Day 2901: Good to know

One thousand, three hundred, and sixty days ago (it’s good to know who’s counting — me!), I wrote another post titled “Good to know.” It’s good to know that it’s still good to know things, even during these times of a deadly pandemic and deadly denial.

I hope it’s good to know that I finally got up some good courage yesterday to call the Internal Revenue Service to know about my good refund, which, as you might know, is a good many months late.

It’s good to know details, so here’s what happened:

• I know how difficult it is to connect with a real person in the IRS, especially these days, so I set aside a good long time to make the call.
• The automated IRS phone system gave me the same response I had gotten on-line a good many weeks ago — that the system had no knowledge of my refund — which was not good to know.
• Other automated information increased my fear that something bad had happened to my refund.
• I tried navigating the phone system every which way I knew, but still couldn’t get through to a real person with knowledge.
• I googled “how to reach a real person at IRS” which gave me a complicated hack of the phone system including refusing to enter my social security number twice, which was very good to know.
• I stayed on hold for 45 minutes, marveling that so many good people ahead of me had figured out the good-to-know hack of the phone system.
• I finally spoke to a wonderful IRS employee who was home in Texas with her dogs and who was good to know. She told me the good-to-know information that there was a backlog of mailed returns and mine was among them. That was the only reason I had not received my refund, instead of all the bad-to-know fears my mind had manufactured.
• She told me other good-to-know information, including (1) don’t mail in your return again, (2) don’t worry about identity thieves stealing your refund, (3) your husband’s erroneous Social Security information (which necessitated the mailing rather than the e-filing of our joint tax return) has been corrected, and (4) you go, girl, for marrying a good guy 10 years younger than you who cooks!

It’s good to know that bureaucracies can be made up of good-to-know human beings.

Are any of today’s images good to know?

It’s good to know Hanukkah is starting tonight and Michael will be making good potato latkes very soon.

Here are five good-to-know facts about Hanukkah from watchmojo.com:

Many thanks to all my good-to-know readers, including YOU.