It's an annual rite. San Juan Capistrano has its sparrows and the rest of us suffer tax forms.

They flutter into our mailboxes around this time of the year: W-2s, bank interest documents, 401(k) statements.

So it bears repeating: to keep them all in one place, take a large manila envelope, mark it with the words "2009 TAXES" and plop it wherever the mail is dropped in your house. Train everyone to insert all tax-related hard copies into that envelope, otherwise no soup for them.

If you have a simple federal tax return, you might check out TurboTax, which is offering free Web-based preparation, e-filing and printing.

Some new items to watch for this year, courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service:

• Certain cash contributions for Haiti relief effort can be deducted on your 2009 tax return.
• Pay cuts and a lower-paying job may have made you eligible for earned income credits. Check to see if you qualify. Larger families can especially benefit from the changes.
• Most workers got or will get bigger paychecks in 2009 and 2010 because of changes made to the federal income tax withholding tables. But some may find that less in taxes were or are being withheld than they planned, affecting their refunds. Read more here.
• Several credits were increased, including first-time homebuyer credits.
• The American opportunity tax credit, formerly named the Hope credit, can now be claimed for college expenses for the first four years of post-secondary education. It could be worth as much as $2,500 for qualified tuition and expenses paid in 2009.

Poor Kindle. I knew you well.

Actually, let's admit it: we really weren't that close. Even when I hauled you with 10 tons of techno junk to L.A., I knew in my heart that we wouldn't bond. I didn't spend any significant time with you. So, really, it's not you, it's me.

Well, okay, it is about you. The truth is your monochromatic screen and lack of pictures really bothered me. I remained silent about these glaring flaws because I could magically buy books out of thin air, and who wouldn't be smittened by that.

I know appearances aren't everything, but the world is changing; black on white just isn't cutting it anymore.

There's a new kid on the block  -- the iPad -- and it has been deemed the Kindle killer. I'm not too thrilled with the name, either, but it did make for a funny trending topic on Twitter.

Kindle, the blunt truth is: I have to kill you. Sorry, about that. But you are a liability. Don't worry. I intend to do this in the most painless way possible.

Readers: help me with this. How do I put away a device once useful and now rendered obsolete by the resolute march of progress?

Apple unveils what most analysts and loose lips say is a digital tablet. Among the sites worth following:

http://www.engadget.com

http://mashable.com

http://technologizer.com

Drop in here with your own observances and tech lust.

Wednesday's the day when the anticipation built up around Apple's next new thing gets unleashed on the stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

The Apple tablet — iSlate, iPad, iThing — can't come soon enough because all this media hyperventilating is making me light-headed.

I'm a self-confessed Apple fangirl, but I'm having major brow-wrinkling over how this tablet fits into the space between iPhones and MacBooks.

If the hype is to be believed, the Apple device will be about 10 inches wide, bigger than the Kindle, smaller than a magazine. It will have an LCD screen, or maybe OLED on the high end.

You'll be able to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi (everyone hopes this will include Verizon and not just AT&T). And while there's been a lot of speculation around Apple's entry into the e-reader market and deals with The New York Times and major book publishers, the tablet will likely be far from a single-use device.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has already declared that the win goes to products that are general purpose. Who wants to return to the dark days of carrying a camera, cell phone, vidcam, and personal digital assistant? Got a smart phone? It's all you need.

So speculation around the tablet is that it will be a combined multimedia player, e-reader, gaming platform, and photo viewer. It may or may not have a Web cam.

Price: recent reports range from $699 to $1,000.

But is this all the tablet is, and do I really need one? So far, the answer is no — unless there's something else.

I'm with David Pogue of The New York Times who suspects Apple has something else up its black sweater sleeve. Jobs regularly introduces game-changing Apple products with his famous line: "Oh, and one more thing." In previous announcements, the "one more thing" turned out to be the iPod and the MacBook Pro.

It just wouldn't be the same if, come Wednesday, Jobs said: "That's it. Beat it."

My wild guess, based on no inside knowledge whatsoever, is that the tablet will go beyond iTunes integration, multi-touch, thin aluminum casing and all the obvious features to integrate 3D or augmented reality. It could be mobile gaming taken to another level or watching "Avatar" on the beach with snowflakes falling on you.

I really don't know it that's the "wow" feature to be announced; if so, the tablet would be pretty cool. I'm certainly not the only one who has blue-skyed about this. I just know whatever the "it" is, it better be good at that price.

What's your guess? You have three days to fantasize about what's to come. Drop your comments here and follow me @sandybeach on Wednesday around 8 a.m. Hawaii time as I tweet about the announcement.

We're wrapped up our stay in the city of stage lights and I'm breaking a tradition.

I don't usually write entries about food, only because other bloggers are much better at describing high-caloric desserts than I. But we spent one of our last dinners in California at King's Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant in Torrance and it's worth veering away from tech for one moment to wax about this L.A. landmark.

King's a haven for anyone from Hawaii hankering for the ono, heart-clogging food that we know and love. There is a certain satisfaction downing chicken katsu smothered in sauce that nothing can quite match. King's — which moved its bake goods production plant to Torrance but remains nostalgic for Hawaii — serves up beef stew, oxtail soup, somen salad and more, charging L.A. prices that we dearly miss now that we're home.

It helped with the tip that they post Advertiser newspaper stories on a bulletin board for those who can't live without the best news source in the islands. I get paid to say stuff like that.

After dinner, we took a drive through a nearby neighborhood that for several blocks decorates with eye-popping holiday lights and displays. Residents with an entrepreneurial bent sell hot chocolate and warm popcorn to the hordes that descend on their streets. This community is rather like Hawaii Kai on Honolulu Marathon Day. The traffic through their streets is so thick, they are prisoners in their homes for the season. Most seem to accept this fate and others are clear holdouts with darkened homes and not a porch light turned on.

If you are in Torrance during the holidays, take a ride to Sleepy Hollow Lane and enjoy the madness.

Cars and pedestrians stream by a Balloon Santa holiday display, one of dozens put up at homes in this Torrance neighborhood.