#because a sandwich like THAT needs to be prepped and ordered in advance

[marinerainbow]

Since Shiny has worked as a waitress for years, in her teens, and in the burlesque club before she got to officially join the dancers, she knows diner lingo like the back of her hand. The first time she treated the boys out to dinner, Psycho and Stupid (and probably Greasy) looked at her like she just performed witchcraft.

[anyataylorjoys]

Someone asked me how I created the fade transition in this gifset which I’ll try to explain in the most comprehensive way that I can. If you've never done something like this before, I suggest reading through the full tutorial before attempting it so you know what you'll need to plan for.

To follow, you should have:

basic knowledge of how to make gifs in photoshop

some familiarity with the concept of how keyframes work

patience

Difficulty level: Moderate/advanced

Prep + overview

First and foremost, make the two gifs you'll be using. Both will need to have about the same amount of frames.

For ref the gif in my example is 540x540.

I recommend around 60-70 frames max total for a big gif, which can be pushing it if both are in color, then I would aim for 50-60. My gif has a total of 74 frames which I finessed using lossy and this will be explained in Part 4.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: when overlaying two or more gifs and when using key frames, you MUST set your frame delay to 0.03 fps for each gif, which can be changed to 0.05 fps or anything else that you want after converting the combined canvas back into frames. But both gifs have to be set to 0.03 before you convert them to timeline to avoid duplicated frames that don't match up, resulting in an unpleasantly choppy finish.

Part 1: Getting Started

Drag one of your gifs onto the other so they're both on the same canvas.

The gif that your canvas is fading FROM (Gif 1) should be on top of the gif it is fading INTO (Gif 2).

And here's a visual of the order in which your layers should appear by the end of this tutorial, so you know what you're working toward achieving:

Part 2: Creating the grid

Go to: View > Guides > New guide layout

I chose 5 columns and 5 rows to get the result of 25 squares.

The more rows and columns you choose, the more work you'll have to do, and the faster your squares will have to fade out so keep that in mind. I wouldn't recommend any more than 25 squares for this type of transition.

To save time, duplicate the line you've created 3 more times, or as many times as needed (key shortcut: CMD +J) and move each one to align with the guides both horizontally and vertically. You won't need to recreate the lines on the edges of the canvas, only the ones that will show.

After you complete this step, you will no longer need the guides so you can go back in and clear them.

Follow the same duplicating process for the squares with the rectangle tool using the lines you've created.

Align the squares inside the grid lines. The squares should not overlap the lines but fit precisely inside them.

This might take a few tries for each because although to the eye, the squares look all exactly the same size, you'll notice that if you try to use the same duplicated square for every single one without alterations, many of them will be a few pixels off and you'll have to transform the paths to fit.

To do this go to edit > transform path and hold down the command key with the control key as you move one edge to fill the space.

Once you're done, put all the squares in their separate group, which needs to be sandwiched between Gif 1 and Gif 2.

Right click Gif 1 and choose "create clipping mask" from the drop down to mask it to the squares group. This step is super important.

After this point, I also took the opacity of the line groups down to about 40% so the lines wouldn't be so bold. Doing this revealed some squares that needed fixing so even if you aren't going dim the lines, I recommend clicking off the visibility of the lines for a moment to make sure everything is covered properly.

Part 3A: Prep For Key framing

I wanted my squares to fade out in a random-like fashion and if you want the same effect, you will have to decide which squares you want to fade out first, or reversely, which parts of Gif 2 you want to be revealed first.

In order to see what's going on underneath, I made Gif 1 invisible and turned down the opacity of the squares group.

If you want text underneath to be revealed when the squares fade away, I would add that now, and place the text group above Gif 2, but under the squares group.

Make a mental note that where your text is placed and the order in which it will be revealed is also something you will have to plan for.

With the move tool, click on the first square you want to fade out. Every time you click on a square, it will reveal itself in your layers.

I chose A3 to be the first square to fade and I'm gonna move this one to the very top of all the other square layers.

So if I click on D2 next, that layer would need to be moved under the A3 layer and so on. You'll go back and forth between doing this and adding key frames to each one. As you go along, it's crucial that you put them in order from top to bottom and highly suggested that you rename the layers (numerically for example) which will make it easier to see where you've left off as your dragging the layers into place.

Part 3B: Adding the Keyframes

This is where we enter the gates of hell things become tedious.

Open up the squares group in the timeline panel so you can see all the clips.

Here is my example of the general pattern that's followed and its corresponding layers of what you want to achieve when you're finished:

So let’s try it!

Expand the control time magnification all the way to the right so you can see every frame per second.

As shown in Part 3A, select your first chosen square.

Where you place the time-indicator on the panel will indicate the placement of the keyframe. Click on the clock next to opacity to place your first keyframe.

Move the time-indicator over 3 frames and place the next key frame.

Things to consider before moving forward:

Where you place your very first keyframe will be detrimental. If you're using a lot of squares like I did, you may have to start the transition sooner than preferred.

If you're doing 25 squares, the key frames will have to be more condensed which means more overlapping because more frames are required to finish the transition, verses if you're only using a 9-squared grid. See Part 4 for more detailed examples of this.

The opacity will remain at 100% for every initial key frame, and the second one will be at 0%.

Instead of creating two keyframes like this and changing the opacities for every single clip, you can copy the keyframes and paste them onto the other clips by click-dragging your mouse over both of them and they'll both turn yellow. Then right click one of the keyframes and hit copy.

Now drop down to your next clip, move your time-indicator if necessary to the spot where the first keyframe will start and click the clock to create one. Then right click it and hit "paste".

Tip: When you have both keyframes selected, you can also move them side to side by click-dragging one of them while both are highlighted.

Your full repetitive process in steps will go as follows:

click on square of choice on the canvas

drag that square layer to the top under the last renamed

in timeline panel: drop down to next clip, move time-indicator tick to your chosen spot for the next keyframe

create new keyframe

right click new keyframe & paste copied keyframes

repeat until you've done this with every square in the group

Now you can change the opacity of your squares layer group back to 100% and turn on the visibility of Gif 1. Then hit play to see the magic happen.

PART 4: Finished examples

Example 1

the transition starts too soon Cause: initial keyframe was placed at frame 0

the squares fade away too quickly Cause: overlapping keyframes, seen below. (this may be the ideal way to go with more squares, but for only 9, it's too fast)

Example 2

more frame time for first gif

transition wraps up at a good point Cause: in this instance, the first keyframe was placed 9 frames in, and the keyframes are not overlapping. The sequential pair starts where the last pair ended, creating a slower fade of each square.

Part 5: Final Tips and Saving

You can dl my save action here which will convert everything back into frames, change the frame rate to 0.05 and open the export window so you can see the size of the gif immediately.

If it's over 10gb, one way to finesse this is by use of lossy. By definition, lossy “compresses by removing background data” and therefore quality can be lost when pushed too far. But for most gifs, I have not noticed a deterioration in quality at all when saving with lossy until you start getting into 15-20 or higher, then it will start eating away at your gif so keep it minimal.

If you've done this and your gif is losing a noticeable amount of quality and you still haven’t gotten it below 10mb, you will have no choice but to start deleting frames.

When it comes to transitions like this one, sometimes you can't spare a single frame and if this is the case, you will have to return to the timeline state in your history and condense the key frames to fade out quicker so you can shorten the gif. You should always save a history point before converting so you have a bookmark to go back to in case this happens.

That's pretty much it, free to shoot me an ask on here or on @jugheadjones with any questions.

[miracle-sham]

Die Like the Butterfly Shoot With Their Guns.

| {Jasonette July 2021, Week 2, Day 7: Guns} |

Chapter 1 of Sheltered by Darkness not yet Moths to the Flame.

| [Ao3 Link] | | [Masterlist Link] | | [Spotify Playlist Link] | | [Chapter 2] |

———

| Sometimes a family can be a gang comprised of eleven vigilantes, and their AI robot, fighting against the father of one of their own. |

| Or alternatively: after falling through the cracks, they do what they must to survive. And if that means committing crimes in order to bring down the Big Butterfly and all the other corrupt businesses in the city, then so be it. |

———

| Tonight's the night. Half of them will strike one of the Big Butterfly's warehouses that just so happens to contain some fancy new gun tech. Besides, it'll be in better hands with them than the Big Butterfly or his associates. Now all that matters, is that nothing goes wrong! |

| Word Count: 3,322. |

| Warnings/Tags: Cyberpunk/Criminal/Gang Au, Explicit Language/Swearing, Hacking, Breaking and Entering, Theft, Mentions of Bombs and Guns, Mentions of corrupt/shady businesses, Fluff, Gang/Team as family/family dynamics, Found Family. |

———

| A/N: It is Cyberpunk Au time! This is a twoshot, so have a looksy to see if you can find all the snippets of foreshadowing I've set! Also this is mostly Action/Fluff but beware of the warnings regardless. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! |

| Also side note, Don’t Like? Don’t Read. Also also, please do not criticise any of my writing. This was written for fun and receiving criticism, even in a compliment/criticism sandwich, is the exact opposite of fun. |

———

Rain patters against the concrete, sound mixing with the low hum and high buzz of electricity. The ground is slick with murky puddles that never seem to clean the pavement. Still just as filthy as before, permanently dyed with dried bloodstains, mud stains, electric scorch marks, and far worse. The air is heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke, ozone, and that ever underlying decay that clings to the city.

It's dark—dead of night—but the streets are awash with flickering neon lights. There are a few others haunting the street though most of them are sticking to the areas of light, avoiding the shadows.

Which is where Marinette, also known as the ruthless gang leader Fantôminou, is lurking.

Jason—Red Hood, her co-leader—snarls as he drops down onto the shadowed fire escape beside her. “We've got a rat. Someone's tipped off the big Butterfly and security has been increased around the perimeter. Most likely interior security increased too.”

Fantôminou flexes her glowing clawed gauntlets, “I suppose we should check in with our local pied piper, before we strike, hmm?”

There's a bzzt in her earpiece as the channel is hijacked by the familiar voice of their gang's hacker, Max aka Raijack. “I wouldn't worry about that if I were you, our pied piper has already been contacted. Whoever they were, they didn't reveal which location we were targeting, so it's just a general security increase.”

She hums. “Raijack, link us up with the rest of the strike force.”

“Got it, 'Minou.” He responds, and not a split second later, the earpiece makes another bzzt and there's the faint ping of the rest of the channel being alerted at someone joining.

“Look, I think you could totally pull off the—oh, who just joined the channel?” Adrien, Cheval Mallet, asks in surprise.

“Just me and our anthill tiger.” Red Hood announces, snorting at the glare Fantôminou sends him.

Silence echoes across the line before a scrabble of hushed but excited voices causes a ruckus.

Fantôminou sighs, “I know we're all excited to hit the big Butterfly hard by stealing some of their new fancy gun tech. But let's leave the yelling for when we inevitably set off the alarms!”

“Hey!” Raijack protests. “I'll have you know I have produced a new virus that has a ninety-eight per cent chance of not setting off any alarms!”

Red Hood rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, but you've still not worked out how to get your viruses to deactivate the bombs in the crates yet, huh?”

“I will one day, until then it's your job to stop the bombs from triggering the rest of the alarms!” Raijack counters with a huff.

Fantôminou sighs again, this time with an added sprinkling of are-you-kidding-me. “Red Hood, Raijack. I can and will kick your asses if you do not shut up so we can discuss final prep before we begin the pesticide protocol.”

Bumping shoulders with her, Red Hood snorts again. “I've got nothing against being beat up by someone as pretty and buff as you Minou, you know that!”

“Oh, I think we can all agree to wanting to get crushed by Minou's guns.” Cheval Mallet pipes up once more.

Fantôminou sighs very wearily. “Nevermind, are you all ready?”

Red Hood salutes at her, and despite his mouth being covered, it's easily telling that he's grinning cockily underneath. “I'm ready. My guns are ready, and I've got the bomb defusal kit at the ready.”

“I may be holding my horses but I'm saddled to giddy-up on the go!” Cheval Mallet cheerfully announces.

“This has to be one of your worst attempts at horse puns yet.” Raijack comments, “otherwise, I'm in position and ready to hack on your call, Minou.”

Red Hood exchanges a glance with Fantôminou as silence falls over the earpiece channel. “Hold up, where's Arsenal? Shouldn't he have checked in by now?”

Taking his hand gently, Fantôminou gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“He already did but because you two had your issues getting into position and avoiding the unexpected police patrol, Arsenal had to deal with another issue that popped up which would've threatened our plan,” Raijack informs, sounding nonplussed.

“Well, you don't sound concerned.” Fantôminou points out the obvious. “Has he got back up?”

There's the faint tapping of a keyboard through the earpiece channel before Raijack responds, “Chèvrapide is on her way to back him up, don't worry.”

“Then that's everyone accounted for. Let's rock and roll.” Red Hood orders, dropping from the fire escape and landing in the rain-slick alleyway with ease, conveniently right beside the hoverbike they had stashed here.

Fantôminou hops down after him, except she manages to flip and expertly land in the driver's seat. “I'm driving Jay, you're the one with the guns after all,” she all but states, putting one gauntleted hand up and flexing just to hammer in the point, “I'm close range only right now and you know it.”

Red Hood throws his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey! I'd never complain about getting to watch you drive this beauty of a hoverbike.”

Fantôminou snorts. “Just get on, pretty bird!”

“Well, if you say so, pretty kitty!” Red Hood teases back, vaulting onto the back of the bike behind her. He wraps an arm around her waist and rests the other hand on his sheathed-for-now gun.

She revs the engine of the hoverbike and steers out of the alleyway with practised ease. There's no directions on the hoverbike's holoscreen, but it's not like they need any—the directions to where they need to be outside the warehouse have already been memorised by each and every one of them.”

Down the left street, take the right at the T junction, pass under the flyover street, then take a further two lefts and then straight on until the block of office buildings forming a protective extra layer between the warehouse electric razor wire tipped fencing and the road. Easy.

“All networks in the office buildings have temporarily shut down. As far as the tech will be concerned, it'll look like the networks just decided to not work today.” Raijack announces through the earpiece channel, voice coming through slightly more robotic than usual.

“So no security cams?” Fantôminou checks cautiously, circling like a hawk around the small stretch of street between her and the office building she and Jason will be entering through. The rain has slowed to a drizzle but that doesn't make the circling in it any less mildly uncomfortable, at least inside it'll be dry.

There's the familiar clack of keys once more. “Not quite, they're a little harder to crack than entering in through the backdoor via someone's unprotected webcam in the office. Thank you, Shodan.” Raijack pauses, keys continuing to clack in the background. “Unfortunately, the Big Butterfly's got tech security smart enough to keep the security system on a closed network so I can't hop from webcam to computer to network to cams. However, they didn't account for Markov, suckers!”

Red Hood snorts. “Isn't Markov a little obvious for this kinda mission?”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you?” Raijack says, in a voice that very clearly conveys he didn't forget so much as purposefully neglected to mention, “I recently upgraded Markov, outfitting him with the currently most highly advanced cloaking system. Thanks to some help from Fantôminou's knowledge of cloaking and camouflage fashion.”

Red Hood leans his head onto Fantôminou's shoulder. “I'm hurt, you knew and didn't tell me? I want cloaking guns! Think of how much cooler I'd look with them!”

Fantôminou merely hums in an unamused response. “Raijack wanted it to be a surprise.”

He huffs. “I see who your favourite person in our gang is then!”

“You're right! It's me!” Cheval Mallet cheers, jumping into the conversation.

“Fucking 'ell!” Red Hood curses under his breath. “I thought you were gonna mute whilst getting in position.”

Cheval Mallet's laugh cuts in and out across the earpiece channel. “And when did I hay that!”

“Hacker voice, I'm in!” Raijack interrupts. “Looks like the security system was perfectly untouched by whatever minor error caused the main networks to crash, how lucky. Which is to say, looping is in process, and we now have free entry.”

“Got us a place to park yet, though?” Red Hood asks.

Raijack doesn't immediately respond, but the sound of the garage door connected to the office building opening, is answer enough. “I might.”

Fantôminou snorts. “Thanks, Raijack. Hood and I need to split here right, just until we get past the fencing right?”

“That's right.” Raijack responds, “good luck, and Markov and I will see you all on the other side.”

“Break a leg, or three!” Red Hood calls over the earpiece. “Preferably some else's though!”

Fantôminou pulls the hoverbike into the garage, keeping her gaze ahead. “If I could elbow you without fucking up my parking, I would.”

Red Hood cackles quietly in response, trying to at least keep to the stealth part of the mission plan.

In the blink of an eye, the hoverbike is securely parked. Perfectly hidden in plain sight but easily accessible for a quick and clean getaway should nothing go wrong. And well, if something were to go wrong, there's not going to be any hoverbike left for evidence. Though, that's not to say a small part of Fantôminou's brain doesn't anxiously hate how they're practically sitting on top of bombs ready to blow up at the slightest hint of things going wrong. However, they've been through enough strikes like this for the concern to be mostly easily ignored.

———

With the hoverbike parked, Fantôminou and Red Hood part ways.

Fantôminou heads up through the internal stairwell connected to the garage, whilst Red Hood takes one of the external doors leading to the office building next door.

The stairwell is like any other maintenance stairwell. Grey concrete walls, metal railings and steps. Even Fantôminou's light footsteps clang loudly against the ridged metal stairs. It's cold, just as cold as the garage was and barely warmer than it is outside in the rain. The air is stuffy but at least the respirator hidden beneath the bandana wrapped around her mouth makes it bearable to breathe. Other than the aforementioned clanging of steps, and her breathing, Fantôminou is alone with the ominous silence of a liminal space.

The stairs stretch on upwards for what seems far longer than it should, but eventually, Fantôminou reaches the final steps to the roof entrance door.

The door is unlocked, and so Fantôminou opens it as quietly as possible. She walks out into the rain once more and scrunches up her nose. A quick glance of the roof yields no immediate signs of danger or anything of note, so she continues to the edge of the roof.

Fantôminou rests one foot on the lip of the roof and flexes her gauntlets, lights switching off for stealth. Carefully, she turns around and crouches on the lip, gauntlets gripping the edge and toes of her boots braced against the wall. Bit by bit she descends, gauntlets making it more than easy to stay attached to the wall.

Two-thirds of the way down, Fantôminou climbs onto a window sill. The fence is only a metre below, with a further four-metre drop. No security drones in sight, yet—but no alarms have been triggered yet either.

A shadow drops down the building and over the fence on the other side of the compound. Not a second later is the double buzz of the earpiece signalling that someone is in position.

Fantôminou smirks beneath her face coverings, not one to be so quickly outdone she leaps forwards in a dive—spinning midair as she begins to plummet. Clearing the razor wire fence with room to spare.

She hits the ground in another diving roll, and immediately uses the momentum to throw herself up and run towards the nearest warehouse building. As soon as she reaches the wall, she double-taps her earpiece to send the double buzz signal to others.

A moment later comes the third double buzz, soon followed by the fourth and final signal.

“Markov is covering our air support.” Raijack's voice clips across the earpiece channel, “Fantôminou, you and Red Hood are on opposite ends of the same warehouse. I've unlocked the doors for you. You know the drill.”

“Thank you, Raijack. Entering now.” Fantôminou responds, she slinks over to the warehouse doors and cautiously pries open the now unlocked door.

Fantôminou heads straight for the terminal, and knows Red Hood is doing the same. Slipping Raijack's new and improved virus into one of the terminal's ports. Seconds pass.

“Interface secured,” Raijack informs.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Red Hood prowling over to her. She nods to him and taps into the terminal with her gauntlet.

Red Hood readies his bomb defusal kit as she instructs the internal warehouse drones into delivering the goods to them.

The drone, blinking yellow—a sure sign of Raijack's virus in effect—hovers over and drops a large black cased crate before them.

As soon as the claws of the drone release the crate, Red Hood is immediately on it, pulling it open and weeding out the bomb.

They wait with bated breath. Red Hood tinkers away. The earpiece channel is silent as the team focuses.

He hisses through his teeth, and Fantôminou tenses—ready to grab him and run, in the worst case—but he only packs the kit back away and sighs in relief.

He taps the earpiece thrice—signalling success.

Raijack and Cheval Mallet don't respond, so Fantôminou and Red Hood stuff their haul into Fantôminou's Miraculous, for ease of transport, and begin making their way towards the warehouse the other two were hitting.

By the time they reach the nearest warehouse doors, the earpiece triple buzzes. Success, again.

They pause only to exchange a nod between the two before continuing to meet up with Cheval Mallet and Raijack—no rendezvous needed this time so far.

It takes forty seconds to cross halfway to the other warehouse, where they meet the other two along with Markov in the middle.

Cheval Mallet waves a hand and the five of them skulk over to a small shed off the side of another warehouse. He raises his horseshoe weapon and calls out, “Bon Voyage!”

The portal forms and Markov flies through first. The remaining four exchange glances then bolt forwards, racing to see who can get through first.

The blue light blinds them all for a second, despite how used to the power they are.

“Mission success!” Fantôminou cheers breathlessly once the blue fades, throwing her hands up in celebration.

“WOOH!” Cheval Mallet yells, jumping up and punching the air.

Red Hood snorts, “but more importantly I so won!”

Raijack hums, “let's see what Markov has to say about that.”

Markov makes a series of boops and beeps, yellow LEDs flickering. “Red Hood is correct, he won the portal race.”

“YES!” Red Hood crows.

“Oh come on!” Raijack grumbles.

Footsteps and clapping approaches. “Well done,” Félix praises, “but perhaps leave the celebration until after you've all gotten into jammies.”

Cheval Mallet giggles, “Flicks, I can't believe you can somehow still sound pretentious whilst saying something as childish sounding as "jammies"!”

Félix raises an eyebrow, “you say this every time I call pyjamas that. Now come on, I've ordered pizza and Roy, Alix, Luka, Artemis, Kori, and Bizarro are already waiting for you lot, in the lounge, so we can get the party started.” He turns on his heel and walks out of the utility-changing room.

Markov, as the only one not needing to change, shows the tongue-sticking-out emoji on his LED screen and zooms after Félix.

Jason, Marinette, Adrien, and Max all start changing out of their gear as quickly as possible.

“Oh no!” Adrien gasps, half undressed, suddenly remembering something. “We forgot to take the motorbikes back!”

Marinette groans, “I knew I was forgetting something!"

Facepalming, Jason sighs. “We were all too caught up in everything going well for once.”

Max snorts. “Oh don't worry! I anticipated this, all it took was a little hacking into our hoverbikes and now they're on autopilot to one of our empty storage bases.”

“Oh. Well, that's good then.” Adrien says, looking a little embarrassed.

“Yeah… anyway come on, we don't want to keep your cousin and the others waiting any longer! They'll eat all the pizza!” Marinette exclaims.

They all finish changing into loungewear and pyjamas just as music starts to play from the lounge and so frantically, they all dash towards it, trying to shove each other out of the way and laughing playfully as they do so.

They've won a battle, they've successfully gotten in and out with a good haul of gun tech. No alarms tripped, nothing went wrong. Hoverbikes undamaged and on the route home. For once, everything went smoothly. And that, is cause for an evening of celebration.

Leaving the worries of the rat for tomorrow.

———

In a dark observatory with a closed butterfly window, a folder is tossed across a desk.

Papillon glances down at the folder with indifference. He rests his elbows on the expensive polished wood and steeples his fingers. “You said you had acquired information that you believe will interest me?”

The man in a black suit sitting opposite Papillon, smiles patiently. “My informant went through quite the lengths to acquire this. Why not take a look inside.”

Papillon purses his lips, “this better not be a waste of my precious time, Lex.”

Lex Luthor raises an eyebrow in amusement. “I assure you, Gabriel, you will find what is inside most interesting.”

There's a moment's pause as Gabriel waits. Nothing happens. He nods and then opens the folder. He spreads the papers inside in arc across the desk. In the middle of the papers, is the photo of a smiling teenage girl with bright blue eyes, and blue-dyed hair. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng?” He reads out, lips curling into a contemplative frown.

“Poor little girl,” Lex croons mockingly, “missing—presumed dead—after her parents' bakery was destroyed in an Akuma attack. Her name should be familiar to you though, won your one-day derby hat competition at her school.”

Gabriel's fingers still mid-steeple, and he moves one hand up to his chin in thought. “Ah yes, I remember that designer. The one with the feather derby whose design was stolen and copied. That signature embroidery was impressive work.” He recounts.

Lex grins, “yes, however most distressingly, it would seem this up and coming star of a designer has lost her glow.”

“How so?” Gabriel responds, furrowing his brows.

“Well you see, my informant has found… evidence, that our poor little designer here fell through the cracks into the shadows after the loss of her parents and bakery. It's rather obvious that the larvae have taken her as their own, some of their masks and clothes fit perfectly with what we know of her unique incorporation of her signature, as well as stitch work.” Lex explains, waving a hand towards the rest of the photographs and documents spread from the folder.

Gabriel frowns and eyes a few of the other papers with interest. “I see, that is most unfortunate.”

“But.” Lex cuts in before Gabriel can say anything more. “I'm well aware you're plenty familiar with fixing larvae with damaged wings and frayed wires. As such, a strange little cold case brimming with potential for your program, would do quite nicely for your collection, wouldn't you say?” Lex insinuates, rising from his seat as he continues, “rescue the poor larvae, craft it a chrysalis, and nurture the Pupa into something radiant. Not unlike what you did with the Macrothylacia Rubi, and your replacement wife.” With that, Lex smiles smugly down at Gabriel and then strides out of the observatory, not giving Gabriel a chance to respond.

And leaving Papillon to the folder and his musings.

———

| Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little fic! Comments, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated! |

| Behind the Names: Fantôminou is a portmanteau of Fantôme (Ghost/Phantom) and Minou (Kitty). And she's called that because I thought the Black Footed cat fit her, and they're nicknamed Anthill Tigers. They also have the highest successful hunting rate! |

| Raijack is a portmanteau of Raiju (lightning dragon) and jack plug (the connect-y bit on headphones into a phone for example) but is also a play on the word Hijack. |

| Cheval Mallet is an evil horse spirit that offers rides to weary travellers and kidnaps them. Yes, there is a reason behind this. It's covered in Chap 2 |

| Chèvrapide is a portmanteau of Chèvre (Goat) and Rapide (Fast). |

| Also feel free to send me any comments with any questions you have regarding this fic, I’ll be more than happy to answer! |

| @jasonette-july-event |

[athingthatwantsvirginia]

Really, Marcia?

PART THRTY-FIVE OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: mentions of parent death, mentions of anxiety, plentiful pop culture references, lack of dialogue because this is exposition and foreshadowing for the next chapter just hang in there with me friends

Word Count: 4.6K

Summary: Jess and Ella return to Stars Hollow once again during graduation season.

Dropping the bags again in the apartment above Luke’s almost made Ella want to laugh out loud. Maybe she shouldn’t have made such a big deal of leaving the diner to move to Philadelphia; she felt like she almost couldn’t escape Connecticut. The trip, this time, was planned in advance, however. Both Adam and Rory were graduating, and Jess’s new sister had been born only a week earlier. Much was to be done, many people to visit. It made Ella feel slightly overwhelmed, the prescribed familial nonsense. Going back to Stars Hollow was easier when she could just casually pop into Luke’s or her home, and then drive away in the Station Wagon with Jess in the passenger seat and Liz Phair on the radio whenever she felt compelled. But the graduation had a scheduled time, Rory’s graduation party had a scheduled time. There was no getting out of it.

For a moment, she had thought about staying back in her old room in the little blue house. She felt as though they were taking advantage of Luke staying over at his place as often as they did. But then it occurred to her that she had no real idea what her room looked like anymore. The few times she’d been over in recent years, she hadn’t even ventured past the threshold of the small hallway, her door the second on the right. She felt maybe it was better to leave the room the way it had been in her memory. She was not in the business of reopening old wounds for no reason other than curiosity.

There was also the issue of her father. Fiona had been cagey at best about Jake on the phone. Would he even show up to the graduation? Surely he would. Even Noah had traveled back home, for the first time in years, though without his fiancé. She was a nurse, and hadn’t been able to get away from the midnight shifts. He was a paralegal, though, and had been able to swing a Saturday afternoon graduation. But, still, there was a gnawing feeling in her stomach. A fear he would simply not show. He had been at her high school graduation, with his robotic hugs and teary eyes and the usual detached way about him. It hadn’t been warm and fuzzy, but he had been there for her. He had clapped as she crossed the stage. And, as far as Ella was concerned, Adam deserved more than she ever got from Jake. Adam called often, and seemed to get along rather well with Fiona, but remained flighty about their father. She could count on him changing the subject every time Jake was brought up.

“Hey! Eleanor,” Jess said, breaking her from her reverie.

She blinked harshly and jumped at the sound of his voice. Slowly, she turned her gaze away from the view of the window above Luke’s kitchen sink. Town square was decorated with florals, and the troubadour stood playing an upbeat, folksy tune on one of the corners. And, as she thought about her family, it had all struck her as a bit plastic. It seemed impossible for so much heartache to happen to her while living in a place like Stars Hollow, but it had. In spite of the sunshiney smiles and the constant offerings for help. Probably why she got along with Jess so well, who understood more than anyone she had ever met what it was to feel a pain she could truly recognize. Luke, too. She wondered at how many people milling down on the sidewalk were concealing all of their hurt for the sake of maintaining a positive, cheerful facade. The farther away the years took her from her upbringing, the more reasons she felt she was better off somewhere other than her hometown. She had never quite been able to polish her outward mold, could never keep it all under wraps. Instead, she ended up cursing out kids who tried to steal random shit from the diner or punishing herself through constant schoolwork and lack of sleep, all to keep her problems from making it from her mind to her mouth. And, most of the time, she had slipped up eventually. Once more, her father came to her mind. He hadn’t been able to wear a convincing mask, either.

“...yeah?” she asked, then looked down to realize the glass she had been filling with cold water from the tap was overflowing onto her hand.

Quickly, she shut off the sink and sipped carefully at the drink, until it was back down to a manageable level. She switched it to the other hand and shook off the wetness, though it hadn’t felt unwelcome after having just come in from the May heat. Jess smirked quizzically at her, from where he stood at the fridge. They were meant to have a late lunch and then go over to Liz’s house and meet the baby, Doula. Despite how much Luke was making fun of it, Ella couldn’t say she hated the name.

“Jeez, Stevens. Where’d you go?” Jess’s voice was lilted and smug as he pulled some leftover sandwiches from the fridge. Luke had instructed them to finish off whatever diner cast-offs they could find. It reminded Jess of his teen years, tense dinners with Luke at the small kitchen table, eating stale food which had been prepped but never actually ordered. And he felt an odd, surprising jolt of nostalgia. But his face didn’t show it.

She shook her head at herself, placing her glass down on the table and grabbing the cutlery as Jess put the leftovers out on the table buffet-style. It reminded her of the way he arranged a meal on her kitchen table the night they’d watched the prom scene of Carrie together, when he’d brought her a care package because she had a migraine and then refused to admit to it later. And, for the most fleeting of moments, she was in the past and they were the people they had once been. A fond smirk tugged at her lips as she sat down, plates and forks in hand.

“Nowhere,” she replied finally, her voice a sigh. Before Jess could ask anything further, she gave him a pointed glance as she piled some cold mashed potatoes onto her plate and continued. “You sure you’re okay going to Liz’s house today? We could always wait until tomorrow morning, then we could have an excuse to leave and go get ready for the graduation.”

He seemed to consider the idea of a moment as he took his first bite of meatloaf, then shook his head. “No. Let’s just rip the bandaid off.”

“That’s the spirit when you’re going to see a new baby,” she quipped.

“I can guarantee the baby will be easier to handle than Liz and TJ, no matter how much she cries,” Jess grumbled, looking down at his food.

Ella bit the inside of her cheek and leveled him with her eyes. Each time they returned to Stars Hollow, he seemed to get more anxious about it. At first, it was because the entire town had hated him as a teen. But it got much worse when Liz moved there. She thought it strange how much everyone seemed to discount how Jess felt about this, how much Luke complained about her. How much they expected Jess to get over what he was feeling and play dutiful son. It reminded her of the way she felt she needed to treat her own father after her mother died. Though the sexist bullshit about her being the ‘woman of the house’ had also played a part. She knew how Luke felt about family, how he would always show up for family regardless of circumstance. Maybe Jess was the same way, loyal to a fault. But maybe it was only for his chosen family. Maybe the rest of it was more because of all the outward pressure he faced.

She reached over and ran a hand through his hand, smoothing it out. For a moment, she thought of saying something, but decided it wasn’t the right time to start a conversation about Jess’s childhood, or the lingering effects he still wouldn’t acknowledge. Not right before seeing his mother. She was trying hard lately to be patient, despite the way his eyes became guarded at the mention of his new sister or his mother, or the increased frequency of his nightmares. It was getting worse before her eyes and she didn’t know why. But Jess was Jess. And he wasn’t going to see it until he was ready to. It almost physically pained her, the effort of swallowing down the words, but she bit her tongue nonetheless.

He offered her a lazy, lopsided smile in return.

.   .   .

His grip on her hand was tight as they made their way into Liz and TJ’s house, just as gaudy and eclectic as Ella remembered from the baby shower. She might��ve even found it charming if it weren’t for the screaming color of the decor. The place smelled of burnt toast and sour milk, and Ella was instantly glad she and Jess had chosen to eat beforehand, just in case Liz asked them to stay for dinner. The scent was overpowered only by the strong perfume Liz was wearing, which Ella couldn’t ignore as Liz pulled her in for a big hug of greeting.

“Come in, come in,” Liz said in her high, sing-song voice as she led them down the front hall and into the living room. “She’s just waking up from nap!”

The room was littered with toys, empty bottles, blankets, story books Doula wouldn’t be able to read for years. But it was sweet. Ella could see how much they’d been preparing, planning. For a second, she was relieved about it, but then the feeling mixed with a distasteful sadness. Jess had never specifically addressed his bedtime routine as a child, but Ella was fairly positive Liz had never read him Goodnight Moon. She gave his hand a final squeeze before disentangling their fingers and sitting down on the paisley patterned couch. Liz lifted Doula up from the bassinet in the corner by the rocking chair. Ella could barely see the baby beneath the patchwork quilt she was swaddled in. Doula fussed for a moment, and Liz smiled at the two of them apologetically.

“She needs a change. I’ll be right back!” she said, retreating back into the bedroom. “Make yourselves comfortable!”

“Okay. Thanks,” Ella replied cordially. She looked back at Jess as his mother exited the room. “You okay?”

He shrugged, his eyes surveying the clutter. “I guess so. It’s just weird still. All of this.”

Ella hummed, nodding.

“And I’m not really used to the whole baby thing yet. I’ve never even held one before,” Jess said, slightly sheepish and slightly curious. He crossed his arms over the Metallica logo on his worn t-shirt. He’d taken a half day working at Truncheon before they left for Connecticut, and was always happy to change into less professional attire after his shifts.

“I know, but it’ll be easy. Unless TJ pops out and sings that song the frog does in Looney Tunes. Then is the only instance when you’d be even slightly at risk of dropping her,” Ella assured him, leaning back into the overstuffed couch.

She’d gleaned from their conversation the night before that his inexperience with children was also not helping his nerves. The only time she’d ever recalled Jess interacting with kids for any real length of time was the one Thanksgiving she’d brought him to meet her family. But even then, she’d been surprised how easily he’d wowed Erin with his card tricks, and played along with her jokes. Not something she’d exactly expected from the boy who wore a battered leather jacket and a constant scowl and a scarred heart on his sleeve.

“Why do you always worry he’s gonna do that?” Jess asked, cracking a smile for the first time since they’d walked in.

“I told you! He sang it to me one time when I was working and he was hanging out at the diner. He was trying to figure out what song to serenade your mom with,” she explained, eyes wide and utterly serious. “I was just wiping down the counter, minding my own business, and he just appeared, like, right over my shoulder.”

Jess rolled his eyes at the story, remembering when Ella had first told him about it over one of their phone calls, back when they were hundreds of miles apart. “Well, it doesn’t seem like he’s here right now.”

“I didn’t think he was in the diner when it happened,” Ella countered, her voice jokingly grave.

Jess chuckled but didn’t have a chance to respond as Liz reentered the room. A large smile stood out on her face, the baby dressed in a soft punk onesie in her arms. Doula squirmed around a little and cooed, but didn’t seem altogether unhappy.

“Ready to meet your little sister, Jess?” Liz asked, coming over and preparing to put Doula in Jess’s arms before he even had a chance to answer.

“Guess so,” he muttered hastily, eyes widening.

“Just be careful with her head,” Ella offered, watching as Liz hovered over her son, placing her daughter’s head in the crook of his arm.

Jess was surprised at how naturally his other arm moved to cradle her. She felt so light, it was as though he was holding nothing at all. Her skin was slightly flushed from the warmth of the quilt she’d been napping in, and he could feel the heat against his arms and his chest, through his t-shirt. His heart fluttered around anxiously in his chest, and he couldn’t help the slight trembling in his hands, but he was pretty sure he had a good grip on her. Liz straightened up again, looking down at the two of them. Jess almost couldn’t take his eyes off the baby, embarrassed at how awestruck he was. Ella’s nieces were the youngest kids he had ever been in contact with. He had never met someone when they were only a week old before.

“Isn’t she something?” Liz said, hands on her hips. “She looked a lot like Danny Devito when she first came out, but I think she’s finally getting past that early ugly baby phase.”

Jess hummed in absent acknowledgement, but said nothing. Doula had thin wisps of blonde hair, and pudgy, rosy cheeks. Her fingers were curled into small fists, her legs scrunched up. He wondered vaguely if she was going to fall back asleep, since it seemed she couldn’t keep her eyes open for very long. She smelled like rash cream, but he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed at it.

“Yeah, she’s beautiful, Liz,” Ella answered, though her gaze went back and forth between the baby and Jess. She couldn’t think of a time when she’d seen his eyes so clear and full of wonder before. She’d been too young to hold a newborn when Adam arrived, but she remembered the feeling of holding Erin as a baby, in the hospital just hours after Julie had given birth to her. It was certainly a unique feeling, and she felt her heart swell at the thought of Jess getting to experience it.

Glancing back at the kitchen for a moment, Liz once again gained a frantic tone in her voice. But, after having known her for so long, Ella knew it wasn’t unusual. Liz was the kind of person who put her coffee cup on the top of her car while unlocking the door, and then drove away without remembering it, the mug shattering and coffee splattering on the road behind her.

“Damn, I was just makin’ a bottle when you guys got here. TJ usually does that stuff, but dinner got a little burned. He had to go get some Plan B takeout. Let me finish with the formula,” Liz said, making her way back towards the opening into the kitchen. “You guys okay with her for a second?”

“Yeah. Fine,” Jess answered, surprising Ella.

Just as Liz left again, Doula opened her eyes once more. But instead of letting them shut, she kept them open. She stared up at Jess, her large brown eyes meeting his and doing their best to focus on his face.

“She’s got a withering stare,” he murmured.

“Isn’t so hard, is it?” Ella shifted a little closer to him, leaning over his shoulder to see Doula. “You didn’t have to be nervous.”

“Yeah, maybe not,” Jess said quietly, a small smile on his face as he glanced over at Ella.

.   .   .

Back when she graduated high school, there had been rain. The day before, they’d had to move the ceremony preparation into the small auditorium. People were squished inside, standing up in the aisles once the seats ran out. Ella’s valedictorian speech had been a bit more than daunting with a bunch of irritated family and friends facing her, those who had traveled miles to Stars Hollow only to be packed into the smelly room like sardines. She supposed having graduation outside in the gazebo was better. The class size was small at Stars Hollow High, but it was best when everyone still had personal space. The one downside was the heat. Connecticut was not usually up near ninety degrees in late May, but a pocket of dry air was currently sitting atop the state, moving at a glacial pace.

Ella and Jess had sat sweating on some lawn chairs. While Julie and her husband Michael, who still lived in the same small house in New Britain, were on Ella’s other side, trying to get their girls to sit through the ceremony to moderate success. Annie’s wild curls were blowing in the scorching wind as she sat on her father’s lap, reading the small storybook she’d brought with her. Erin, on the other hand, just about to cross over into adolescence and middle school, had folded her arms sullenly over her chest and rolled her eyes at nearly every name called up to receive a diploma. Ella didn’t imagine she would’ve reacted much better at that age, being forced to sit out in the heat for hours only to watch Adam be handed a piece of paper. Noah had been on the far side of their row of seats, in his plain clothes, looking stoic as usual. He would be leaving just after the fanfare ended. He’d stayed at a motel the night before, with perhaps even less desire to stay in the little blue house than Ella had.

The valedictorian speeches were actually pretty good, but long. Adam would’ve been giving one if he hadn’t stopped trying in every one of his classes except for those involving science during his senior year. Ella respected the decision though. She had never found any application for calculus in adult life, no matter how hard she had worked at it in high school.

Fiona and Jake had shown up, together for some reason, ten minutes late. No seats were left near Ella, or anyone else in the family. Instead, they were relegated to the far back row. Her brows furrowed at their entrance, but they didn’t get close enough to Ella for her to say anything. Jess had brought her arm around her shoulder as she watched them pass her without so much as a look, and took to whispering jokes about their old principal in her ear. It didn’t work as well to distract her as he had hoped, but it had still earned him a laugh or two, which was far from nothing.

As they all stood around afterwards, under the shade of some trees behind the old gazebo, congratulating Adam, Ella couldn’t shake the thoughts of her parents from her mind. She wondered how different the day would be if her mother had lived. Would her parents still be together? Probably. Despite the problems they hid, the ones Ella had become more aware of the older she got, they did love each other. No matter how much her mother laid down and took Jake’s outbursts and his alcoholism, and no matter how much her father ignored Sophia’s distracted nature and inability to decide on anything in life, they loved each other. And, the thought struck her suddenly, that maybe everything would have been easier to swallow if they hadn’t loved each other so much. It would have been easier to accept how quickly everything fell apart, and how quickly her father had found someone new to fill the hole in his heart.

“You okay?” Jess asked, close to her ear as they lingered amongst the group, pictures having been taken and pleasantries having been exchanged.

“Just peachy,” she replied, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said, pressing a kiss to the crown on her head and giving her hand another squeeze. It hadn’t taken him long to gather how angry seeing her father again had made Ella. He wondered when the last time had been.

“I could do without the Brady Bunch performance,” she whispered back to him, gesturing to the members of her family as they continued with fabricated niceties.

“Really, Marcia? But you’re the oldest sister! That means you would’ve been prom queen!” Jess teased.

She rolled her eyes and snorted a laugh. “Whatever, Wally Logan.”

Approaching the two of them with narrowed eyes, Erin still had her arms crossed over her frilly dress. She had more than one bandaid on each knee, and she had already pulled the french braid out of her red hair. Speaking mostly to Ella, she sized Jess up.

“I remember him,” Erin said suspiciously.

A confused, bemused grin crossed Ella’s face. “Yeah. At Thanksgiving. You were like five. You remember that?”

“I have a really good memory,” Erin said, shrugging, confident and casual.

Ella chuckled at the flippant ten-year-old.

“Photographic, huh?” Jess asked, eyebrows raised.

“Pretty close,” Erin replied, then focused her eyes back on Ella. “Did you ever figure out his middle name?”

“Sure did,” Ella answered, smirk growing. “You wanna hear it?”

“Of course,” Erin said. “I know for a fact it’s not Santa Claus.”

Jess rolled his eyes.

Ella leaned down and whispered in Erin’s ear. Straightening up again, Ella watched Erin’s gaze roam over to Jess doubtfully.

“What kind of a name is Cosmo?” Erin asked.

“Listen, my mom’s into crystals and-” Jess began, but Michael called Erin over for something.

“Gotta go,” Erin said, and skipped off towards her father without another word.

“C’mon, Elle,” Jess groaned, a blush creeping up his neck and warming the tips of his ears.

She chuckled, nudging him with her shoulder. “Sorry, Cosmo.”

Before Jess was able to retort, Fiona and Jake approached them. Considering they were split up, the peculiarity of the two of them arriving together wasn’t lost on anyone, not that it would ever be mentioned. At a closer proximity, Ella was surprised to see how different Jake looked. His hair was greyer, he was skinnier, there were dark circles under his eyes. Whatever has been going on in Maryland didn’t seem to be conducive to health. She had to bite back her sigh at the sight of him. Fiona was more or less the same, though Ella had visited her more or less recently. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laid eyes on her father. The shadow of the man he had been when she was a child was almost completely gone. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest.

“Hey, kids,” Fiona said, giving Ella a quick hug.

“Oh, hi,” Ella chirped, surprised at her instant warmth.

She also hugged Jess, shocking everyone involved.

“So good to see you guys! How are things in Philly? Adam tells me you just got a new apartment?” Fiona asked, buzzing and bubbly. Her black hair was cropped close to her head. Ella remembered how she used to let apprentices at the beauty salon experiment on her locks during breaks.

“Yeah, we’ve been there about a month,” Ella said. “It’s only a few blocks over from school. I can walk there.”

“How nice,” Fiona smiled.

“It is,” Jess agreed.

Shifting uncomfortably from foot-to-foot, Jake finally interjected. “Hi, Ellie.”

“Hey, dad,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek.

“Young man,” Jake greeted Jess coldly, nodding.

Jess gave a curt nod and a thin-lipped smile in response.

There was a long pause before anyone spoke again, filled with distant, amiable chatter of other families and shrieks of congratulations. Out of the corner of her eye, Ella could see Adam was already off with his friends. Soon, they would be headed to dinner and Project Graduation. Part of Ella was glad Adam didn’t want a big day of family celebration. No one would’ve survived any extended period of false positivity.

“I see you’ve got tattoos now, Ellie,” Jake said, looking down at the tulip on her arm, exposed in her spaghetti strap dress. “Your mother would’ve called that sinful, you know.”

The corners of Ella’s lips tugged up into a resentful smile, the words dripping with venom as they left her mouth before she could stop them. “Well, it’s a good thing she’s dead then, isn’t it?”

Both Fiona and Jake’s jaws dropped and it seemed all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air around them. Ella’s stomach dropped and she brought her hand over her mouth just after she said it. Her hazel eyes grew to the size of saucers. Immediately, Jess took her by the shoulders and began leading her in the direction of the diner, blurting out excuses.

“Hey, nice to see you folks, but we have to get to Rory’s graduation party tonight and it’d be pretty rude if we were late so…” he trailed off, stopping once they were far enough away, leaving Fiona and Jake flabbergasted and speechless.

“Oh my god,” Ella muttered, chewing at her thumbnail for the first time in what felt like forever. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. I was gonna try to be nice if he came, because...at least he showed up, right? Fuck. Oh my god. Jess. Oh my god.”

“It’s okay, Daria. Just try to relax,” Jess breathed, steering her towards the diner as she instantly began melting down.

“I can’t relax, Jess! Don’t fucking tell me to relax! Did you hear that?! Did you hear what I just said?!” she muttered hastily. “Fuck me! Fuck! Every time I see him, my fucking mouth-”

“Hey, language!” Luke scolded her as they entered the diner, the bell jingling jovially above the door. There were only a few customers scattered around, the mid-afternoon lull.

“God, Luke, I thought age was supposed to negatively affect your hearing!” Ella snapped as Jess directed her to a stool and sat her down, hopping up on the seat next to her.

“Joe Pesci here is having a bad day,” Jess explained shortly as Luke shot Ella a bewildered stare.

“What happened?” Luke asked, arching a brow.

Ella heaved a great sigh and placed her head in her hands, elbows on the counter. “Bigmouth has struck again. And apparently she has even less of a filter now than she did in high school!”

“Right,” Luke said, increasingly confused.

Running a hand up and down over Ella’s back as she continued fuming, Jess gave Luke a dejected glance. “Green tea?”

A shadow of realization passed over Luke’s face. “Comin’ right up.”

[hellofashionist]

Tasty Food Recipes That You Can Cook Within Ten Mins

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24 healthful and portable mason jar food

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a southern classic, tacky grits don’t need to be a complete fat and calorie bomb. Cook dinner them in water rather than milk and leave out the butter. However keep the cheddar: the 2 tablespoons in keeping with serving here maintains the dish gooey and rich and affords almost 10 percent of your day by day calcium. Then upload eggs for staying electricity, chopped chives for their slightly oniony flavor, and garlic, which makes the whole lot flavor higher. 5. Hot quinoa cereal picture: marin mama chefs terrifi as it's miles, quinoa takes some time to prepare dinner. Even as a few humans have stated it can be nuked, that takes extra than 10 mins in most microwaves. But quinoa flakes, which can be similar to oats however are a complete protein, can be equipped in a flash. Cook them in your selected milk with dried berries, after which top away with nuts, nut butter, seeds, and fresh fruit.

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rather than top a salad with bagged croutons, whip up this tuscan version with toasted pita bread. There’s the usual right-alone-however-higher-together suspects predicted in something called “mediterranean”: tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, and olives. The olives are key since the fat in them assist your body absorb the vitamins inside the greens.

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leftover hen finds a new domestic in this short burrito. Blend it with avocado and cheese earlier than wrapping it up in a tortilla and cooking it. We’d take it one step in addition and upload a few peppers, onions, and perhaps a few vegetables to the filling. Bonus: make some immediately and freeze the extras for a fair quicker lunch subsequent time.

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15. Creamy buffalo fowl and black bean quesadillas if you usually reach for the wings on sport day, this is the lunch quesadilla for you. It’s spicy, creamy, and loaded with flavor. Black beans bump up the fiber and protein, and inexperienced onions upload a touch more zing. Experience loose to cut back on the bitter cream or use greek yogurt instead. 16. Tomato salad–crammed avocados image: taste of home

not only desirable for guacamole, moist desserts, and rich smoothies, avocados are designed to be filled! Dispose of the pit and fill the center with a mixture of tomato, feta, onion, and herbs for a filling meal that’s quite sufficient to serve at a brunch. After all, not every breakfast-meets-lunch recipe must take hours to put together.

17. Caprese quesadilla italian and mexican favorites crew up for a mashup that’s better than something blended with the aid of a dj. The how-to is quite apparent: fill a tortilla with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil; cook until the cheese is melted; and drizzle with balsamic glaze for a taste-packed final touch. 18. Herb and onion frittata at the same time as this recipe uses liquid eggs, you can alternative  complete eggs for the reason that ldl cholesterol and fats inside the real factor are not anything to worry approximately. Upload anything herbs — clean or dried — enchantment to you, due to the fact all of them have distinct flavors and fitness blessings. Like pizza and mashed potatoes, frittata tastes simply as properly bloodless as it does warm, so cross in advance and double the recipe and devour the alternative half of for breakfast tomorrow.

19. Turkey-provolone wrap with avocado mayo this isn’t just every other turkey sandwich. Smear mayo and coronary heart-wholesome avocado on a tortilla and roll it up with lettuce, provolone, and tomato. This recipe is gentle, creamy, and crunchy, but view it as a starting vicinity and play with other fillings. Dinner

20. Zucchini pasta with vegan cashew-basil pesto photograph: the fitchen the addition of cashews — a good source of bone-building phosphorus, strength-generating magnesium, and other minerals — makes pesto distinctly creamy. Make the sauce in a meals processor, spiralize zucchini (or use a vegetable peeler), and integrate the two. Then dig in! 21. Veggie fried rice image: pinch of yum fried rice is a dream for chefs pressed for time, and this model is not any exception. Leftover brown rice works high-quality for this, however in case you’re in a pinch, microwaveable rice stands in nicely. Peas, eggs, and corn get tossed with salty soy sauce and rice vinegar. Mix in any of your different preferred greens, too. You surely can’t cross wrong.

22. Highly spiced cilantro shrimp with honey-lime dipping sauce image: love grows wild because it chefs so quick, shrimp is the right protein for busy evenings. Season it with paprika, cumin, cayenne, and cinnamon (yes, cinnamon — it provides warmth) for max flavor, and sauté it in butter for just minutes. Toss with sparkling lime juice and a selfmade honey-lime dipping sauce that tempers the heat of the shrimp.

23. Oven-baked tostadas image: yellow bliss avenue crunchy oven-baked corn tortillas famous person in this meal. After they’re golden and crispy, pinnacle them with refried beans or any simple beans, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, cheese, and avocado. That is one recipe to have fun with and spot what mixtures you can create. 24. Broccoli and parmesan soup

with five ingredients and 10 minutes, dinner is prepared. Cooking the broccoli with a parmesan rind infuses cheesy flavor into every spoonful, and a hint of soy adds umami — that savory taste that you may’t pretty describe but taste pointers of (in a terrific manner). This pureed soup packs nutrients a, b-6, and c, plus phytochemicals that can fend off cancer. 25. Pan-roasted salmon with arugula and avocado salad

picture: serious eats a complete seafood dinner in 10 mins? Oh, sure. While the salmon sears on the stove, toss arugula with a lemon–olive oil french dressing, cubed avocado, and parmesan. Once the fish is achieved, plate it on pinnacle of the salad. Your coronary heart will thank you, for the reason that two servings of fatty fish weekly may additionally decrease the hazard of cardiovascular ailment. 26. Brief and smooth black beans and rice image: the perfect pantry

there’s a reason rice and beans is this kind of popular dish: it’s cheaper and clean. But it could additionally be uninteresting. Not so with this flavorful take. Conventional latin flavorings like sofrito, cumin, and chili powder are introduced to cooked rice. Toss in inexperienced chile peppers for heat and black beans for protein and you've a complete meal right away. 27. Low-carb chili picture: i breathe i’m hungry whilst you want chili and you need it now, pull this recipe out. Using your preferred keep-sold salsa speeds matters up, and there’s no longer even any dicing or slicing worried. Use ground lean red meat or turkey, and pinnacle together with your favorite fixings like sour cream, corn, avocado, or clean-squeezed lime juice.

28. Bbq chook pizza neglect frozen pizza or delivery: this pie is ready even faster! Use a whole-wheat pita because the crust, and pinnacle it with fish fry sauce, red onion, mozzarella, and precooked hen — leftover or rotisserie from the store works nicely. Microwave until the cheese is flawlessly melted, and then go beforehand — consume everything! 29. Lean and green tofu stir-fry photograph: consuming fowl food

stir-fries are ideal when you need a healthful meal speedy. Plus, they’re an smooth manner to % in greens. This recipe consists of onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and a couple of cups of spinach in step with serving — that alone offers approximately a third of the daily advice of diet a, plus loads of vitamin k and some potassium, vitamins that are critical for the fitness of your eyes, bones, and coronary heart.

[arcticdementor]

When I saw him, he was outside Payne Whitney. Nothing about the tall, gray façade suggests it is the university gym, unless there is a new trend of contractors housing athletics departments in Gothic cathedrals. You wouldn’t guess by looking at the frosted glass panes and arches that the third floor hosts the world’s largest suspended indoor swimming pool. It is a work of art, like the rest of Yale’s buildings.

Marcus was smoking by a bench, his face jaundiced from three packs that day. This is atypical for Yale students—most abstain from smoking. There was no reason for him to smoke so much, just as there was no reason for me to ride around campus on a blue Razor scooter. But Yale students tend to have such quirks. His suit-jacket was dusty and smelled of sweat—he didn’t mind lifting weights in a dress shirt and trousers if that meant more time to read Nietzsche alone at the bar.

When I hugged him, he felt skeletal. I asked if he had eaten today. He assured me that his earthly requirements were limited—no need for anything other than alcohol and cigarettes. “I can buy you a sandwich.” He refused. I insisted. A nice one. Bacon and egg. Or steak and cheese. I was testy now. “GHeav is right there. I’ll be back in six minutes.”

He turned his face towards me, warm with friendliness—and with one sentence, he changed our relationship forever.

“You know I’m rich, right?”

“What?”

“You know I have a trust fund, right? I can buy my own sandwich if I wanted it.”

This is the moment when after three years of friendship, Marcus sat down and told me his life story. His cottages in Norway. Sneaking into the family study. Learning about the cost of hardwoods and hearing his boorish, critical father sulk in 5-star hotel rooms.

Marcus did not act this way out of anxiety, grief, stress, or because he had nobody to tell him his habits will kill him. He lived as a starving writer not out of necessity, but for the aesthetic. Out of some desire to imitate the Bohemian 19th century writers. Out of artistry. Style. Intentional choice.

…

This is a story about an institution and an elite that have lost themselves.

…

Over the past decade, elite colleges have been staging grounds for what Matthew Yglesias has termed the Great Awokening. Dozens of scandals have illustrated a stifling new ideological orthodoxy that is trickling down into the rest of society through HR departments, corporations, churches, foundations, and activist organizations. The nation is becoming polarized and its parts disconnected. The right is evil, and the left is stupid. Or is it the other way around?

The campus “free speech” debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about “diversity” and “inclusion.” The real problems run much deeper. The real problems start with Marcus and me, and the masks we wear for each other.

…

Based on statistics from the class of 2013, approximately 2% of students hailed from the lowest income quintile, while 69% came from the top 20%. How did those poor students fare after graduation? Around 2% of students at Yale move from the bottom to the top quintile. In other words, nearly all of them. You show up poor, and you leave rich. Going to an Ivy League school may be the fastest way to join the upper class.

But this low number of 2% surprised me because when I was at Yale, everybody kept talking about how broke they were.

…

Poor people—actually poor people—don’t talk this way. They tend to stay under the radar because they don’t know the rules of the game. But I bought it—at least when I was a freshman. If they were constantly announcing how broke they were, my assumption was that they must have even less money than I do.

This turned out to be wrong. The reality was that they were invariably from the upper-middle and upper classes. I know this because they eventually told me, like Marcus did. But there were tells. These students didn’t act the way my friends and I did growing up. They didn’t know how much pens or flights or cars were supposed to cost. They couldn’t tell when a restaurant was a good deal.

Pretending to be poor is a lot easier than pretending to be rich—just because there are so many different ways to be poor. But there are still small quirks you have to get right. Social class doesn’t just influence how you walk and talk; it influences how you interact with others. The stereotype is that poor people are improper—but sometimes it is the opposite. They try to do things as they think they are meant to be done. Spending a hundred hours building bat wings for a Halloween costume. Renting a limo for their child’s prom.

But lying about anything is tricky—you risk being found out—so what were these people trying to accomplish by acting broke? And this raises the broader question: why pretend to be of a social class you are not?

…

What about the regular rich? Not the children of billionaires, but the children of millionaires. The common impulse is to emulate the people one or two levels above you—so they might also act poorer than they are. But whereas the super-rich learned purposeful discretion from their parents at weekly dinner table meetings, the regular rich did not. They learned it through mimicry—and with varying degrees of success. The less sophisticated copycats end up brazenly proclaiming that they are “broke” and “upper-middle class.”

For some people, this isn’t an act; they actually believe this. After all, they do seem poor when compared to the hyper-rich. They can’t afford spontaneous Spring Break trips to private Bali islands. They see their prep-school classmates’ Facebook photos and realize that they are one, or maybe two, pegs down from that, and so they use the term “upper-middle class” without really knowing what this term refers to. They have no idea how the actual upper-middle class, the middle class, or the poor really live. Those students never went to their prep school, so for all intents and purposes, they do not exist. Like Krasnoyarsk, Siberia—we know it exists. We can find it on a map. But we don’t need to concern ourselves with it. Often, this is what the real poor are to rich people—they are a theoretical construct that exist somewhere else.

…

In another instance, I was privately discussing with a professor the pros and cons of a Food Stamp reform proposal. After some analysis, I commented on my own experience with the program. His response was complete shock. “You don’t really mean you were on welfare. You just mean you were supported by your parents, right?”

In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to convey the truth.

And this is how I ended up offering a sandwich to a man with hundreds of millions in a foreign bank account.

…

On the surface, there is nothing wrong with haphazard and sometimes warped class signaling. But if you put on a façade for long enough, you end up forgetting that it is a façade. The rich and powerful actually start believing that they are neither of those things. They actually start believing that there is not much difference in status and resources between themselves and the upper-middle class, the middle class—and eventually, between themselves and the actual poor. They forget that they have certain privileges and duties that others do not. They forget that the inside joke was just a joke all along.

…

When these kids grow up, they end up at conferences where everybody lifts their champagne glasses to speeches about how we all need to “tear down the Man!” How we need to usurp conventional power structures.

You hear about these events. They sound good. It’s important to think about how to improve the world. But when you look around at the men and women in their suits and dresses, with their happy, hopeful expressions, you notice that these are the exact same people with the power—they are the Man supposedly causing all those problems that they are giving feel-good speeches about. They are the kids from Harvard-Westlake who never realized they were themselves the elite. They are the people with power who fail to comprehend the meaning of that power. They are abdicating responsibility, and they don’t even know it.

…

There is another reason why people might pretend to be poor. This reason is much more serious than fitting in or avoiding hitmen. The rich and powerful are expected to take responsibility for things, and blamed when they go wrong.

“Check your privilege.” Just about every college student has heard this phrase since 2013. What it means is evasive. But like most memes that strike a chord with people—there is some point to it. The rich have privileges. They therefore also have responsibilities. The responsibilities are not always so fun.

…

Would you want to be the strongest man in the village right at the moment when you failed to use that strength properly and the village is dying and rivals are out for blood? Or would you rather be the average person, eating the normal amount of food, without being hated?

But that was just a thought experiment. Those are people in crises—in a hunter-gatherer village at war. We live in America. Certainly things are different during a stable, prosperous period, in a technologically advanced society. Would you want to be exceptional then?

Not necessarily. The elite are faced with certain hard burdens.

The elite are expected—by everyone else, and by each other—to use their power to make sure society works properly. That is, they are expected to rule benevolently. The reason they are expected to do this is that if they don’t, nobody else can or will. The middle class and the poor do not have the powers and privileges that the rich and elite do, and cannot afford the necessary personal risks. But without active correction towards health and order, society fails.

…

In times of political uncertainty, when things are not going well, elites face more scrutiny, and more internal pressure to find people to blame—whether rightly, or as scapegoats. It becomes a bigger liability to be openly elite.

Further, such times are themselves caused by political dysfunction among the elite, when elite institutions forget how to listen to reason (or have decided not to) and forget how to coordinate towards benevolent rule.

At elite conferences, they wonder how to regain trust, or otherwise deal with the rising atmosphere of populist discontent. They acknowledge that something is deeply wrong. But they dare not lay the blame at their own feet, caused by their own overreaches and dysfunction. Anyone who did would immediately be under suspicion. No longer one of us, but one of them. So, those who might otherwise lead the difficult but necessary elite self-critique instead keep their mouths shut, or they say the wrong thing without ideological, psychological, and social preparation for the consequences and get cast out. Only the true believers incapable of self-critique, the incompetent, and the cynics, remain as voices in the public forum. They talk in circles, never quite able to correct course and come to any new conclusions, except the need to double down on current ideological practices.

…

They say that the recent scandals at Yale had to do with racial and social justice. I don’t think that’s what it was really about. When looking at one or two scandals, it’s easy to buy the story that it is just students organizing and using their rights of free speech and assembly to protest what they see as injustices perpetrated by the university. But when looking at all of the scandals together, another narrative starts to emerge.

And that narrative is much closer to this: members of the ruling class are not sure what to do with themselves—and they are not even sure they want to rule.

…

When people think of universities, they think of their local state school, or else Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. And when they think about Yale, it is often when they are reading about a president, a Supreme Court justice, or the editor of The New Yorker. That’s because Yale graduates play no small part in running the world. It is the school the elite want to send their kids to. It is the school the lower classes assume their kids will never go to.

…

What happens when a school with this position is embarrassed about its role as an international trendsetter? What if instead of doing the hard work to set the tone for responsible rule, it abdicates that responsibility?

…

But the appearance of bottom-up protest politics is always a bit of a false narrative.  It would be one thing if the students were polled and a majority said they wanted the name changed, or some other process was used. At least the university could say that it was making decisions based on some objective democratic process, and wasn’t just being pushed around. But this is not what happened. No polls were taken. There was no authoritative process. The school said no for a few months, then caved. If the school were actually confident in its position to resist, it could have easily pushed back on the protests. Instead, it folded on demands from a small number of students willing to make noise. Either the university administrators are spectacularly spineless, or the protests just provided a convenient impetus and excuse to do something they already wanted. We can look at several more incidents and notice a similar trend.

…

What do all of these events have in common? Some had student support. Some did not. Some started as public outrage taken to the street. Some were completely internal. What they had in common was an administration and student body coordinated around an ideology that continually mutated to ensure moral entrepreneurship and a continued supply of purges, as new forms of human behavior or commonplace descriptors became off-limits. Some of this energy was genuine, some cynical.

These were not kids protesting the Vietnam war, or graduate students mobilizing for better pay and medical care. Nobody would have had a gun shoved into their arms and sent across the world if Yale had not fired the professors. Nobody would have lost money if they did not change “Master.” In fact—Yale lost money on these changes in the form of alumni donations and administrative time. Meetings, committees, redone paperwork, and brand new “head of college” plaques. These changes were neither meant to save lives, nor to save money.

But what was the point of it all?

…

Thousands of hours of human effort and labor. And for what? What was it for?

If you ask supporters, they will tell you the cost does not matter so much, because this is about creating an ideal world. Of course the professor should be fired—how dare she stand against the minority student organizations? Of course it’s okay that the Yelp reviews were published—she should never have written them. Of course names should be changed if they hint at or honor the wrong ideology. What does preserving history matter if history is racist? The university is handling things according to its proper ideals of empathy and inclusion.

In short, their point was that this was all to help poor people. Immigrants. People whose parents are from distant, impoverished lands. People of color. Changing “Master,” firing the dean, and firing professors was all for this.

Except this did so little to actually help any of these people that this could not possibly have been the main motivation.

None of this was actually to their benefit, except for the few activists willing to invest time and energy into the game. It is not easy to stay up-to-date with the new, ever-more complex rules about what you are allowed to say to qualify as the bare minimum of sociable and sane. It is cognitively and socially demanding. I had to not just study psychology and computer science, but I had to stay up-to-date with the latest PhD-level critical theory just to have conversations.

…

If words like “Master” are deemed offensive based on questionable linguistic or historical standards, then this means other words and phrases can become offensive at a moment’s notice. Under these rules, only people in the upper ranks who receive constant updates can learn what is acceptable. Everybody else will be left behind.

The people best positioned for this are professors at elite universities. They are ingrained in the culture that makes up these social rules. They get weekly or even daily updates, but even they cannot keep up.

…

A cynical observer might conclude that this is all just revolution as usual; a small clique of agitators seizing more and more power, and purging their enemies by virtue of their superior internal solidarity, a bold and demanding ideology, lukewarm popular moral support, and no real organized opposition. In some ways, that is what’s going on. They have the bold ideology, the ambient support, and no real opposition.

But importantly, they don’t have internal coordination by any means other than adherence to the ideology itself. Even members of the clique are never really safe. Anyone who contradicts the latest consensus version of the constantly mutating ideology, even if they have worked to its benefit or are otherwise obviously on side, gets purged. If you don’t keep up, you get purged.

It doesn’t matter that the ideology is abusive to its own constituents and allies, or that it doesn’t really even serve its formal beneficiaries. All that matters is this: for everyone who gets purged for a slight infraction, there are dozens who learn from this example never to stand up to the ideology, dozens who learn that they can attack with impunity if they use the ideology to do it, and dozens who are vaguely convinced by its rhetoric to be supportive of the next purge. So, on it goes.

This is the nature of coordination via ideology. If you’re organizing out of some common interest, you can have lively debates about what to do, how things work, who’s right and wrong, and even core aspects of your intellectual paradigm. But if your only standard for membership in your power coalition is detailed adherence to your ideology, as is increasingly true for membership in elite circles, then it becomes very hard to correct mistakes, or switch to a different paradigm.

And this helps explain much of the quagmire American elites are stuck in: being unable to speak outside of the current ideology, the only choice is to double down on a failing paradigm. These failures lead to lower elite morale, resulting in the class identity crisis which afflicts so many at Yale. Ironically, the result is an expression of that ideology which is increasingly rigid on ever more minute points of belief and conduct.

…

What is the point of this new ideology? This ideology is filled with inconsistencies and contradictions, because it is not really about ideological rigor. Among other things, it is an elaborate containment system for the theoretical and practical discontent generated by the failures of the system, an absolution from guilt, and a new form of class signaling. Before, to signal you were in the fashionable and powerful crowd, you would show off your country club membership, refined manners, or Gucci handbags. Now, you show how woke you are. To reinforce their new form of structural power, people dismiss the idea that they even have the older, more legible forms of status. They find any reverse-privilege points they can, and if they are cis-white-men, they pose as allies. On an institutional level, the old ways of legitimizing power are gone, and the new motto is this: diversity is legitimacy.

There is a deep comedy to this sort of signaling. Only around 2% of the student body was in the bottom 20% of American society, and yet extremely wealthy Singaporean students who had spent just a few years in America marched in the street and referred to themselves as “people of color.” People’s experiences were ignored when they volunteered information that countered the main narrative, because the surface-level debate wasn’t the point. The point was to signal that you were with the program. Only a select and secret group of student “leaders”—who were already savvy enough to engage comfortably with hierarchy—were invited in to chat with administrators.

Shouting from the rooftops that “They aren’t doing enough!” is much easier than following any traditional system of elite social norms and duties, let alone carefully re-engineering that system to reestablish order in a time of growing crisis.

…

But there is more to selling out that nobody talks about. These jobs are the dream jobs of the middle class. They’re not supposed to be jobs for the sons and daughters of millionaires and billionaires—these kids don’t actually need the money. They want independence from their parents and proof that they can make it on their own—and prestigious work experience—but they have wealth acquired through generations that they can always fall back on. These people are generally as harmless as the middle class—which is to say completely harmless. They keep to themselves. They quietly grow their bank accounts and their 401ks. And just like the real middle class, they don’t want to risk their next promotion through being too outspoken. They have virtually no political power. This mindset is best encapsulated by: “I’ll go with the program. Please leave me alone to be comfortable and quietly make money.”

They effectively become middle class, because there is no longer any socially esteemed notion of upper class. They have a base of power, of f-you money, that they could use to become something greater than just another office worker or businessperson. But there is no script for that, no institutional or ideological support. What would it even mean to be an esteemed, blue-blooded aristocrat in 2019? So they take the easy and safe way.

How else do Yale students give up their responsibility?

They go in the other direction. These are the people who call themselves idealists and say they want to save the world. They feel the weight of responsibility from their social status—but they don’t know how to process and integrate this responsibility into their lives properly. Traditionally, structurally well-organized elite institutions would absorb and direct this benevolent impulse to useful purpose. But our traditional institutions have decayed and lost their credibility, so these idealists start looking for alternatives, and start signalling dissociation from those now-disreputable class markers.

…

Who is winning? This question is an important one. Yale administrators had lofty goals. In an attempt to placate their own biases, the administrators and faculty forgot that they are the ones who are supposed to be teaching. Instead of expelling or suspending the small number of people actively undermining the student body and university as a whole, the university does nothing, or actively accelerates the process. The professors are the ones who leave. The radical clique feels emboldened.

Now we can begin to understand the real problem at Yale. It is not free speech—and it is not non-inclusivity. The standards of reality, and the standards of morality not based solely on being woke, are ousted. That’s because the conventional standards of elite morality, based on responsible use of power—actually responsible, not just a convenient feeling of doing good—are much harder, and based on the very self-consciousness that everyone is trying to avoid.

…

The result is an institution increasingly unable to carry out its own mission, as tuition rises to pay for more administrators, and ideological drama makes it harder and harder to actually teach. And now we are back at the original question. What was the point of Yale? What was the point of going to Yale? What is the point of elite institutions?

Is the point of Yale to promote the humanities and knowledge of the West that is hard to learn anywhere else? This is not the full mission. Donald Kagan and Lee Bass’s year-long history of the West program was cut, due to faculty protesting that it was not multicultural enough, despite having large interest and $20 million in funding.

Is Yale’s vision a futuristic, technocratic university? Is the university divesting from the liberal arts for the purpose of committing to the technology of the future? This isn’t the case, either. Computer science enrollment has increased significantly in the past decade. But Yale’s computer science department is lagging behind other schools. The university has taken steps towards improving the department, but in general shows no signs of a visionary commitment to expanding tech or significantly expanding professorships.

…

Maybe the university has lost every purpose other than giving students a social environment in which to party. If the students aren’t educated or visionary, at least they’re networking and hedonically satisfied.

Except they’re not. It would be one thing if they were happy—but even this is not true. They don’t know what is expected of them, or what they should aspire to be. The lack of expectations creates nihilistic tendencies and existential crises. In 2018, around one quarter of Yale undergraduates said they sought mental health counseling. One quarter of Yale students took the “Happiness and the Good Life” course in 2018 in an attempt to find answers. Students are demanding more mental health resources. A new wellness space was created with bean-bag chairs and colored walls. But the real sources of unhappiness are more systemic. They are rooted in uncertainty about the future.

If Yale students are uncertain about the future and their role in it, what does that say about the rest of society?

…

So what if Yale, and Yale students, are abdicating responsibility? We can all just send our kids to Harvard, or MIT, or move to California and go to a state school. I heard UC Berkeley is pretty good.

But the problems present at Yale are present at every other university, and schools outside of the United States look to elite American universities as role models. If things are broken at elite universities, things are broken, period.

…

Yale is supposed to be using its power and reputation to set standards for excellence, but instead it is abandoning its responsibilities and getting embroiled in controversy after controversy. Yale is not special in this regard—other colleges are also often embroiled in controversies. But the controversies of top colleges matter most because they determine what is acceptable for everybody else.

And what’s happening at Yale reflects a crisis in America’s broader governing class. Unable to effectively respond to the challenges facing them, they instead try to bail out of their own class. The result is an ideology which acts as an escape raft, allowing some of the most privileged young people in the country to present themselves as devoid of power. Institutions like Yale, once meant to direct people in how to use their position for the greater good, are systematically undermined—a vicious cycle which ultimately erodes the country as a whole.

Segments of this class engage in risk-averse managerialism, while others take advantage of the glut to disrupt things and expand personal power. The broader population becomes caught up in these conflicts as these actors attempt to build power bases and mobilize against each other. And like Yale, it seems a safe bet that things will continue and even accelerate until some new vision and stable, non-ideological set of coordination mechanisms are able to establish hegemony and become a new ground for real cooperation.

[somebodytolove1976-blog]

Cooking Tips That Everyone Needs To Read

A lot of people think that cooking is a nuisance. This article gives you with suggestions to do that.

Preparation is incredibly important prior to cooking for family or friends. Gather all of your ingredients beforehand. This process will limit the amount of stress you experience when cooking the meal and help to ensure that you are able to cook the masterpiece you want.

Partially frozen meat to make slicing into thin strips. This method is especially useful when preparing Asian dishes. However, be sure to allow the meat strips to thaw before cooking them, so it cooks evenly.

Try adding cauliflower in with your mashed potatoes to cut some calories and fat. The taste of cauliflower helps it to blend nicely with your potatoes while picking up the potatoes. Cauliflower has the same texture and color as potatoes, so the dish will be transformed into one that has more vegetables and fewer calories.

Do you regularly cook with fresh basil? Place several sprigs of fresh basil in a glass container. Fill the glass with water so that the stems can absorb it. Put it on top of your kitchen counter and it will remain fresh for up to seven days! The basil will grow roots if you change out the water regularly. Trim or cut the basil once in a while so it grows even more and stays fresh.

This seasoning can also be utilized on various foods other than meat. You can add it to scrambled eggs and roasted pumpkin seeds. Everyone will wonder what you're doing to make it so good.

Use fresh ingredients whenever possible, as they bring out the best flavor of the dish, and they may cost less over the long run.

Plan to make a large pot of stock in order to freeze and store it. Good chicken stock that you make at home makes a great starter for soups, stews, casseroles and more.

Oil or butter both have fat than necessary to your dishes. Try using nonstick cooking spray instead: this product does not to stick and keep it free from fats that contribute little to a healthy lifestyle.

Beans or tofu are great sources of protein if you may not have yet considered adding to your diet. Both beans and tofu are readily available to buy at almost every grocery stores. Try frying tofu and you will have a tasty alternative to meat. Beans can always be cooked with herbs is a meal full of flavor and protein.

This will keep fruits fresh for much longer. This also a good way to have access to seasonal fruits that might otherwise not be available at the time you want them.

If you are having people over to your home to eat, do not pour the salad dressing on the salad, allow your guests to put the dressing on themselves. Some people enjoy lots of dressing than others; let guests pour their own dressing. Offer many different types of dressing.

Don't cook with wines that you wouldn't drink regularly. There are cooking wines available at the supermarket.

Storing herbs and spices in warm location will lead them to lose their flavor.

Never trash the leftovers whenever you have cooked a turkey. Cut the leftover meat and put it away in airtight container. Turkey remains fresh up to three weeks and you can use it in sandwiches or a salad.

Many popular veggies and herbs have a scent that remains on cutting boards even after use. Use permanent pen to make a mark so you know which is which.

Always follow instructions to the instructions if you are making something like macaroni and cheese. The macaroni turns out perfect and delicious because the nice velvety cheese is melted over the noodles. Use a solid face spoon when you serve macaroni and cheese. Spice it up with some pepper!

When you have a large or complicated meal to prepare, do the prep work the evening before the actual cooking is to take place to minimize stress. Get all of the ingredients that you will need, and chop or measure anything you can in advance. You will only have to get everything put together when it's time for you do good advance preparation.

Raw onions have sulfurous gas when they are chopped. This excessive gas by-product can damage the flavor of your fresh salsa. The gas is removed by rinsing and pat the onions dry.

When you are sauteing a food, don't put too much oil in the pan. Make sure you saute foods on a low temperature as well.

As was shown in the above article, there are numerous ways for cooking to be more interesting and less of a hassle. By following the tips presented above, your time in the kitchen can be a creative, joyful experience.

[kkbarksdale]

Day 6- Welcome Cookout

Thursday, May 4th, 2023

We had our first official wedding festivity scheduled for this day, our Welcome Cookout. Thursday and Saturday of our wedding weekend actually had some flexibility/free time for our guests to do their own exploring. Many of our family and friends just wanted to hang out with us, so we actually planned a beach day and invited whoever wanted to tag along. We decided to take everyone to Lindquist Beach since it was close, a beautiful beach, and an opportunity for people to see more of the island. Bonus that it was right next to a big condominium complex where most of our guests were staying. It took the villa bit to get going but we packed some lunches, worked out, grabbed a coffee order from Lattes and made our way over to Lindquist. This was a day that I had so much to do and so much on my plate to organize, I was struggling to relax and have fun. I was nervous that we would run out of time at Lindquist but I knew it was a great plan for everyone.

Most everyone showed up to hang out! I think everyone except Lauren and Brandon went to Lindquist. My whole family even made their first appearance. All of the Barksdale crew came, as well as Carson and his crew. We all hung out and had a fabulous time. There was a barracuda in the water, along with so many small silver fish around our feet. Many people took a stab at snorkeling, and Carson got some amazing footage of 4 turtles. He swam right alongside them. Lindquist was a solid move for the day but I really needed to get home to start prepping and also getting ready myself for our wedding event. Everyone else in our group wanted to head over to the Sapphire Beach Bar. I was trying really hard to have fun and I also really wanted to go to Sapphire but I knew that 2 hours wasn’t enough to prep all of our sandwiches for Friday, dinner for our cookout, and also do my hair and make up for the evening. I was getting overwhelmed and ended up telling Cody that we really had to leave. Natalie ended up coming with us, to relieve my stress which I so appreciated. When we got home, I got in the shower and had a long cry. Meanwhile, Cody was calling Moe’s about our platter order that we needed to pick up that day. I was a bit worried about our platter order because I very unfortunately didn’t follow up on my previously placed order. I followed up with all of the vendors we used but I didn’t follow up with the grocery store. Cody found out that Moe’s had not completed our order and didn’t even know we had one. Cody got transferred around but finally got a hold of someone who confirmed we did have an order for that day. They said they would get our platters ready within the next hour. A funny part to this story is that while we were on the phone with them trying to figure out our order, Lauren and Brandon AND Lauren Barksdale and Stevie were in the grocery store trying to pick up our platters. They knew before we did that our platters weren’t ready and were trying to figure out what to do for food for our wedding day. They were like bottom line- we don’t tell Katy because they all knew I was just radiating stress. Luckily, I actually did have back up plans for food. I ordered the platters 24 hours in advance in case they weren’t ready. Basically, we could have picked up the platters wedding morning if we needed to. Aside from that, my back up plan was to just order from the beach bar and grill. 

I eventually got myself ready for our party, and everyone started arriving. My friend Mika showed up who I was so excited to see! We had a great spread of food for dinner. We all just mingled, caught up and enjoyed some food and drinks. We ordered jerk chicken, sausage and peppers, and also cupcakes. The cupcakes were vanilla, chocolate, rum punch, and tres leches. We made ourselves: mac and cheese, green beans, meatballs, a salad bar, pasta salad and rolls. I was very happy with catering the things we did, and whipping up the sides on our own. The food was all so great, home made and catered. 

The night was slipping away from us. I realized we had all been there a while and I was just procrastinating Cody and I’s dances and speeches we prepared. It was around this time that my brother who brought his 2 little girls told me they were about to leave. I was instantly sad and stressed because we were supposed to do these speeches and dances but people were already leaving. Daniel and his crew were in charge of transporting the sandwiches, wraps, and food to Magen’s Bay the following day. So Daniel and Corky were trying to grab all the platters and pack them into the coolers if possible. Daniel accidentally tripped over the water hose while doing this and it busted the spicket off the wall. This left water spewing out of the wall off the house. Daniel was just holding the water with his hands to prevent it from flying everywhere, but we eventually had to let it jsut burst out of the wall. I was the only person who had the AirBnb host’s phone number on my phone, however I did not have my phone. I scrambled to find it. I called Chris and had to leave a VM and text. He called back almost immediately, and Cody answered and handled the situation. We had to shut off the water, which was in a locked utility room. Cody and Chris worked together over the phone well to shut the water off and Chris arrived to the villa within 20 minutes. 

At this point, I was exhausted from 2 days of 35 people in my face telling me everything was going to be alright. The water bursting was just the cherry on top of a really difficult and stressful 2 days for me. I ended up going to my room for the night and wasn’t feeling mentally well enough to come back out. I was pretty devastated that we didn’t do our speeches or dances that we had practiced over a month for. I was just overall sad that I wasn’t enjoying myself. On the bright side, ALL of our guests were having a blast. I guess that’s all that matters. They all proceeded to mingle and have a great time. They even busted out the karaoke. I personally needed to rest and recoop. I had barely been sleeping and desperately needed to rest for our early morning wedding the next day. 

[fuck-customers]

I've worked at sbubby for about a month and I liked it at first but now i hate it. So much. Some highlights: 1) So. Many. Bitchy. Customers. Just today one lady yelled at my (new) coworker for not putting enough olives on her sandwich? He put like twice as many as the guidelines, which is the amount my managers let us do before charging like 30 cents extra. She got in an argument with the woman behind her, who (bless her) asked the bitchy lady to be more respectful. My second or third shift working there, we had to call the cops on a lady who was mad she got the wrong sandwich in a pickup order. We would have refunded it or given her a new one (which we wouldn't be able to do anymore, but we could then) but she'd eaten like 3/4 of it. Etc etc etc 2) The manager and assistant manager are always taking like. 20 minute long smoke breaks. Today, they left for one 3 minutes before I was supposed to be off. Guess who got off almost an hour late after a big ass rush with just me and my new coworker 3) No breaks. Even though they're legally required in my state. I'd complain, but i need the job until I can find a new one. 4) The manager and assistant manager are always bitching to each other and to me and some of my coworkers about the other people who work there. In front of customers sometimes too. 5) They're training me to open and close. I said okay to the training for opening but that I'm not comfortable closing alone. They didn't care. 6) I'm always leaving like an hour late because there's so much to do and I'm helping with prep the whole time too. It fucking sucks. If you need me that late, schedule me that late. 7) The store is super understaffed so if I need a day off because I'm sick or something, or even requesting it in advance sometimes, I'm fucked. I feel bad quitting because they don't have enough other people, but I just can't do this forever. And I know if I bring any of it up the managers will just bitch to everyone else about me and nothing will change. Fuck sbubby and fuck sbubby customers ughhh

[krinsbez]

Work Stories: A Tale of Two Sundays

-Last Sunday: early in the day, m’boss tells me that a guy who he’s been e-mailing back and forth aboutwill be calling to place his depost. mid-afternoon, he calls. As my boss has provided me with no deets, I ask the guy to provide ‘em. Apparently the event is scheduled for 6:30 that night. Now, we generally require the deposits for special menu events, but the deposit for that is usually placed in advance, so I was...a bit confused, but the dude was having a larger than usual group (17 people) and I guessed that, IDK, the guy wanted to make sure he had the whole backyard to himself or something; basically, I assumed my boss was on it, because he usually is, and when I told him the deposit had been placed he didn’t show any particular response i took it as confirmation, even though I foolishly didn’t place as much emphasis on the time as I should have.

The thing I hadn’t taken into account is that he was A: planning our Thanksgiving specials, B: planning our Chanukah specials, C: figuring out the specifics of a necessary price increase, D: dealing with a supplier issue, E: all the other hassles of running the restaurant when you aren’t actually in charge, and F: dealing with some family stuff that I’m not gonna mention on tumblr because it’s none of your damn business. He was, needless to say rather distracted. So, when I reminded him of it at 5:30, as the dinner rush was in full swing, his response was “Wait, what? No, that’s not until the 14th.” Then realization dawned. He was Not. Happy with me. So, he, and the kitchen, had less than a hour to prep what they usually take all day for, and had to do it during a rush when normally we’d shut down the restaurant.

Meanwhile, us at the front counter are short one man, and everything is delayed because of the kitchen having to do a special menu, and I’m not sure what’s worse, people who ignore you when you tell them upfront there’s a delay, spend fifteen minutes placing an order, and then decide they don’t want to wait when you tell them how long it will take, or the people who try to bully you into bringing their food out faster (the urge to quote Mr. Scott was almost overwhelming). And as mentioned, things are BUSY. And to make matters worse, one of the first big orders of the night, which was apparently one of the local high school Rabbis rewarding his class by taking them out to dinner, decided that paying for their beverages was too expensive, so I have over twenty high school boys rolling up to buy individual sodas and whatnot all at the same time while I’m trying to field phone calls and online orders and people trying to pay for their pick-ups and walk-ins. Oh, and then one of the co-owners decides that now is the time to place a large order for ASAP.

And then, in defiance of all previous experience, the guys with the Event actually show up on time! And then, I have to stall like mad; now this sort of thing is usually my boss’ task, but again, he’s busy in the prep kitchen making food, so it falls to me. And you best believe I *suck* at that sort of thing. And I can’t even send him outside to wait because it’s hella cold and we haven’t had a chance to set up yet! Oh, yeah, and then I have to go out and set-up outside, meaning the counter staff is down a second man at a crucial time.

But! Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, WE. PULL. IT. OFF! Like champions! The dude leaves happy! And even more miraculous, seventeen drunk guys cleaned up after themselves!

-So, this Sunday. Now, for reasons I’m not going to go into, but I swear they make sense and it doesn’t generally cause problems, I generally go to bed at 3AM on Saturday nights. But, this Sunday, we’ve been paid to provide 200 lunch sandwiches for a soup kitchen that have to be in before we usually open. So I have to go in at around 7AM, and since it generally takes me about an hour to get ready in the morning, that means I need to get up at six. Now, you’d think I would go to bed early, but I did a dumb and did not. And apparently I ate something I shouldn’t have o’er the Sabbath cuz i had stomach problems all day. And one of the Kitchen staff couldn’t come in. And one of the night shift couldn’t come in, so I had to work late to cover. And it was the busiest Sunday night we’ve had in months. Like, the dining room filled up at 4:00 and never emptied, we’d have maybe a minute to bus a table before the next group came in. Somehow, despite all this, we’re keeping things humming along.

And then, because been working almost 13 hours on less than three hours of sleep, my eyes decide that A: they are tired of being open, and B: decide they’re tired of staring at the bright screen of the Point Of Service tablet. That is to say, in the middle of taking an order, my eyes suddenly feel like I just stuck them into a giant pot of cooking with onions. They are stinging so bad they feel like they’re on fire, and so full of tears I can barely see. Somehow I manage to finish taking the order and mention this issue to my co-worker. He wisely suggests i splash some cold water on my face. I take his advice, it works, but briefly the pain and blurriness gets worse, and because of the aforementioned tiredness, this sends me into full-blown panic mode and somehow I convince myself that I can’t see, despite my eyes now working fine. My very concerned boss (who, I should note, has been working for even longer than I have, and is doing harder work) of course tells me to go home, and kindly helps me through calling my ride and clocking out despite my hysterical quasi-blindness. I then go home, say evening prayers, take a bath, and go to bed, from which I do not emerge for almost twelve hours.

[happyweddingblogs]

6 Best Tips to Have Wedding Reception on Budget

You may be on a tight budget or believe that spending a fortune on a wedding reception is a waste of money. Remember that your wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, and you don’t have to forego a great

wedding reception because you’re on a shoestring budget.

You can arrange a party that everyone will enjoy and that you will remember fondly for years to come with meticulous planning and a little creativity. Here are some tried and tested tips to have outstanding wedding receptions on a budget.

Take a look…

1. WEDDING RECEPTION LOCATION ALTERNATIVES.

Because the reception venue or location is generally the most expensive part of the event, your top pick is to look for a free or extremely low-cost option. There are numerous places that you can consider for hosting your wedding reception, such as:

a. Park

You might want to consider having your wedding reception in a local park. It will not set you back any money. To have your reception in a local park, you will only need a permit or written consent from the local authority.

b. The beach

If you’re one of the fortunate folks who live near the beach, you won’t need to travel anyplace else. During your winter wedding, the beach is an ideal location for an outdoor wedding reception.

c. Halls

Another great option for hosting a wedding reception on a budget is to use a local social hall, church, or temple hall. In most cases, you won’t have to pay anything extra in these locations. However, you can still gather information in and around your neighborhood to identify low-cost reception halls.

d. Libraries and Museums

Museums and libraries are other great low-cost wedding reception sites. More often than not, these sites are low-cost and budget-friendly. You might not have to pay a lot to hire or rent these locations.

e. Botanical Garden

Then there are neighboring botanical gardens where your wedding reception could take place. All you have to do is find out whether or not your local botanical garden organizes such events. If you say yes, you can get the price and other information. In most situations, they only charge a small fee for the venue. You will, however, need a permit or formal authorization from the relevant government.

f. Backyard

Even your backyard will work well if you’re hosting your reception with just your family members and friends. And if you have none, you can contact a friend who has a nice backyard to host a small party for a small gathering. The coolest thing about hosting your wedding reception in your backyard is that you can decorate it the way you want it to.

g. Hotels & Restaurants

Traditional wedding venues include hotels and restaurants, but you can often find better discounts if you hold your reception at a non-traditional time. If you’re willing to have your wedding during the week, you can get terrific deals from a catering hall that would otherwise be empty at that time.

2. WEDDING RECEPTION FOOD ALTERNATIVES.

Food is generally the most expensive aspect of a wedding budget, so you’ll have to get creative. Consider the following non-traditional cuisine options to save a lot of money on catering:

a. Potluck.

Consider throwing your wedding reception the traditional way, the Potluck way! All you have to do is to ask everyone to bring their favorite reception. This requires some planning so that you don’t end up with 50 platters of brownies and no main course. Due to the necessity for cooperation, it also works best with smaller receptions.

b. Brunch.

You can have a brunch reception if your wedding is in the morning. Bagels, sandwiches, omelets, french toast, fruit, and other brunch fares can be on the menu. With some classical music playing in the background, you’ll have created a very exquisite atmosphere. It won’t cost you much, and you’ll end up having a great wedding reception.

c. Food Truck

Food trucks are new norms in the market. These trucks don’t cost you a fortune; in fact, they look stylish and snappy. You can have a food truck standing at the wedding reception location. Make sure you tell your food requirements to the vendor in advance. A food truck wedding reception can appear to be much more cost-effective than a typical wedding reception. Rentals, staffing, and, in many cases, beverage and dessert service are all included in a regular catering price. Cuisine trucks usually only provide their food and their vehicle. It’s a great option to have a picnic-style wedding reception on a budget.

d. Restaurant

If you’re planning to host a wedding reception for a tiny gathering, then you can consider getting food from a restaurant. It’s just like we do at domestic parties. Yeah, all you have to do is find a good restaurant in your area and order your food. But make sure you contact the restaurant owner in advance and tell them your requirements. It’s because they will also need time to arrange things and prep all the dishes.

e. Cook at Home

It’s a tried and tested method of keeping a wedding reception under budget. If you’re fortunate enough to have a terrific cook in your family, whether it’s your mother, aunt, or someone else, then enlist their assistance. Especially when you have to mind your guests’ health during corona times, cooking food at home is the finest solution.

f. Dessert.

It’s a little tough to serve simply dessert, but it works nicely with a shorter reception. After all, it is everyone’s favorite part of the meal. But, don’t forget to make it explicit on the invitation that you’ll be offering dessert only. Otherwise, folks may arrive hungry and eager to depart to grab some “real meal.”

g. Barbecue

You can always go for a more laid-back approach and have a BBQ or other light fares. This is a particularly good alternative if you decide to host your wedding on the beach or in a garden. Even your backyard is great for a BBQ wedding reception. It’s a terrific way to save money on a wedding reception by having a modest gathering. This will give your guests the impression of being at a family picnic. They will adore the thought of a modest BBQ wedding reception on the beach, in a park, or in your own backyard.

3. WEDDING CAKE ALTERNATIVES

Instead of an expensive wedding cake, you can choose from a variety of various possibilities. All it needs is a little creativity! The best part about wedding cake alternatives is that they can often be made at home and save you a lot of money. Here are some of the top wedding cake alternatives to have a wedding reception on budget:

a. Ice Cream

Ice cream is always a good choice. The best part about this refreshing delicacy is that it comes in a variety of delicious flavors. At the wedding, your guests would want to have their favorite ice cream.

A summer wedding might benefit from an ice cream bar with a choice of flavors, toppings, and sauces, allowing guests to construct their own dessert combinations!

b. Cupcakes

Cute, tiny cupcakes are already in trend! Cupcakes have the advantage of being able to be adorned in any color or design you can think of.

Cupcakes are also incredibly easy to make. You may bake lovely cupcakes at home for a low cost if you have good baking skills or if you have a friend or aunt who does. Cupcakes can be customized to match your wedding theme or color scheme and served as favors in little boxes for guests to take home.

c. Pies

Pies are a trendy dessert and a perfect wedding cake replacement for a low-budget wedding reception. With a variety of home-baked pies, you can satisfy everyone’s taste buds. You may explore a range of pies, from a delectable apple pie topped with crisp, buttery crumble on top to layering pink grapefruit curd in a crunchy graham-cracker crust with caramel sauce.

d. Cheesecake

Cheesecakes are quite popular these days; they make for an excellent wedding cake alternative. They are available in a variety of flavors such as vanilla, chocolate, and fruit. Aside from that, they can be baked or served cold. They can also be served as mini-cheesecakes or in layers.

e. Croquembouche

Croquembouche is a French pastry dish that’s commonly offered during weddings, communions, and baptisms. It’s made up of stuffed profiteroles or choux balls stacked into a towering cone. The choux are traditionally filled with cream or chocolate and drizzled with caramel. Besides, chocolate, flower petals, or almonds can also be used to decorate a croquembouche.

f. Doughnuts

A doughnut, often known as a donut, is a popular leavened fried dough that is popular these days. Doughnuts are a popular sweet snack in many nations and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. For your special day, you can prepare them yourself or buy them from bakeries and franchised specialized sellers. To fit your wedding theme, you can experiment with different fillings and icings in a variety of colors.

g. Petit Fours

Petit Fours are small desserts. Cakes, cookies, meringues, pastries, and macaroons are examples of petit fours, which are small bite-sized confectionery or savory appetizers. They’re delicate and exquisite, with fondant, frosting, and chocolate on top. You might serve a range of petit fours or just one type, such as macaroons.

h. Fudge

Another popular wedding cake alternative is fudge. This seasonal favorite is easy to make, available in a variety of flavors, and is foolproof! The incredible thing about fudge is that everyone loves it! It’s decadently rich and chocolaty, and it’s perfect for wedding favors or presenting as a wedding dessert! This nutty, delicate, snappy dessert will be a hit with your guests!

4. WEDDING DECORATION ALTERNATIVES

There are numerous options for creating gorgeous wedding decorations on a budget that are elegant and opulent. All you need is a little creativity. Here are some of the best wedding decoration options for a low-budget wedding reception:

a. Flowers

Look into what flowers are local and seasonal for your time of year for floral ideas. To achieve a vintage-chic effect, choose fewer, larger blossoms or bunches of vibrant, affordable flowers.

b. Lanterns

Instead of using harsh fluorescent lights during your wedding reception, consider using beautiful lanterns to illuminate the space. These lanterns are simply stunning and add a romantic feel to the room, believe it or not. Moreover, lanterns are an affordable wedding decoration alternative.

c. Alive Items

You can also use other ‘alive’ items instead of flowers. Branches, palm fronds, and plants with large greens may make a great impact. Succulents are also becoming a popular option.

d. Use Bowl of Fruit & Vegetables

Bowls of fruit and vegetables are another option to decorate your tables. It looks stylish and sophisticated and will simply jazz up your wedding reception tables.

e. Feathers

Feathers are the other best option to decorate your wedding reception area. Using huge feathers as part of your centerpieces is also a popular alternative.

f. Balloons

Balloons are a terrific way to bring back childhood memories by incorporating balloons into your wedding decor. You can have colorful balloons placed at the entrance. You can even have balloons matching your wedding theme.

g. Vases & Bottles

You can utilize colorful vases and bottles from the local garage sales or vintage shops. You can add both character and creativity to your centerpieces if you plan ahead of time. This is a great option to have a gorgeous setting at the wedding reception on budget.

5. WEDDING MUSIC ALTERNATIVES

To set the right tone, you will need the right music at the wedding reception. Here are some of the best ways to have wonderful music at your wedding without spending fortune:

a. Music System

Practically everyone these days enjoys music; if you’ve your own music system, you can set up the same for the wedding reception. If you don’t have one, have a friend bring one to the event. All you have to do is to make a playlist of music ahead of time.

b. Live Performance

Many aspiring musicians are on the lookout for possibilities to add to their credentials. If you know anyone who is searching for a chance to play at your wedding, please let us know. It will just add pizazz to your wedding and make it a memorable occasion. The best part is that these musicians don’t charge a lot for their services.

c. Contact a University Band

Many University bands seek opportunities to perform live. Contact any local universities where bands are looking for opportunities to perform. A live band performing at your wedding would be a huge hit with your guests.

d. Ask your Music Enthusiast Friend

If you have a musician or singer friend, don’t be afraid to ask them to perform at your wedding reception. Best of all, if you’ve already asked that person to the reception, he or she won’t even ask for money. With live music, you’ll be able to create the perfect atmosphere for your wedding guests.

6. WEDDING FAVOR ALTERNATIVES

There are a plethora of wedding favor alternatives to pick from. Giving your wedding guests something that will remind them of your magnificent wedding is a perfect wedding gift for years to come. Furthermore, handcrafted products like cookies, brownies, candles, and other such items make excellent wedding favors. You could also try presenting your visitors with a lovely live plant. Essentially, they are less fussy favor selections that practically everyone will enjoy. The objective is to provide something that will not be left on the table by your wedding guests.

Chocolate and cookies as favors are yet another great way to add to the Panache. You can even gift your wedding guests with some DIY hot chocolate kits or chocolate goodies at the end of your wedding reception. All of these are great wedding favor alternatives for a wedding reception on budget. The best thing is that these can be enjoyed by people of all age groups.

BONUS TIP #1. Do a Lot of Research

This is very, really, very important. If you really want to host a wedding reception on budget, then doing a lot of research is crucial. You will need to find the best and the most affordable options for your wedding reception. Of course, it can be a little exhaustive for you, but keep in mind that your wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event. So there is no point leaving everything to luck. If you do so, you’ll end up paying more than your pocket, which is not wise at all.

BONUS TIP #2. Ask For Recommendations

When it comes to hosting a grand wedding on budget, the rule of thumb is not to hesitate to ask for recommendations. You can ask your cousin, who recently got married, about the affordable wedding vendors or caterers, etc. Or if you know someone in your office recently got married in a modest way, ask the person for the details. Doing so will help you save a lot of money that you can spend on other important things, like your honeymoon.

BONUS TIP #3. Make a memorable exit.

You can come up with ideas for an unforgettable exit to add panache to your wedding reception. Make plans for a joyful and festive send-off, such as a fireworks display, a sparkler exit, or even a confetti send-off! It will be a hit with your wedding guests. It will also result in some stunning wedding images that you will treasure for the rest of your life.

BONUS TIP #4. Stick to Your Wedding Budget Religiously.

If you’re on a limited budget, it’s critical to plan your wedding budget ahead of time and stick to it. Making a wedding budget ahead of time will help you spend less. You could be tempted to buy things that aren’t necessary for your wedding, but a budget will remind you to spend on the things that are. Having a wedding budget handy is a terrific strategy to have a wedding reception on budget.

Putting it all together…

So these are the ways to plan a wedding reception on budget. Apart from these, there are numerous additional ways to create a low-budget wedding reception that includes all of the components you like.

Furthermore, whether you’re planning a luxurious wedding or a low-budget wedding, the goal is to enjoy every moment of it. Because your wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, it is critical that you enjoy your wedding reception to the fullest. Do not be concerned… From the moment you walk in the door until the moment you leave, enjoy every moment of your wedding reception. Never forget that this is the moment you’ve been waiting for from a long time. So, make the most of it and enjoy every bit of it to make wonderful memories of your BIG DAY!

Happy Wedding…

[leopardwrangling101]

There’s a leopard in the fridge

Leopards get into everything.

You would think it was impossible because a leopard is a very big thing and some of these spaces are super small, but they manage.

Leopards however seem to like the fridge.

When leopards arrive they mess with food.

Can’t eat, don’t want to eat, over eat, eat only junk food, only eat take out.

Can’t walk through the grocery store without disassociating

Can’t place an on-line grocery order because everything just seems to be closing in and the thought of trying is just TOO MUCH

Can’t chose something off a menu to save a life.

Disassociate in the fast food parking lot (if you’re lucky, the drive through like if you’re not)

Time for preplanning.

If you’ve read anything in this tumblr you should know that my leopards are pseudo controllable with preplanning. Organization, structure, lists, kits…these things seem to befuddle my leopards and give me a little breathing room.

Keeping leopards out of the fridge requires three to four lists.

List one- typical meals or types of meals that you eat each week, - breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. If you are a hobbit, fill in the other meals, no judgement here.

Example:

Breakfast schedule

Monday - yoghurt and cereal

Tuesday - eggs

Wednesday - yoghurt and cereal

Thursday - eggs

Friday - yoghurt and cereal

Saturday - something easy

Sunday - something special

Lunch schedule

Monday - themed lunch (make it special)

Tuesday - vegetarian plough man’s lunch

Wednesday - afternoon tea

Thursday - salad

Friday - tuna sandwich

Saturday - picnic (even if indoors)

Sunday - popcorn and a movie

Evening Meal schedule

Monday - vegetarian

Tuesday - Fish

Wednesday - new recipe

Thursday - dinner with friend (after work, going out to eat)

Friday - Ethnic option - self-made, take out or frozen

Saturday - Soup and Grilled Cheese

Sunday - Something special

List two - core foods in the fridge and freezer that you typically eat.

I keep to a pescatarian diet and my core list looks like this:

Dairy

Eggs

Heavy cream

Cheese (shredded, chunk, sliced)

Butter (stick and spread)

Yoghurt (Greek or French)

Horseradish

Sour cream

Cottage cheese

Hummus

Cream cheese

Milk (nut and/or small amount regular)

Produce

Salad materials:

Lettuce

Spinach

Tomatoes

Peppers

Cucumber

Radish

Carrots

Celery

Sprouts

Cooking vegetables:

Ginger

Garlic

Shallots

Mushrooms

Peas

Bok Choy

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Kale

Leeks

Fennel

Zucchini

Asparagus

Beets

Swiss chard

Yellow squash

Onions

Potatoes

Small eggplant

Corn

Green beans

Fruit in season

Lemons

Apples

Berries

Oranges

Clementines

Blood oranges

Plums

Peaches

Grapes

Avocado

Fish

Shrimp

Squid

Snapper

Perch

Scallops

Swordfish

Cod

Trout

Other fish/shellfish when on sale, in season

Frozen

Appetizers

Quick entrees - vegetarian and pescatarian

Veggie sausage

Veggie burgers

Frozen vegetables

List three - typical core pantry items

This is my list:

Pantry Items

Pasta

Pasta sauce (pesto, marinara, vodka, Alfredo)

Rice (jasmine, long grain wild)

Soup (jarred preferably)

Olives

Artichoke hearts

Roasted red peppers

Salsa (red and green)

Tea

Flour

Chocolate chips

Cocoa

Corn meal

Pickles

Vegetable stocks

Fish stock

Yeast

Mustard

Mayonnaise

Sugar

Herbs

Spices

Popcorn

Cereal

Bread

Crackers

Canned fish

Canned vegetables

Canned beans/lentils

Nuts

Specialty items

Salad dressing

Oils

Vinegars

List four is for specific leopard foods, either foods that scare off leopards or foods that soothe leopards. So sometimes these foods are in the cupboard, sometimes they are in your leopard wrangling kit. Sometimes they are what you serve yourself on a relaxation night.

My list

McCain smiley fries

Nacho cheese Doritos

Mexican hot chocolate disks with cinnamon

Spaghetti Os

Canned Clam Chowder

Oyster crackers

Goldfish crackers

Anise sponge cookies

Root beer

Dark chocolate covered almonds

As you can see this list is pretty carb heavy, these are comfort foods, things that I know specifically can lift me out of a leopard moment or can dissuade leopards from taking residence. But these are not my everyday foods. Some of my everyday foods, like tea, also work against leopards, but since that is a staple, it doesn’t need to be specifically on this list. If I am in a bad way leopard wise, this is a quick list for an online grocery order, a request to a friend or a specific short list for my own foray into the store. Only one item on the list is frozen, so even if I disassociate I don’t need to worry about a cart full of ruined food stuffs. The hot chocolate disks are a specialty item that most of my local grocery places don’t stock, so this is something I either have to keep on hand or pick up when I spot it and save it. This is a definitive leopard wrangling kit item and also requires that I keep some option of milk on hand.

How to use these lists.

List one: Having a routine for meals gives the day a bit of structure and helps keep leopards at bay for a bit. Meal routines also allow for prepping meals in advance, such as when the leopards are quiet. As you know from reading other posts, I also love to cook, so my lists are designed around that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t shove ingredients for a new recipe in the slow cooker to fulfill my need for food when avoiding a leopard. If the lists are too rigid and the leopards too loud, adjust the list. It’s just a list, it’s a reminder and suggestion to yourself.

Lists two through four: knowing your core needs and preferences for food makes it easier to grocery shop, keep track of what you need versus what is on hand and do alternative ordering when you cannot shop for yourself. You can print out your lists and keep them tacked on the fridge and puta mark next to things that are used up and need to be replaced. You can load all the items into an app on your phone and do the same.

[marilynlamantia]

Most Powerful Method:-- How to lose weight on a budget in 7 simple steps

How to lose weight on a budget is what it literally means, what it means- how to make lemonade out of lemons. It doesn’t matter why you have chosen to eat clean on a budget and lose weight, what matters is that you’ve decided that no matter what, you are going to shed off the extra pounds. I applaud you for that because so many people wait for the perfect conditions when in fact you can achieve anything that you want if you really want it.

As you may be aware, weight loss is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise’ and what and how much you eat is way more important than the hours you’ll spend on a treadmill try to ‘out-exercise a bad diet.’ Working out for an hour is easy, what is hard is what you do during the other 23 hours that you have to nourish your body with the right food. Essential reading: How to eat clean on a budget and lose weight

You will realize that it is even harder when you are trying to lose weight on a tight budget. This is because of the misconception that to eat clean, you have to buy into the ridiculously overpriced ‘healthy foods.’ I won’t get into what I think about some of these ‘healthy or organic foods’ but what I will tell you right now and probably the most important thing that you can take away from this article is this:

The fastest and best way to lose weight is really not about you eating organic this and that, or gluten-free this, and gluten-free that. Calories are calories where your chicken is organic or not or whether your bread is gluten-free or not. The fact that most healthy foods are way more expensive than junk food shouldn’t be a stumbling block to meeting your goals in your weight loss journey. Unless you have a medical condition that makes it impossible to lose weight, there really shouldn’t be a reason why you shouldn’t lose weight even when you can’t afford the healthiest meals. As long as your food isn’t overly processed or refined, you can eat clean on a budget and lose massive weight without spending thousands of dollars on food. Here is how you can lose weight on a budget How to lose weight on a budget in 7 simple steps

1. Plan and prepare your meals in advance Have you heard about this wonderful thing called meal planning? Meal planning is when you plan and prepare your meals in advance and is the best tip if you want to lose weight on a budget and busy schedule. You can plan and prepare your meals for as long as you wish and as long as your freezer can handle the quantity. Depending on your schedule, you can prepare meals a week, 3 days, or even 2 weeks in advance. It’s all up to you. I prefer planning my meals a week in advance usually on Sundays. A week out is the perfect balance to maintain some form of freshness especially when it comes to food like chicken breast, which seems to dry up pretty fast, in my opinion. Your life will be much more simplified when you don’t have to think and worry about what you’ll eat when you get off from work. For 7 days a week, your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in-between snacks will all be sorted out. The awesome thing about meal planning is that it’ll also help you to stick to your planned healthy meals. When you don’t have a plan for what you are going to eat on a particular day or time, it’s easy to dive into whatever is sitting in front of you. Meal planning will also help you put a stop to mindless snacking.

2. Do your grocery shopping in bulk to save money Planning meals in advance will become easier once you start buying your groceries in bulk. What you should do here is write down your grocery list for the month, fortnight or week, and then plan your meals for the week around the list. Once you know exactly what you are going to need to prepare your meals, only then should you go out to the store, and do your shopping. When at the store, be strict and stick to only, and only, what is on that list, no negotiations. This is how you are going to lose weight on a budget effortlessly.

3. Cook your own meals Yes, Suzy, it’s time to learn how to cook! Eating out or ordering in when you are trying to lose weight on a budget must be out of the question. If you don’t know how to cook, this is the perfect time to learn basic cooking. The internet today is full of quick and easy healthy meals that you can prepare without much effort. I am not qualified to dispense financial advice but will say this: if you are looking up how to lose weight on a budget, dining out should be a huge NO-NO until your finances are in better shape. Buying a ‘healthy’ sandwich here and there may seem like a great idea to eating clean when you are on the run, but those small amounts of money spent on sandwiches and smoothies will eventually add up. Something you should always remember while you try to eat clean on a budget and lose weight is that you do not have to learn how to cook world-class meals.

Your life is not MasterChef, and neither are you in competition with anybody. You can find easy healthy recipes for weight loss on a budget to help you cook sumptuous meals in a flash. One of the cookbooks that I love is meal prep: the complete meal prep cookbook for beginners. It promises delicious but simple healthy meals for weight loss and delivers on it. If you can afford to buy this book right now, then I would advise you to get it, but if you can’t, make Pinterest and the internet your true love. 4. Track the calories Again, I’ll sing this song- eating clean and losing weight have got nothing to do with eating organic foods or any fancy diet that might pop up every now and then. The amount of calories that you consume versus the amount that you expend determines whether you gain, maintain or lose weight. That simple. For example, if your maintenance calories (the calories you need to maintain your body weight) are 2000, you should subtract about 200 to 500 calories to arrive at the number of calories you should be consuming to lose weight. To understand this better, there are free tools such as MyFitnessPal that will hold your hand while you learn how to track and calculate the calories that you burn, as well as consume.

5. Drink like a fish

You have to literally drink water like a fish because not only is it free in most cases, but it’ll help you stay hydrated and lose weight. You have to chuck out that bottle of wine for a while because alcohol can dehydrate you and also lead to weight gain. Water is life as they say, and when it comes to losing weight, water is, the life that weight loss depends on. Apart from revving up your metabolism, water can also help you curb hunger as well as help your body get rid of waste. The study also shows that drinking water before meals helps to suppress appetite.

6. Stock up on frozen fruits and canned vegetables When your finances are tight, canned and frozen foods that include macronutrients are a lifesaver. Your freezer, on the other hand, should be stocked with bags of frozen vegetables You should have on hand, these foods in your pantry and home even if you are not trying to lose weight on a budget. �� Canned tuna in water – cheap source of protein • Kidney beans – look for the option that is low on sugar and sodium • Lentils – dry or canned • Chickpeas and peas • Oats – stay away from instant oats, they are highly processed and contain too much sugar (I love this overnight oats recipe with chia) • Sweet potatoes • Brown rice • Frozen vegetables like green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, and butternut squash • Chilli peppers to rev up your metabolism • Greek yogurt or plain yogurt • Frozen fruit • Grapefruit • Eggs • Apples • Kale and spinach • Avocado, when in season • Chicken breasts • Canned fruit in water and not syrup 6. Workout at home if you can’t afford a gym membership

If you can’t afford it, there’s no reason for you to sign up for a gym membership to keep fit and lose weight. There are many ways of exercising, such as running outdoors and at-home workouts for beginners, and the best part is they are either free or cost next to nothing. Running outside your neighborhood, or taking part in Parkruns is absolutely free. I recently joined my local Parkrun and I love it

If you are a beginner, you can start by walking outside your home at least 3 times a week for 20 minutes, until you are fit enough to throw in a little jogging here and there, or run the entire distance. At-home workouts to lose weight If you would rather workout at home, these are some of the best inexpensive weight loss workout programs that you can start with: My final thoughts on how to lose weight on a budget

Lastly, I’ll say this to you from the bottom of my heart. As someone who had to survive on a shoestring budget on several occasions and also lost weight, my advice to you is this: Losing weight is not easy, no matter what anybody tells you. Don’t ever be too harsh on yourself. Don’t pit yourself against others who are on an entirely different weight loss journey from yours. You have no idea what goes on behind the closed doors of most fitness models that you might be looking up to for motivation. There’s a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ struggles between all the incredible weight loss success stories, and the before and after photos that we often see on social media. Be true to yourself, to your WHY, to your finances, and to your personal story. As you try to eat clean on a budget and lose weight, you might, and will fail along the way. The secret to successful weight loss is to get up and start again each time you fail. Don’t stay down for longer than 5 days.

Find the strength within you to stay consistent, and keep going no matter what! Don’t give up on your weight loss goals. Yes, you will be discouraged time and again, especially when results seem slow. Just never ever quit. I have struggled with weight since 2005 when I had my first child and I know how it is like. Keep going until you reach your goal

[douglassmiith]

Tax Tips for Last-Minute E-Filers

July 14, 2020 13 min read

This story originally appeared on PC Mag

In a traditional year, your taxes would now be long overdue, but 2020 is as far from a normal year as possible. The COVID-19 pandemic has the weakest of silver linings. The federal government and all the states with income tax pushed back the filing deadline (even for extensions) to July 15, 2020.

But that means you’ve only got a couple days left.

According to AICPA tax filing guidance, some states have even later deadlines: Iowa is July 31 and Hawaii on July 20. However, a few states required filing in June (Idaho, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Washington; the latter two for business taxes), as well as Puerto Rico, so here’s hoping you didn’t forget.

If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming, you don’t have to worry about state income tax at all.

If you’re getting a refund, you should have filed months ago so you could get that money fast. Now, time’s up. Read on for everything you need to know to file fast.

Hassle-Free Filing

Filing doesn’t need to be a hassle. Today’s tax-prep software painlessly takes you through the steps needed to file a clean, correct return in a timely fashion. The software saves your work as you go, so start immediately and finish when you have all the documents you require. Legally, most tax documents such as W-2s, 1099s, etc., should be mailed with a postmark by Jan. 31, though there are a few exceptions, like 1099-S and 1099-B forms. But it’s July. You better have it all by now.

Don’t file until you’re sure you’ve got all the forms. Not only does it put a bigger target on you for an audit, it means more paperwork later when you file an amendment (Form 1040-X; you’ve got three years from the original filing date to file an amendment to get a refund, and 1040-X cannot be e-filed, only snail mailed). Better to file an extension (see below).

E-filing is the way to go. (If you don’t believe me, read How to Get a Bigger Refund with Tax Software.) Perhaps best of all, nine out of 10 e-filers receive refunds within 21 days, as opposed to six weeks for paper filers. Even the IRS prefers it.

In 2015, there was a huge spike in refund theft—1.2 million fraudulent returns filed for $7.2 billion. The IRS and states cracked down on tax refund fraud, thus delaying refunds to verify IDs has become the norm, especially for those getting the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit. Fraudsters love these refundable tax credits, since even a low-income return that owes nothing could qualify. The other reason refunds will be late: low staffing at the IRS.

The IRS will only accept one return per Social Security number, so filing early means beating fraudsters to the punch. Getting a rejection on an e-filed return this late in the game is the first sign your ID may be compromised. Fixing that issue can be a true hassle, starting with a fraud report.

All of which means, if it takes longer to get your refund, it may be for a good reason. The IRS fraud filters are more stringent, catching more legit filers in their claws. In 2015, 40 percent of the 4.8 million flagged by the IRS as fraudulent were not. By the end of 2018, fraud was down a full 72 percent, according to the IRS.

In 2018, there was something else to worry about. The IRS issued a warning about fraudsters who deposited tax returns to your account even if you didn’t file. Sound great, but then the bad guys tried to trick you into handing the money over to them. It was a phishing+fraud+social engineering scheme, and it could still work. If you receive an erroneous refund, contact your bank and have them return the refund to the IRS, then call the IRS at 800-829-1040 for individuals, or 800-829-4933 for businesses, and explain what happened. You can read a lot more about this in Forbes. You can also read our expert’s take on How to Avoid Phishing Scams.

Here’s a look at the 2020 list of “Dirty Dozen” top tax scams from the IRS.

In 2015, scam calls from people/bots pretending to be the IRS demanding tax payments were on the rise, persisting into 2018. It is a scam: The IRS will never call you to demand an immediate payment. It certainly won’t ask for a credit or debit card number over the phone. The IRS’s first point of contact is always the mail, and you have the right to appeal before you pay a dime, even to the IRS. It’s all part of the Tax Payer Bill of Rights. If you get such a call, report it on the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting form, or call 800-366-4484.

Smartphone users should download the Hiya app (free on Android and iOS), which has built-in phone-spam detection specifically targeting such calls. If you report a call to Hiya, it adds any new numbers to the database to help others.

Hopefully you’re past worrying about all this because you’ve already filed. But if that were they case, you wouldn’t be reading an article with a headline about last-minute e-filers. So read on for the overview of what you need to know.

Determine the Best Tax Software for You

There are big names and small in online tax preparation software, but this year only Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2020 takes home the Editors’ Choice. The only other software with as high a rating is H&R Block DelUXe 2020.

All range in price from free versions for federal filing to premium packages that include state filing and advanced scenarios. Each offers a variety of ways to claim refunds, provide recommendations to avoid an audit, and offer some form of an accuracy guarantee.

If you need to file on your phone, these are our picks for Best Mobile Tax Apps (TurboTax wins again).

If you’re a freelancer, our guide to filing taxes in the gig economy will help you determine the right tax software.

Extensions, Penalties, and When to Pay

If you know you’re owed a federal refund, you are allowed to file late. Yeah, even after July 15 this year. That’s because your typical punishment for filing late is giving up a percentage of your refund.

In fact, the government would appreciate it if citizens getting a refund did file late. It prefers to collect money. It also likes to keep money, and if you wait long enough—three years—your refund becomes government property.

This does not apply to the states, however. File state taxes on time, whether you’re paying or not.

For the Luddites who fear electronic filing, there will likely be a number of USPS offices open until midnight on July 15—and you must have an 11:59:59 p.m. post mark or you’re late. Use the USPS.com Locations tool to find the office nearest to you that will be open, but call to make sure.

Image credit: JJ Gouin/Shutterstock

If you don’t file by July 15 (not even an extension), but you owe money, the monetary penalties are 5 percent of any unpaid taxes owed for each month you don’t file, up to 25 percent of the total owed. On top of that, you have to deal with the IRS, which is punishment enough. That’s just for filing late.

Then there’s a penalty for paying late—another 0.5 percent per month. There’s no statute of limitations on lateness—the IRS will come after what you owe even in 80 years, if you last that long. The moral is, file even if you can’t pay what you owe.

Strangely, the penalty for not filing is a lot worse than the penalty for not paying.

You can always file an extension. Form 4868 (“Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return”) is part of your e-filing tax software. It also must be filed by July 15, just like a standard tax return. Doing so gives you an extra three months to do the federal paperwork, until October 15, 2020; for states it varies.

There’s one problem. If you owe money, getting an extension doesn’t mean you get to pay later. You are required to pony up at least 90 percent of what you owe by July 15, 2020. (Remember, that beats paying the 5 percent per month penalty you receive if you don’t even file an extension.)

Deductions, If Possible

There’s a chance you’re going to be among the hundreds of thousands of citizens of the US this year who don’t even bother itemizing and claiming any deductions. That’s because the standard deduction for most has been increased so much—it’s nearly double—that itemizing deductions won’t be worth the hassle. You’ll be just as, if not more, likely to get a refund without doing the extra work.

Plus, a lot of deductions went away under the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2019, which has radically changed things for tax payers. There are no more deductions for: personal exemptions, SALT deductions, moving expenses, work expenses (until 2025), or even tax preparation fees.

If you are still claiming deductions, here are a couple you can sandwich in at the last minute to help, even though the tax year 2019 is long over.

Until July 15, 2020, because of the tax filing date change, you can contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA and deduct the amount from your income for 2019. You can contribute up to $6,000 or $7,000 if you’re over 50. That can save you $2,200 in taxes.

You can still contribute to a Simplified Employee Pension IRA (SEP IRA) and/or Health Savings Account (HSA) for the 2019 calendar year. For the SEP-IRA the limit is $57,000 or 25 percent of your compensation, whichever comes first. For the HSA, don’t go over the maximum contribution of $3,550 for individuals or $7,100 for families. You can add $1,000 if you’re over age 55.

Need to find more deductions? Try these:

Are you a volunteer? You can’t deduct your time or personal expenses like lunch while helping, but you can claim up to 14 cents per mile driven in your own car while traveling for voluntary acts for a nonprofit. Parking and tolls, too. (That’s right, you can claim mileage for volunteering, but not for actually paid work.)

If you’re in the armed forces and have to move due to a change of station (under orders), you can claim 17 cents per mile driven for moving purposes. Which is actually down from the 20 cents option in 2019.

If you paid directly for glasses or contacts, examinations at any doctor, teeth cleanings, hospital visits, ambulance bills, etc., in calendar year 2019—and those medical expenses all add up to more than 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income (AGI)—you’ve got a major deduction on your hands. It takes a lot to get to 7.5 percent, but one year with a serious illness can add up quickly. (In 2020, you’ll have to spend 10 percent of your AGI on medical care to deduct it.)

If you did any kind of home improvement for medical reasons—like installing a wheelchair ramp—that’s deductible, but again must fall within that 7.5 percent with all the other medical expenses.

Find Your Missing Info

Worried about a missing W-2 or 1099? Get a look at your full IRS transcript—that’s a list of all the income and wage information that was reported about you over the year. You’ll find it at the IRS page called Welcome to Get Transcript.

You’ll need to provide your Social Security number or Individual Tax Identification number (ITIN), date of birth, filing status, and street address for an online transcript that’s suitable for printing.

Know Your IP PIN (If Necessary!)

For a select group of citizens—mainly those who may have a compromised Social Security number—the IRS will assign a six-digit Identity Protection personal identification number (IP PIN). It’s another extra-governmental identifier that might make privacy advocates apoplectic but helps the IRS in its constant battle against fraud.

Including it provides government accountants extra assurance you are you. If you ever got one, even as part of a pilot program, it’s required for all future tax returns. If you can’t find your IP PIN (it comes on a CP01A notice; you’ll get a new one every year), go to the Get An Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) page to retrieve it.

If you’ve never received an IP PIN in your life, consider yourself lucky. But you can always opt in to get one.

Don’t Sweat the Audits

A lot of people get stressed about an audit. That’s when the IRS comes in and goes over your records to make sure you’re not a big ol’ tax liar. Tax prep software like TurboTax will provide a rundown of why it believes you’re at risk of an audit or not. Audits have declined every year since 2010; As of 2019, it only screened 0.45 percent of individual tax returns, that’s half of what it screened a decade ago. That’s because of staffing. The IRS has lost 30,000 full-timers due to cuts since 2010. 31 percent more of them will retire by 2025.

Filers who make over $10 million a year are statistically more likely to get inspected, no matter what—6.66 percent of returns on such high-income households get screened. Sorry, Richie Rich.

There might be some random audits, but if you’ve never been audited before, it’s unlikely to happen now if you don’t throw any red flags in your filing. The biggest thing is, don’t stand out. The IRS is using algorithms just like everyone else to see who in your income bracket is unique, and unique gets noticed, and noticed gets checked. Amending your taxes is another red flag that increases audit risk, so use software to file accurately the first time.

Other ways to get audited, according to Forbes: have off-shore accounts, make incredibly huge charitable deductions, publicly protest paying taxes (and then don’t pay!), have a business that’s always reporting losses, try to write-off your hobbies, or make a lot of math errors in your returns. That last one isn’t a problem if you use tax prep software.

At least one accountant claims a good way to avoid audits is to always file for an extension and submit tax paperwork in the height of summer, because auditors like to vacation, too. But for 2020, filing in the summer is now the norm, so it shouldn’t count against you. We hope.

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Tax Tips for Last-Minute E-Filers

July 14, 2020 13 min read

This story originally appeared on PC Mag

In a traditional year, your taxes would now be long overdue, but 2020 is as far from a normal year as possible. The COVID-19 pandemic has the weakest of silver linings. The federal government and all the states with income tax pushed back the filing deadline (even for extensions) to July 15, 2020.

But that means you’ve only got a couple days left.

According to AICPA tax filing guidance, some states have even later deadlines: Iowa is July 31 and Hawaii on July 20. However, a few states required filing in June (Idaho, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Washington; the latter two for business taxes), as well as Puerto Rico, so here’s hoping you didn’t forget.

If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming, you don’t have to worry about state income tax at all.

If you’re getting a refund, you should have filed months ago so you could get that money fast. Now, time’s up. Read on for everything you need to know to file fast.

Hassle-Free Filing

Filing doesn’t need to be a hassle. Today’s tax-prep software painlessly takes you through the steps needed to file a clean, correct return in a timely fashion. The software saves your work as you go, so start immediately and finish when you have all the documents you require. Legally, most tax documents such as W-2s, 1099s, etc., should be mailed with a postmark by Jan. 31, though there are a few exceptions, like 1099-S and 1099-B forms. But it’s July. You better have it all by now.

Don’t file until you’re sure you’ve got all the forms. Not only does it put a bigger target on you for an audit, it means more paperwork later when you file an amendment (Form 1040-X; you’ve got three years from the original filing date to file an amendment to get a refund, and 1040-X cannot be e-filed, only snail mailed). Better to file an extension (see below).

E-filing is the way to go. (If you don’t believe me, read How to Get a Bigger Refund with Tax Software.) Perhaps best of all, nine out of 10 e-filers receive refunds within 21 days, as opposed to six weeks for paper filers. Even the IRS prefers it.

In 2015, there was a huge spike in refund theft—1.2 million fraudulent returns filed for $7.2 billion. The IRS and states cracked down on tax refund fraud, thus delaying refunds to verify IDs has become the norm, especially for those getting the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit. Fraudsters love these refundable tax credits, since even a low-income return that owes nothing could qualify. The other reason refunds will be late: low staffing at the IRS.

The IRS will only accept one return per Social Security number, so filing early means beating fraudsters to the punch. Getting a rejection on an e-filed return this late in the game is the first sign your ID may be compromised. Fixing that issue can be a true hassle, starting with a fraud report.

All of which means, if it takes longer to get your refund, it may be for a good reason. The IRS fraud filters are more stringent, catching more legit filers in their claws. In 2015, 40 percent of the 4.8 million flagged by the IRS as fraudulent were not. By the end of 2018, fraud was down a full 72 percent, according to the IRS.

In 2018, there was something else to worry about. The IRS issued a warning about fraudsters who deposited tax returns to your account even if you didn’t file. Sound great, but then the bad guys tried to trick you into handing the money over to them. It was a phishing+fraud+social engineering scheme, and it could still work. If you receive an erroneous refund, contact your bank and have them return the refund to the IRS, then call the IRS at 800-829-1040 for individuals, or 800-829-4933 for businesses, and explain what happened. You can read a lot more about this in Forbes. You can also read our expert’s take on How to Avoid Phishing Scams.

Here’s a look at the 2020 list of “Dirty Dozen” top tax scams from the IRS.

In 2015, scam calls from people/bots pretending to be the IRS demanding tax payments were on the rise, persisting into 2018. It is a scam: The IRS will never call you to demand an immediate payment. It certainly won’t ask for a credit or debit card number over the phone. The IRS’s first point of contact is always the mail, and you have the right to appeal before you pay a dime, even to the IRS. It’s all part of the Tax Payer Bill of Rights. If you get such a call, report it on the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting form, or call 800-366-4484.

Smartphone users should download the Hiya app (free on Android and iOS), which has built-in phone-spam detection specifically targeting such calls. If you report a call to Hiya, it adds any new numbers to the database to help others.

Hopefully you’re past worrying about all this because you’ve already filed. But if that were they case, you wouldn’t be reading an article with a headline about last-minute e-filers. So read on for the overview of what you need to know.

Determine the Best Tax Software for You

There are big names and small in online tax preparation software, but this year only Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2020 takes home the Editors’ Choice. The only other software with as high a rating is H&R Block DelUXe 2020.

All range in price from free versions for federal filing to premium packages that include state filing and advanced scenarios. Each offers a variety of ways to claim refunds, provide recommendations to avoid an audit, and offer some form of an accuracy guarantee.

If you need to file on your phone, these are our picks for Best Mobile Tax Apps (TurboTax wins again).

If you’re a freelancer, our guide to filing taxes in the gig economy will help you determine the right tax software.

Extensions, Penalties, and When to Pay

If you know you’re owed a federal refund, you are allowed to file late. Yeah, even after July 15 this year. That’s because your typical punishment for filing late is giving up a percentage of your refund.

In fact, the government would appreciate it if citizens getting a refund did file late. It prefers to collect money. It also likes to keep money, and if you wait long enough—three years—your refund becomes government property.

This does not apply to the states, however. File state taxes on time, whether you’re paying or not.

For the Luddites who fear electronic filing, there will likely be a number of USPS offices open until midnight on July 15—and you must have an 11:59:59 p.m. post mark or you’re late. Use the USPS.com Locations tool to find the office nearest to you that will be open, but call to make sure.

Image credit: JJ Gouin/Shutterstock

If you don’t file by July 15 (not even an extension), but you owe money, the monetary penalties are 5 percent of any unpaid taxes owed for each month you don’t file, up to 25 percent of the total owed. On top of that, you have to deal with the IRS, which is punishment enough. That’s just for filing late.

Then there’s a penalty for paying late—another 0.5 percent per month. There’s no statute of limitations on lateness—the IRS will come after what you owe even in 80 years, if you last that long. The moral is, file even if you can’t pay what you owe.

Strangely, the penalty for not filing is a lot worse than the penalty for not paying.

You can always file an extension. Form 4868 (“Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return”) is part of your e-filing tax software. It also must be filed by July 15, just like a standard tax return. Doing so gives you an extra three months to do the federal paperwork, until October 15, 2020; for states it varies.

There’s one problem. If you owe money, getting an extension doesn’t mean you get to pay later. You are required to pony up at least 90 percent of what you owe by July 15, 2020. (Remember, that beats paying the 5 percent per month penalty you receive if you don’t even file an extension.)

Deductions, If Possible

There’s a chance you’re going to be among the hundreds of thousands of citizens of the US this year who don’t even bother itemizing and claiming any deductions. That’s because the standard deduction for most has been increased so much—it’s nearly double—that itemizing deductions won’t be worth the hassle. You’ll be just as, if not more, likely to get a refund without doing the extra work.

Plus, a lot of deductions went away under the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2019, which has radically changed things for tax payers. There are no more deductions for: personal exemptions, SALT deductions, moving expenses, work expenses (until 2025), or even tax preparation fees.

If you are still claiming deductions, here are a couple you can sandwich in at the last minute to help, even though the tax year 2019 is long over.

Until July 15, 2020, because of the tax filing date change, you can contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA and deduct the amount from your income for 2019. You can contribute up to $6,000 or $7,000 if you’re over 50. That can save you $2,200 in taxes.

You can still contribute to a Simplified Employee Pension IRA (SEP IRA) and/or Health Savings Account (HSA) for the 2019 calendar year. For the SEP-IRA the limit is $57,000 or 25 percent of your compensation, whichever comes first. For the HSA, don’t go over the maximum contribution of $3,550 for individuals or $7,100 for families. You can add $1,000 if you’re over age 55.

Need to find more deductions? Try these:

Are you a volunteer? You can’t deduct your time or personal expenses like lunch while helping, but you can claim up to 14 cents per mile driven in your own car while traveling for voluntary acts for a nonprofit. Parking and tolls, too. (That’s right, you can claim mileage for volunteering, but not for actually paid work.)

If you’re in the armed forces and have to move due to a change of station (under orders), you can claim 17 cents per mile driven for moving purposes. Which is actually down from the 20 cents option in 2019.

If you paid directly for glasses or contacts, examinations at any doctor, teeth cleanings, hospital visits, ambulance bills, etc., in calendar year 2019—and those medical expenses all add up to more than 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income (AGI)—you’ve got a major deduction on your hands. It takes a lot to get to 7.5 percent, but one year with a serious illness can add up quickly. (In 2020, you’ll have to spend 10 percent of your AGI on medical care to deduct it.)

If you did any kind of home improvement for medical reasons—like installing a wheelchair ramp—that’s deductible, but again must fall within that 7.5 percent with all the other medical expenses.

Find Your Missing Info

Worried about a missing W-2 or 1099? Get a look at your full IRS transcript—that’s a list of all the income and wage information that was reported about you over the year. You’ll find it at the IRS page called Welcome to Get Transcript.

You’ll need to provide your Social Security number or Individual Tax Identification number (ITIN), date of birth, filing status, and street address for an online transcript that’s suitable for printing.

Know Your IP PIN (If Necessary!)

For a select group of citizens—mainly those who may have a compromised Social Security number—the IRS will assign a six-digit Identity Protection personal identification number (IP PIN). It’s another extra-governmental identifier that might make privacy advocates apoplectic but helps the IRS in its constant battle against fraud.

Including it provides government accountants extra assurance you are you. If you ever got one, even as part of a pilot program, it’s required for all future tax returns. If you can’t find your IP PIN (it comes on a CP01A notice; you’ll get a new one every year), go to the Get An Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) page to retrieve it.

If you’ve never received an IP PIN in your life, consider yourself lucky. But you can always opt in to get one.

Don’t Sweat the Audits

A lot of people get stressed about an audit. That’s when the IRS comes in and goes over your records to make sure you’re not a big ol’ tax liar. Tax prep software like TurboTax will provide a rundown of why it believes you’re at risk of an audit or not. Audits have declined every year since 2010; As of 2019, it only screened 0.45 percent of individual tax returns, that’s half of what it screened a decade ago. That’s because of staffing. The IRS has lost 30,000 full-timers due to cuts since 2010. 31 percent more of them will retire by 2025.

Filers who make over $10 million a year are statistically more likely to get inspected, no matter what—6.66 percent of returns on such high-income households get screened. Sorry, Richie Rich.

There might be some random audits, but if you’ve never been audited before, it’s unlikely to happen now if you don’t throw any red flags in your filing. The biggest thing is, don’t stand out. The IRS is using algorithms just like everyone else to see who in your income bracket is unique, and unique gets noticed, and noticed gets checked. Amending your taxes is another red flag that increases audit risk, so use software to file accurately the first time.

Other ways to get audited, according to Forbes: have off-shore accounts, make incredibly huge charitable deductions, publicly protest paying taxes (and then don’t pay!), have a business that’s always reporting losses, try to write-off your hobbies, or make a lot of math errors in your returns. That last one isn’t a problem if you use tax prep software.

At least one accountant claims a good way to avoid audits is to always file for an extension and submit tax paperwork in the height of summer, because auditors like to vacation, too. But for 2020, filing in the summer is now the norm, so it shouldn’t count against you. We hope.

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Tax Tips for Last-Minute E-Filers

July 14, 2020 13 min read

This story originally appeared on PC Mag

In a traditional year, your taxes would now be long overdue, but 2020 is as far from a normal year as possible. The COVID-19 pandemic has the weakest of silver linings. The federal government and all the states with income tax pushed back the filing deadline (even for extensions) to July 15, 2020.

But that means you’ve only got a couple days left.

According to AICPA tax filing guidance, some states have even later deadlines: Iowa is July 31 and Hawaii on July 20. However, a few states required filing in June (Idaho, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Washington; the latter two for business taxes), as well as Puerto Rico, so here’s hoping you didn’t forget.

If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming, you don’t have to worry about state income tax at all.

If you’re getting a refund, you should have filed months ago so you could get that money fast. Now, time’s up. Read on for everything you need to know to file fast.

Hassle-Free Filing

Filing doesn’t need to be a hassle. Today’s tax-prep software painlessly takes you through the steps needed to file a clean, correct return in a timely fashion. The software saves your work as you go, so start immediately and finish when you have all the documents you require. Legally, most tax documents such as W-2s, 1099s, etc., should be mailed with a postmark by Jan. 31, though there are a few exceptions, like 1099-S and 1099-B forms. But it’s July. You better have it all by now.

Don’t file until you’re sure you’ve got all the forms. Not only does it put a bigger target on you for an audit, it means more paperwork later when you file an amendment (Form 1040-X; you’ve got three years from the original filing date to file an amendment to get a refund, and 1040-X cannot be e-filed, only snail mailed). Better to file an extension (see below).

E-filing is the way to go. (If you don’t believe me, read How to Get a Bigger Refund with Tax Software.) Perhaps best of all, nine out of 10 e-filers receive refunds within 21 days, as opposed to six weeks for paper filers. Even the IRS prefers it.

In 2015, there was a huge spike in refund theft—1.2 million fraudulent returns filed for $7.2 billion. The IRS and states cracked down on tax refund fraud, thus delaying refunds to verify IDs has become the norm, especially for those getting the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit. Fraudsters love these refundable tax credits, since even a low-income return that owes nothing could qualify. The other reason refunds will be late: low staffing at the IRS.

The IRS will only accept one return per Social Security number, so filing early means beating fraudsters to the punch. Getting a rejection on an e-filed return this late in the game is the first sign your ID may be compromised. Fixing that issue can be a true hassle, starting with a fraud report.

All of which means, if it takes longer to get your refund, it may be for a good reason. The IRS fraud filters are more stringent, catching more legit filers in their claws. In 2015, 40 percent of the 4.8 million flagged by the IRS as fraudulent were not. By the end of 2018, fraud was down a full 72 percent, according to the IRS.

In 2018, there was something else to worry about. The IRS issued a warning about fraudsters who deposited tax returns to your account even if you didn’t file. Sound great, but then the bad guys tried to trick you into handing the money over to them. It was a phishing+fraud+social engineering scheme, and it could still work. If you receive an erroneous refund, contact your bank and have them return the refund to the IRS, then call the IRS at 800-829-1040 for individuals, or 800-829-4933 for businesses, and explain what happened. You can read a lot more about this in Forbes. You can also read our expert’s take on How to Avoid Phishing Scams.

Here’s a look at the 2020 list of “Dirty Dozen” top tax scams from the IRS.

In 2015, scam calls from people/bots pretending to be the IRS demanding tax payments were on the rise, persisting into 2018. It is a scam: The IRS will never call you to demand an immediate payment. It certainly won’t ask for a credit or debit card number over the phone. The IRS’s first point of contact is always the mail, and you have the right to appeal before you pay a dime, even to the IRS. It’s all part of the Tax Payer Bill of Rights. If you get such a call, report it on the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting form, or call 800-366-4484.

Smartphone users should download the Hiya app (free on Android and iOS), which has built-in phone-spam detection specifically targeting such calls. If you report a call to Hiya, it adds any new numbers to the database to help others.

Hopefully you’re past worrying about all this because you’ve already filed. But if that were they case, you wouldn’t be reading an article with a headline about last-minute e-filers. So read on for the overview of what you need to know.

Determine the Best Tax Software for You

There are big names and small in online tax preparation software, but this year only Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2020 takes home the Editors’ Choice. The only other software with as high a rating is H&R Block DelUXe 2020.

All range in price from free versions for federal filing to premium packages that include state filing and advanced scenarios. Each offers a variety of ways to claim refunds, provide recommendations to avoid an audit, and offer some form of an accuracy guarantee.

If you need to file on your phone, these are our picks for Best Mobile Tax Apps (TurboTax wins again).

If you’re a freelancer, our guide to filing taxes in the gig economy will help you determine the right tax software.

Extensions, Penalties, and When to Pay

If you know you’re owed a federal refund, you are allowed to file late. Yeah, even after July 15 this year. That’s because your typical punishment for filing late is giving up a percentage of your refund.

In fact, the government would appreciate it if citizens getting a refund did file late. It prefers to collect money. It also likes to keep money, and if you wait long enough—three years—your refund becomes government property.

This does not apply to the states, however. File state taxes on time, whether you’re paying or not.

For the Luddites who fear electronic filing, there will likely be a number of USPS offices open until midnight on July 15—and you must have an 11:59:59 p.m. post mark or you’re late. Use the USPS.com Locations tool to find the office nearest to you that will be open, but call to make sure.

Image credit: JJ Gouin/Shutterstock

If you don’t file by July 15 (not even an extension), but you owe money, the monetary penalties are 5 percent of any unpaid taxes owed for each month you don’t file, up to 25 percent of the total owed. On top of that, you have to deal with the IRS, which is punishment enough. That’s just for filing late.

Then there’s a penalty for paying late—another 0.5 percent per month. There’s no statute of limitations on lateness—the IRS will come after what you owe even in 80 years, if you last that long. The moral is, file even if you can’t pay what you owe.

Strangely, the penalty for not filing is a lot worse than the penalty for not paying.

You can always file an extension. Form 4868 (“Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return”) is part of your e-filing tax software. It also must be filed by July 15, just like a standard tax return. Doing so gives you an extra three months to do the federal paperwork, until October 15, 2020; for states it varies.

There’s one problem. If you owe money, getting an extension doesn’t mean you get to pay later. You are required to pony up at least 90 percent of what you owe by July 15, 2020. (Remember, that beats paying the 5 percent per month penalty you receive if you don’t even file an extension.)

Deductions, If Possible

There’s a chance you’re going to be among the hundreds of thousands of citizens of the US this year who don’t even bother itemizing and claiming any deductions. That’s because the standard deduction for most has been increased so much—it’s nearly double—that itemizing deductions won’t be worth the hassle. You’ll be just as, if not more, likely to get a refund without doing the extra work.

Plus, a lot of deductions went away under the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2019, which has radically changed things for tax payers. There are no more deductions for: personal exemptions, SALT deductions, moving expenses, work expenses (until 2025), or even tax preparation fees.

If you are still claiming deductions, here are a couple you can sandwich in at the last minute to help, even though the tax year 2019 is long over.

Until July 15, 2020, because of the tax filing date change, you can contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA and deduct the amount from your income for 2019. You can contribute up to $6,000 or $7,000 if you’re over 50. That can save you $2,200 in taxes.

You can still contribute to a Simplified Employee Pension IRA (SEP IRA) and/or Health Savings Account (HSA) for the 2019 calendar year. For the SEP-IRA the limit is $57,000 or 25 percent of your compensation, whichever comes first. For the HSA, don’t go over the maximum contribution of $3,550 for individuals or $7,100 for families. You can add $1,000 if you’re over age 55.

Need to find more deductions? Try these:

Are you a volunteer? You can’t deduct your time or personal expenses like lunch while helping, but you can claim up to 14 cents per mile driven in your own car while traveling for voluntary acts for a nonprofit. Parking and tolls, too. (That’s right, you can claim mileage for volunteering, but not for actually paid work.)

If you’re in the armed forces and have to move due to a change of station (under orders), you can claim 17 cents per mile driven for moving purposes. Which is actually down from the 20 cents option in 2019.

If you paid directly for glasses or contacts, examinations at any doctor, teeth cleanings, hospital visits, ambulance bills, etc., in calendar year 2019—and those medical expenses all add up to more than 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income (AGI)—you’ve got a major deduction on your hands. It takes a lot to get to 7.5 percent, but one year with a serious illness can add up quickly. (In 2020, you’ll have to spend 10 percent of your AGI on medical care to deduct it.)

If you did any kind of home improvement for medical reasons—like installing a wheelchair ramp—that’s deductible, but again must fall within that 7.5 percent with all the other medical expenses.

Find Your Missing Info

Worried about a missing W-2 or 1099? Get a look at your full IRS transcript—that’s a list of all the income and wage information that was reported about you over the year. You’ll find it at the IRS page called Welcome to Get Transcript.

You’ll need to provide your Social Security number or Individual Tax Identification number (ITIN), date of birth, filing status, and street address for an online transcript that’s suitable for printing.

Know Your IP PIN (If Necessary!)

For a select group of citizens—mainly those who may have a compromised Social Security number—the IRS will assign a six-digit Identity Protection personal identification number (IP PIN). It’s another extra-governmental identifier that might make privacy advocates apoplectic but helps the IRS in its constant battle against fraud.

Including it provides government accountants extra assurance you are you. If you ever got one, even as part of a pilot program, it’s required for all future tax returns. If you can’t find your IP PIN (it comes on a CP01A notice; you’ll get a new one every year), go to the Get An Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) page to retrieve it.

If you’ve never received an IP PIN in your life, consider yourself lucky. But you can always opt in to get one.

Don’t Sweat the Audits

A lot of people get stressed about an audit. That’s when the IRS comes in and goes over your records to make sure you’re not a big ol’ tax liar. Tax prep software like TurboTax will provide a rundown of why it believes you’re at risk of an audit or not. Audits have declined every year since 2010; As of 2019, it only screened 0.45 percent of individual tax returns, that’s half of what it screened a decade ago. That’s because of staffing. The IRS has lost 30,000 full-timers due to cuts since 2010. 31 percent more of them will retire by 2025.

Filers who make over $10 million a year are statistically more likely to get inspected, no matter what—6.66 percent of returns on such high-income households get screened. Sorry, Richie Rich.

There might be some random audits, but if you’ve never been audited before, it’s unlikely to happen now if you don’t throw any red flags in your filing. The biggest thing is, don’t stand out. The IRS is using algorithms just like everyone else to see who in your income bracket is unique, and unique gets noticed, and noticed gets checked. Amending your taxes is another red flag that increases audit risk, so use software to file accurately the first time.

Other ways to get audited, according to Forbes: have off-shore accounts, make incredibly huge charitable deductions, publicly protest paying taxes (and then don’t pay!), have a business that’s always reporting losses, try to write-off your hobbies, or make a lot of math errors in your returns. That last one isn’t a problem if you use tax prep software.

At least one accountant claims a good way to avoid audits is to always file for an extension and submit tax paperwork in the height of summer, because auditors like to vacation, too. But for 2020, filing in the summer is now the norm, so it shouldn’t count against you. We hope.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

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source http://www.scpie.org/tax-tips-for-last-minute-e-filers/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/623678993347018752