proceed to inform me that she would send out a replacement shipment on Monday via FedEx Overnight, and gave me the replacement order number.

The replacement shipment was actually sent via FedEx Ground, but the results were the same because it arrived the following day, on Tuesday.

From reading more about SmartPost tracking online, it sounds like there are supposed to be additional tracking entries throughout the process, not just the initial "Carrier Notification Made" entry. I'm not sure what happened with the original shipment - if FedEx incorrectly routed it during their stage of the process, or if they handed it off to the USPS and they delivered it to the wrong address, or what the problem was.

At any rate, the experience left me with a rather poor opinion of FedEx Economy/SmartPost, and I will avoid this option in the future whenever possible.

RepairClinic.com was very helpful and I have no complaints with how they handled the situation. I only wish I had called them at least several days earlier, instead of waiting as long as I did!

The Detroit Tigers signed Curtis Granderson to a five-year extension yesterday.

I was thrilled to read this news. Granderson is a very talented young player and it's exciting to watch him play. His baseball skills have flaws, to be sure - his high strikeout rate being the most worrisome - but the things he does well on the field far outweigh the things that he struggles with.
He has an excellent work ethic, so I'm confident that he will continue to improve in those areas that need improvement. I'm looking forward to watching him play for the Tigers in the years ahead!

Welcome to the reincarnation of Anemic Slime Stew. I completely wiped out the old blog, including all of my ancient posts, so I can start over with a completely fresh site. I'll probably go back to the old template soon though, as I sort of still like it.

Time will tell if I can stay interested in this enough to post on a semi-regular basis. I hope I can.