Tax Time Adventures

So have you ever had one of those experiences where you think, "Holy shit, I need to blog about this"?  And I actually said it out loud, and God bless my husband, he didn't call me a nerd. So here's our Friday adventures, in pictures. We were going to get our taxes done. Usually we do them ourselves, but my taxes are complicated since I'm technically a small business owner. We wanted to make sure that we got all the possible deductions. Enter Bob. Bob came recommended to us by a work friend of Frank's. Frank had been to his office one other time, and when I told him that I would join him this morning, he said "Um, just be prepared. His office is different than you might image." Ok . . . his office was in a yuppy fancy suburb of our city, so I kind of expected it to be nice. But, ok maybe it's not so nice.

We parked on the street and walked to the entrance of a residential apartment building. The door didn't open, so we had to ring the doorbell. A sweaty guy in basketball shorts ran to let us in. Then we descended the steps into the basement of the building. Here's the view looking into the tax guy's office:

That bark-patterned thing? It's a couch. It was epic and I wanted to make an offer for it on the spot. And behold the brown/orange shag carpeting. They had us sit in the "waiting area" until they were done with a client. These are our views from the waiting area:

This is looking to the right.

This is looking to the floor.

Finally, Bob was done with his client and invited us into the office. Awkward, semi-obvious cell phone picture taking ensued. 

This is the best picture I could get of the couch. I'm sad its not a better picture, but you win some, you lose some. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be representational of tree bark or some kind of black, brown and gold batik/tie die deal.

This guy got a little more credibility when I saw the vintage typewriter. I mean I would love to have a vintage typewriter in my office as a home decor prop. I was in love with it. And I thought, maybe he's going for a vintage look for the office? Maybe this is all part of the plan. But then I realized it wasn't.

The typewriter was this guy's computer. Because he didn't have one. The whole time we were sitting there, this guy was drinking coffee from a plastic cup and cutting out pictures from postcards with safety scissors. Also, you can't really tell in this picture, but there were random Virgin Mary's all over the place. That's a calendar to the right of him. The calendar was a typical picture of a tropical beach scene, but it had an image of the virgin mother just randomly Photoshopped in.

The floor was tasty.



The tasteful rust-colored velvet chair cushion.

Okay, I feel like this post was sort of mean-spirited. I'm really not like that. The office was just SO shocking that I wanted to document it. But there is a moral to this story. Don't judge a book by the cover. If this guy hadn't been recommended, I would have run out the door so fast. But this guy did a kick-ass job on our taxes and saved us a bunch of money. Not like H&R Block where they would have Turbo Taxed it in five minutes. This guy really took his time and thought of EVERYTHING that we could deduct (and legally, I might add) to get the best possible return. There is definitely something to be said for "the little guy". The end.