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Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas. I thought it was a great Christmas because we didn't have to spend hours in the car. We had a great zoom session with the kids and grandkids. Plus we had dusting of snow later in the day as we were watching the movie White Christmas! It was a very good a Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Ye on this Board!

Stay safe and enjoy each other...

I missed most of the week leading up to the holiday and our first tiny live tree in years, but did finally have a nice Christmas after all. The previous Friday evening I started with a high fever of 103.5+ that Tylenol wasn't touching. I was isolated and alone in a spare bedroom and bathroom the whole week and worried the whole time of what I had and what illness I'd exposed my mom and husband to. The exception to my quarantine was for a Covid test on Tuesday afternoon where my husband and I drove in separate cars. Christmas Eve I got the best prezzie, a negative test result! My husband got his negative result on Christmas morning. Glad everyone else here is doing so well.

It poured down rain, running through our garage but not flooding our basement. Washed away all the snow, though, and then turned bitter cold and icy. We had a nice Zoom church service Christmas Eve, and a few relatives from far and wide tuned in for a bit of it so got to see some faces, wave hello. FaceTimed with grandson/our "kids" yesterday. Still haven't heard from DIL when we can Messenger Live our granddaughters. They run an inn/restaurant in PA so were shut down by the governor and could only offer take-out for Christmas and New Year's. They aren't busy but are bored and depressed and broke. Plus son just had neck/back fusion and can't drive or work or pick up his daughters. One of their former employees has Covid; hasn't been an employee since last March, though. My ill/housebound sister in IL attended the National Cathedral's Zoom Blue Christmas service, so that tells you how she's doing. She hasn't been available yet for a phone call from us. All in all, hubby and I are having some relaxing holiday time with Stew Leonard's pick-up filet dinner with all the sides that's lasting us about three dinners and watching movies/Netflix/Prime and both of us getting some work done (he's teaching piano today via FaceTime, and I'm doing a few more hours of on-demand 2020 tax updates). We put up some decorations, received a photo book of our grandson's first year in the mail, a few presents. Hubby's director of music at our church, and I'm a frequent liturgical assistant and bell ringer, so Christmas is usually a frantic build-up. This year, Steve had all the music recorded ahead of time (including three bell-ringers with two bells in each hand) and I was reading the same Christmas readings and leading the prayers, but all sitting down at home with Steve (instead of him in the church balcony and me at the prayer desk) while he was the audio/visual guy pulling up the music and sharing his screen at the appropriate times. We got to have much more music than on recent Sundays, so that was festive. I miss hugging my grandchildren/seeing my grandchildren but overall the differences this year were positive: seeing relatives that are far away, less stress (especially since our "midnight" service was at 8 pm), self-quarantining with a husband I love, etc. Hope you all can have a Happy Holiday Season in a different way this year. After all, it's our pre-tax season, too!

Since today is December 24th, I will wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! Next week, I'll send wishes for 2021. We'll keep the two separate.

IR-2020-279, December 22, 2020 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today issued the 2021 optional standard mileage rates used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving purposes. Beginning on January 1, 2021, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be: 56 cents per mile driven for business use, down 1.5 cents from the rate for 2020, 16 cents per mile driven for medical, or moving purposes for qualified active duty members of the Armed Forces, down 1 cent from the rate for 2020, and 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations, the rate is set by statute and remains unchanged from 2020. The standard mileage rate for business use is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile. The rate for medical and moving purposes is based on the variable costs. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-rates-for-2021

And we get an extra 9% from state for a big night out on the town.

$300 x 12% = $36 in tax savings, which I'll take but it's just crumbs. $3,000 would be a lot more useful, obviously.