A Smile, A Groan, and A Surprise

     We invited our seven-year-old grandson Owen to come camping with us one night this week. Our tiny camping trailer can only accommodate one grandchild overnight since it has only one extra bed. That's not necessarily a bad thing either. This is true especially if it rains, which it did a lot one morning.

    So to keep the little guy entertained, we played an I Spy card game, watched the lightning flash through the windows and played a time-tested game my wife and I played with our kids when we took long road trips with them as youngsters: the ABC game. You're given a category and each player needs to come up with a word that fits the category beginning with A then continuing down the alphabet.

    The category was food. That's an easy one with the letters at the top of the alphabet. For example, A for apple, B for banana, C for cereal. But when the game goes past the letter “T”, it gets tougher. For the letter “U”, my wife volunteered “Uglifruit”, a citrus product from Jamaica, which didn't pass muster with Owen though we finally thought we convinced him it was legitimate. That is, until we came to the letter “Y” when Owen called out “Yucky fruit,” saying if Uglifruit was okay, so was Yucky fruit.👱

    A little while ago I finally got a response from the Michigan department of treasury to my state income tax problem that I've blogged about previously here. For weeks, the state of Michigan on-line tax assistance service claimed to have no knowledge of my amended tax return I filed at the beginning of May. I wanted to correct a mistake that resulted in my getting shorted $1,000 on my refund.

    But finally, Michigan's automated tax assistance service reported that they received my amended return. So the good news is that they DID receive it. Bad news is that they say it's going to take until November at the earliest to process it. Will I get interest on the additional $1,000 they owe me? I doubt it.😒

    I did get a pleasantly unexpected surprise this week too. My wife and I are regulars at our local Tim Horton's coffee shop. Hardly a day goes by when we don't stop by for our favorite light roast with cream and Sweet N Low sweetener. I always pay with a Tim Hortons gift card, my method of payment since when germaphobes said cash could carry the Covid virus during the pandemic.

    About a month ago, the drive-through clerks at Tim Horton's asked if I was missing a $50 Tim Horton's gift card that someone had ordered, paid for, but neglected to collect before he or she drove off. Not me. A week later, they asked again and I assured them that everything was accounted for and clear on my end. I thought that would be the end of the story.

    But this week when I wanted to re-charge my Tim card with another $50 they asked again if I'd paid for a card that I'd not received. Nobody had claimed it after a month. “Are you sure?” they asked. I said I was positive. It didn't matter this time. They gave me the $50 gift card anyway.😲

    Hey, maybe that means my luck is on the upswing. I could be on a roll here. Maybe the state of Michigan could give a break to a senior and deposit into my bank account the income tax refund I have  coming rather than wait another six months. So I just had my wife check our bank statement.

    Nope. Guess it's too much to expect our government to be compassionate and generous.