Thursday night, late March. A blond Canadian ex-pat sits in her living room, having come to the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion. It's come to this. It's time.

I'm about to begin Canada's favorite springtime game that I like to call "Choose your own income tax filing adventure."

This year is particularly fun, given that I've come across two entirely different sets of filing instructions for non-residents of Canada, each with a different tax office to mail your return to. I haven't quite figured out yet which one applies when you were a resident for part of the year, but I'm hoping it's the one where I get to claim a portion of the personal tax credit for the number of days in 2007 that I was still living there. If you don't hear from me in the next week or so, I'm probably rocking back and forth somewhere, singing Rick Mercer's "Knee in my Package" song.

For the confused, yes, I file a US return too. ;) But given that I wouldn't know how to file a state and federal return if it walked up to me, shook my hand, then took me out for dinner, I'm letting the pros handle that one.

Before I head off to the land of the infinitely confused to be blindsided by numbers while attempting whichever non-resident-applicable mathematical equation was dreamed up for us this year by someone who's been snowed-in to their government office since last fall, I want to leave you all with a very funny article that was forwarded to me by a friend this morning. If you're in need of some sarcastic/cynical humor, then check out "What's eating you, Mother Nature? Is it us?" by Maclean's columnist Scott Feschuk. I'm sending lots of love and warm, snow-melting thoughts to my friends back in Ottawa. Hope you see springtime soon!