My Daily Domestic Diigolet 05/07/2008

Weight loss is to women as sex is to the seventeen year old male: We think about it every 6 seconds.

How Does Using TurboTax Affect My Economic Stimulus Payment?

If you’ve used TurboTax to file your income tax, there is a chance you will be getting a paper check in the mail. You will get a paper check even if you get your federal income tax rebate by direct deposit.

Under certain circumstances, however, the IRS has decided that taxpayers can only get their rebates by mail, even if they get their refunds by direct deposit. At TurboTax, this will happen if you use a “refund transfer” when filing your 2007 return. This service lets you pay for your tax preparation and/or e-filing from your refund proceeds, for an additional fee, under an agreement with Santa Barbara Bank & Trust .

Because of the timing of the Economic Stimulus Payment Package most tax preparation companies didn’t have a chance to prepare for it. So in TurboTax’s defense, they probably just didn’t have time to make it work.

TORONTO (LifeSiteNews) – Jim Caviezel, the star of the blockbuster film The Passion of the Christ, told an interviewer that he had been challenged by a friend who was not pro-life to live up to his professed pro-life convictions and adopt a disabled child.

The friend told Caviezel that if he did that, then he would change to the pro-life position. When Caviezel and his wife, Kerri, went to China to adopt not one, but eventually two orphans suffering from brain tumours, the friend reneged on the deal. Caviezel, however, said, “It didn’t matter to me because the joy that we had from (Bo) – he’s like our own.”

About the adoption of his children, Caviezel was frank about his feelings, saying the challenge “completely terrified” him at first. “Yes, you do feel fear, you do feel scared but you have no idea the blessings that you have coming to you if you just take a chance on faith.”

When the Caviezels went to adopt their second child, they were first offered a healthy baby girl, but a five-year-old girl with a brain tumour from the Guangzhou region of China also needed a home. The Caviezels reasoned that a healthy baby would be more likely to be adopted by another family and that the child with the tumour had a greater need for a home.

Asked about the challenges of being a publicly Catholic figure in Hollywood, Caviezel responded, “It’s part of the cross you take up when you choose to believe in Him…we all have this desire to want to be liked…but what we should be asking God is the desire for humility.”

The strength of Christian faith, he said, is “in just giving it up and saying I’m going to be a servant of Jesus Christ, and my Father in heaven.”

“We were not awarded any Oscars for the Passion, but do you think that’s the important thing for God? Certainly if we received ten Oscars, it would not bring any more peace into the world.”

Caviezel said, “When you live in holiness, when you really try to stop sinning, you become braver. You become more courageous, you become a man of your word. You become a man of conviction that you’re not willing to sell out and you’re really a true knight in shining armour.”