Today is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ first ***sales tax holiday|http://www.dor.state.ma.us/forms/SalesTaxHoliday.htm***. Normally we have a 5% sales tax (which really isn’t that bad), but today on items $2500 or less, you don’t have to pay sales tax. A great place to use this would be to purchase something like a new computer. Fortunately, the Apple Store is making this very easy – they will be open for 24 hours today at all three Massachusetts locations. Unfortunately, not only do we not need to buy a new computer, we also don’t have anything else we need to buy. Going shopping today would only motivate us to buy things we don’t need (which, of course, is exactly what the Commonwealth and Commonwealth businesses are hoping for).

That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing I *want*, of course. If you hadn’t noticed already, I’m keeping track of such things in the new ***Stuff Peter Wants|http://prwdot.org/?p=stuff_peter_wants*** page. It’s on the left navbar of our main website.

In more exciting news, we had some folks over last night for a little party to celebrate the 2004 Athens Olympics. There were nine people there, including Becky and I, which is just about as much as our living room can hold. 🙂 We did some Olympic trivia, watched the opening ceremonies, and had lots of food and desserts. Becky made a ***watermelon whale|http://gallery.prwdot.org/craftiness/IMG_8797*** which she filled with fruit salad. There were also various munchies, and several delectable desserts: peanut butter cheesecake with chocolate topping, which Jenn brought, strawberry cake, and ice cream sandwich cake. Recipes are available. if anyone is interested. 🙂

One other thing I missed posting earlier was that I attended the ***BMAC|http://www.bmac.org/*** meeting this Wednesday. You can see the ***photos I took|http://gallery.prwdot.org/bmac_august_04***. The topic of the meeting was “Stump the Chumps”, where people bring in all sorts of Mac problems they are having and try to stump a panel of Mac “chumps”. Many of the questions were beyond arcane, but it is always an interesting study in Geek group dynamics to see all of these people interact. Of course, the free ice cream at the end of the meeting was a nice bonus. 🙂

Can you believe that we are halfway through August? Before you know it, it will be October — which means my birthday (see the aforementioned ***Stuff Peter Wants|http://prwdot.org/?p=stuff_peter_wants*** page), Dad’s birthday, and our second anniversary! 🙂