In Which the Government Gets My Money, Even Though I Don't Feel Like They're Doing a Particularly Good Job Representing Me

Here is what it's like to do taxes in high school:

Collect W2 from employer. Give it to Dad. Dad says, "Cool, I'll take care of that." Several months later, receive check in mail. Rejoice.

Here is what it's like to do taxes in college: 

Collect W2 from employer. Lose it in stack of papers. Two months later, panic and turn desk inside out looking for it. Succeed. Give it to Dad. Several months later, receive check in mail. Rejoice.

Here is what it's like to do taxes as a newlywed:

Collect W2s from employers. Add up the two numbers. Write numbers on forms and send forms to government. Several months later, receive check in mail. Rejoice.

Here is what it's like to do taxes when you have one job but that job involves the occasional speaking engagement and you have one W2 but about eight miscellaneous income forms from the different groups you spoke to and your husband is a graduate student and he was a non-resident for the first term of the year and he has a lot of receipts for school-related expenses like books and protractors and and you also moved across the country and have about a thousand receipts documenting the move:

Collect every piece of paper you have touched in the past year. Have a glass of wine. Regard papers. Wonder what would happen if you wrote a letter to the IRS saying "How about we just call it even this year?" Have a cookie. Compose letter. Show letter to husband. Giggle manically while husband deletes letter. Call H&R Block and try not to sound too hysterical on the phone. Resolve to become a hermit next year.

We know what would be easier? We could make taxes proportional to how well we feel the government's done. I'm happy to pay my state and local taxes this year, for example. The roads aren't too pothole-y and the trash is always picked up on time. The state parks are well maintained and they're always careful to post warnings when someone has been mauled by a bear recently. Congress, however, reached an unprecedented level of incompetence this year, and I just don't trust them with my money. 

If you need me at any point in the next week, I can be found on my couch amidst a pile of papers and file folders and ballpoint pens and paper clips and post-it notes, wishing that we were still on the feudal system and I could satisfy my debt to the government (or benevolent overlord) with a few sheaves of wheat and my daughter's hand in marriage. Wish me luck. 

In Which I Humbly Request Your Assistance

My computer got all sluggish again tonight. (More sluggish than usual, I mean. It's pretty elderly, and just like elderly folks it wakes up pretty slowly and likes to take the occasional nap in the middle of the day...usually when I'm trying to watch the new episode of Downton Abbey.) When it gets slow I usually just give up and figure I should have been doing something more useful with my time anyway, but the hubby does this mysterious thing where he cleans out the cache--or, to continue with a metaphor I should probably abandon, gives it Alzheimer's. So it forgets all the things it doesn't really need to know and gets all speedy again.

So the hubby was cleaning the cache, and as he did so he remarked, "Crazy! I'm removing half a gigabyte!"

And I did that thing where I go "Hmm!"

Because here's the confession: I don't know what a gigabyte is. I know it's a lot of bytes. I know that a megabyte is a lot of bytes, too, but giga doesn't really sound that much bigger than mega. I understand both prefixes to mean, "Oh, gosh, a whole bunch." And now apparently I have to know about terabytes as well. Why couldn't they just stick with the metric system?


I start to panic whenever bytes of any size come up in conversation. I never know what I'm supposed to say, so I start examining the other person's face for clues. Do they seem impressed? Appalled? Irritated? Geeked out? I always say exactly the same thing ("Dude, seriously?") but I vary my tone to suit their facial expression. This is the quickest way to end the byte conversation, I've found.

But I've decided to come clean about it, and here's where I'm asking for your help. I need a clever mnemonic device to help me remember the order of the sizes. Evidently it goes:

byte
kilobyte
megabyte
gigabyte
terabyte

So I need a B.K.M.G.T. phrase, please. The hubby suggests "Bring Kleenex! My Girl's Tribulations," but this has two strikes against it:

(1) I'd prefer a phrase less concerned with my propensity to sniffle.
(2) I can't remember it.

I was considering "Burger King Makes Great Tacos," but I can't stomach lies on that scale. So I turn to you, Gentle Readers. Please, please, help me sound educated.