Yeeees…out of the blue. Odd coincidence.

Thank u for replying! You give me hope that it won’t be too hard. :)

A family member recommended target circle as a replacement for Amazon prime and I am researching it. It’s still a big company…but where I live there really isn’t TRULY local options (I.E. small businesses) for household goods and such. I figure target is a pretty good alternative and since we have a store pretty close, I can pickup stuff instead of getting so much extra shipping.

Keeping our Amazon prime until it’s 2025 expiration date. Spent today researching alternatives so I can placate my Amazon loving spouse. Fortunately coming armed with info and the promise that they’ll have a several month “get used to it” cooling down period, they took it pretty well. I also reminded them if they MUST get something from Amazon, they still do the free 2 day shipping if u spend over $35. But it’ll probably be easier than they think with all but the oddest of purchases.

Been wanting to get rid of it anyways and this was the nail in the coffin.

Yep, she was Wendy

According to the cdc website pretty much everywhere in the u.s. went up during 2020-2021 and things started coming down 2022-2023. In fact it looks like the average across the u.s. was pretty much back to “normal” by 2023. But what we see here is that while things declined again for TX in 2022, they still remain quite elevated above 2019 while the u.s. average went back to pre-pandemic average, which would tell me that something else is going on in TX unrelated to the pandemic.

Even better!

In the app search bar I was able to get the chatbot just by typing the question “how do I chat with customer service?” For future reference.

Hmmm…truly new tech that came out after I was 35…

VR …yeah pretty cool, my partner has one but I’m not a gamer and don’t generally go for anything gaming anyways. Use it more widely for non gaming uses tho and I’m on board. Self driving cars …cool, don’t have one, never been in one, but I’m all over learning/using that shit if it becomes mainstream AI… personally not a fan, mostly cuz I think it could be like nukes where it’s used for more bad than good, but I’ve messed my way around ChatGPT and it’s whatevs. Probably eventually very useful if we don’t murder ourselves first.

Personally, having gotten our first school PCs when I was in 7th grade (92’ -ish), I find that I tend to at least be curious and want to learn about new tech. So I wonder if the late genX, early millennials might break rule #3 just cuz we were forced to know more about computers to run them and thus don’t view tech as inherently scary. Then again, I’m always fucking around with stuff and my siblings (2 yrs older and younger) are always like “woah how u do dat?!?”…maybe im just a lazy oddball always looking for a way to shortcut my life with technology.

What goes around…apparently. My 57 year old co-worker does the same thing and it drives me batty.

Yes, direct file is guided with a checklist. However there are only certain situations where a taxpayer would qualify for direct file - there’s income limitations and only certain income types qualify (u would not be able to use it if u are self-employed or own rental properties for example). The IRS is planning to expand this but for now it’s limited tho the vast majority of taxpayers would qualify.

Anyone can use the free fillable forms but u either have to know what you’re doing or be comfortable reading irs form instructions if you have a more complex tax situation.