April 15 came and went, but not without a few startled moments.

Tom, a good friend who has also been my accountant for as long as I can remember, had received my tax info towards the end of March. I prepared it in an excel spreadsheet. We hadn't talked since he received it, which I took as a positive. No questions, no problems!

Yesterday morning I called his office and talked with his wife.

I identified myself and inquired as to when and where we needed to be to pickup our tax return. I was told they were going to extend us until August. I told them I couldn't be extended. They said, "Oh sure, it isn't a big deal".

I refreshed their memory that I had completed an offer in compromise a year ago and one of the stipulations is that for five years I have to be timely in filing (meaning no extensions), another being no tax refund (so long economic stimulus).

"Oh!" The other end of the conversation exclaimed.

I told them to do what ever they had to do to make me on time. The last thing I need is a $1.3M tax lien reinstated! I told them they could let me file individually and do an EZ file and they could extend Krl and the S-corp.

Tom called and told me they would try to get the tax returns finished!

Later in the day he called asking me what king of program he needed to open the disc I had given him. Turns out the computer they had which had a floppy drive didn't have excel. In a mad thrash I e-mailed them with the spreadsheets off my thumb-drive. They got them, although they were read only. This was going to work!

About five in the evening I went to the trailer, picked up two pieces of information I thought he might ask for, and I told Krl let's go to Big Spring and we would be one hour closer. It worked pretty well. We arrived at Tom's office just before seven, spent about an hour there, signed and dated the tax returns (by the way we over paid your uncle $2200, I promise we won't do that next year).

Tom pulled another rabbit out of his bag of tricks! Thanks Tom!

On our two hour trip back to the compound we made a stop at Long John Silvers before we turned South at Big Spring.

My day had not been a good one but maybe it was turning the corner.

I had one driver who quit. Unannounced. (I'll bet he wished he had kept that DPS ticket he got so HE could pay it). I had brought in my buddy to help catch us up and he brought a trailer back with a tire problem. I don't think he caused the problem but he confessed he had run over a curb. Out of all the tires I have on hand, I had none, zero, in this particular size. Dang the luck. And finally, just before I reached Big Spring I received a call from Cowboy who I had flipped from seed to bales and told me he was in Garden City with no lights! Yuk!

I figured the safe thing for me to do was take my time driving from Big Spring back to the compound. With a full moon approaching, the deer have been "on the move". Sure enough we saw between six or eight deer grazing in the roadside.

Thankfully we did not make contact with any foreign object not our vehicle.

In another good note, Pepa put another driver on his truck that lost the driver earlier in the day.
So we survived another day.

356 modules to go. 176,002 bales process as of 7am. this morning!

On a funny note. Cowboys pulled out of the way, behind the old gin plant and went to sleep. This morning I was a little concerned that he had not stirred. He had some oral surgery last week and has forty-five stitches in the roof of his mouth. While he has bounced back, he hasn't been as resilient as he had hoped.

I walked to his truck and patted the side of the sleeper. Immediately the truck shook, and Cowboy came out of the bunk. "Are you O.K.?", I asked.

"Yeah, I fell out last night.", he said.

"Cowboy, it is Friday morning and they are ginning the last module", I told him.

"Dang, I was tired, wasn't I?", he said.

I told him I was just kidding, much to his relief, but he was embarrassed he had slept all night anyway!

Other news,

Rian did a half day back at work yesterday.

Have a day!

FATHER, click it up another notch.