Miscellaneous Updates

I was going to write a post about the cooking class I took yesterday, but then I found a leak in the garage last night. Aaah, the joys of home-ownership. I will get around to blogging about my cooking class, but I thought this might be a good opportunity (maybe I am turning into a Pollyanna after all) to update my faithful readers on miscellaneous things that have been going on in my household.

• I did finally get that refund all sorted out with the rental car company. That's the short story.
• Captain America had to return some pants he got as a Christmas gift, and the replacements have not yet arrived. This is not particularly exciting news to anyone at all, but I'm really looking forward to the arrival of his pants as right now he only has two pairs to wear to work, which means lots of laundry (in the garage where the light doesn't work and there's a leak).
• We were planning on replacing our windows, but that project may be put on hold while we figure out what to do about the roof situation.
• We have not gotten our $8,000 first-time homeowners refund yet. I filed this back in October by amending our 2008 return, and I called the IRS in December to find out where our refund was. The woman I spoke to said that it normally takes 16 weeks, so we should not have been expecting our refund until the middle of January. Well, in the middle of January, we received a letter from the IRS stating that we needed to provide them with various documents, mostly just confirming that we bought the house as our primary residence, blah, blah, blah. At the time, I thought the electronic amendment was a little too easy, but really, they couldn't have asked for all of this documentation when I was filing the amendment? Or when I spoke with them in December? I was hoping to receive the refund before I filed our 2009 taxes (which I'm planning on doing on Sunday).
• I found a leak in the garage. It's not big, and it's in a spot where the inspector told us it looked like there had been a leak, but it was fixed. Or not. I remember when we had our roof replaced in my mother's house. The roof men returned a couple of times before there were actually no leaks. Captain America is going to check if it's under warranty, and I presume handle the scheduling of people coming out to look at it and whatnot. What's odd is that we didn't notice a leak last week when we were having crazy storms. Or in the beginning of December when we were also having crazy storms.