Around this time of year, tax papers come fluttering in with the mail like homing pigeons returning to roost. Each letter serves as a reminder that if I don’t get organized pretty quick, more than feathers will hit the fan come April 15.

It’s a pretty universal experience to be almost done with one’s taxes except for that one missing tax form from a bank or mutual fund, isn’t it? I ask this because I really don’t want to be the only dim light forced to spend hours upon hours searching for that single piece of paper on the eve of the filing deadline while the rest of the world is out playing golf.

I have to say that tax time was a whole lot simpler when I was single. If you are half of a couple, the chances of tax papers going missing more than doubles. Indeed, rough estimate, it probably triples. It increases maybe ten fold if you have a spouse whose idea of organization is to stack things on the kitchen counter until they fall over.

So here’s my simple solution for avoiding tax day regret and remorse. Put out a manila envelope wherever you sort your mail. Mark it “taxes.” Take your spouse by his/her hand and point to it. Put all tax-related mail into the envelope.

In two months, there will be a whole lot less crying, screaming and talk of moving out.

How are you getting organized for tax time? Are you an early filer or do you enjoy living on the deadline edge?

The deaths last week of Janel Tupuola and Cyrus Belt came as a jolt out of the blue and left many of us with a feeling of despair that has been hard to shake.

Driving under the Miller Street bridge a couple of days later, I moved to the left lane, the memory of Cyrus’ covered body still fresh in my mind, and I watched others do the same.

We have killings in Hawaii, but the nature of these crimes — a woman beaten repeatedly with a rifle and a small child flung into the H-1 traffic — was horrendous to the extreme.

Shaking our heads does little to assuage the grief we’re feeling for the victims, for the families and for Hawaii, where we’ve convinced ourselves that things like this just don’t happen.

There is more than enough blame and recrimination in these two cases to go around. But if we do nothing ourselves in the wake of them, what healing will come of it?

None of us alone can cure the drug abuse that likely led to Cyrus’ death or quell the anger that turned to homicide in Janel’s case. But we can act in small ways. We can contribute to a program for those seeking to get off drugs or one that helps women flee from violent boyfriends.

We can take the money that would have gone for stuffed animals and balloons and contribute instead to half-way houses or to groups that fight child abuse.

None of this will bring back a loving mother or a rambunctious 1-year-old. It will give us something to say if we are ever asked: “What did you do?”

For information on groups that address the problems of drug abuse and domestic violence, call Aloha United Way’s information line at 211 or go to Aloha United Way’s Web site.

Macheads across the country go into a feeding frenzy whenever Steve Jobs takes the stage at the MacWorld Expo. On Tuesday, when Jobs announced what everyone more or less expected — movie rentals through iTunes and a super-cool notebook — the chomping reached fever pitch.

I’ll report back on the movie rentals in a few weeks, but the $1,799 notebook is grist for an insta-blog.

Apple likes to think outside the core and the MacBook Air with its paper-thin silhouette and 13-inch screen is just what I’ve been waiting for. Mobility is the one non-negotiable feature I seek in any new laptop. Now, here comes the “but”…it doesn’t have an ethernet port or CD/DVD drive and it comes with a standard, paltry 80 gigs.

The “Apple think” behind this notebook is that we need to shed old technology and move on to wireless. That’s praise-worthy. I once suggested when building out our Web site that we create features which forced users to download Flash, and got badly singed on a techie listserv. Force-feeding was not in vogue at the time. Fast-forward 10 years and Apple is advocating the same tactic — push the masses to jettison their antiquated cables and drives and all of the miscellanea that keep us earth-bound.

Many folks would be right behind Steve cheering him on his mission to take to the air — but for the fact that software still comes on CDs and the office still requires an ethernet connection.

Apple has workarounds for some of this, including an external optical drive that you can pick up for an extra $99.

But my take on this, and it is not a bad policy to apply regarding all new technology, is to wait for the next generation when the marketplace matures and solves these issues.

Meantime, try to ignore the need to feed and go lie down until the feeling passes.

So what are you looking for in new technology in 2008?

Been listening to the audiobook version of “The 4-Hour Workweek” set on high speed. (Just for the sake of clarity, that’s a reference to the fast playback feature on my mp3 player rather than my pharmaceutical state, but more about that later.)

Author Timothy Ferriss, a self-admitted hellion, advocates ditching the 9 to 5 rat race for a life of adventurous travel and living like a millionaire at a fraction of the cost we pay in the United States.

As a general proposition, this is rather intriguing. Technology has made it possible to stay in communication anywhere in the world so long as there’s a seedy Internet cafe with wi-fi nearby.

Unless your job requires you to be at work in the flesh — I can see where brain surgeons may have trouble with this — why not conduct your business while lounging with a chocolate martini on a beach in Thailand as the Web sites you built pile up the money?

You’ll need to set this up, of course. Ferriss suggests you scale down your American lifestyle by selling the house, uprooting the kids, ridding yourself of all but the essentials, which includes one week’s worth of travel clothes, and bailing out. He has all kinds of ready answers if you begin to question this life plan: How do I pay for travel? Who feeds the dog? What if I’m adverse to being kidnapped in foreign lands?

Most of us, having had mothers who wouldn’t let us cross the streets without siblings on both sides firmly gripping our hands, have a certain fear of the unknown — not to mention apprehension that authorities will string us up for unpaid bills. Embracing this Ferriss lifestyle would be a major detour on the road down the straight and narrow.

The value of this book for the majority, I think, is in its tips on efficient living. Here’s one: check plane fares on Orbitz first, then bid on flights on Priceline at half the Orbitz cost, increasing your bid by $50 until you get a taker.

You can hear more of these tidbits if you read or listen to this book. Listening is preferable; the audiobook is available at Audible. Set your mp3 player to play this fast to save time; this is not a volume you need to linger over. Lingering will come when you move to Maldives.

So how willing are you to drop most of your possessions and hit the road?

No one said losing is easy.

I’m not talking about the Sugar Bowl, because, folks, it’s time to move on.

Instead, let’s look inward, specifically to that extra 10 pounds that leapt up out of nowhere to attach itself to your midriff.

That added weight drives 90 percent of the commercials you’ll see at this time of the year. How we’ve all come to regard January as the month we resolve to lose weight is a deep mystery, hidden in the mist of ancient ages. All I know is we are biologically programmed, when the year turns over, to jump on our bathroom scales, gasp, suck in our tummies and hope that action alone will lighten things up.

I’ve concluded that this annual ritual and our attempts to battle the bulge are serious drains on productivity. Case in point: Weight Watchers.

In an attempt to get ahold of my weight before it took hold of me, I joined the Weight Watchers program and went to the first of the weekly meetings. What I didn’t expect is that I would then spend hours upon hours planning what to eat, planning what to buy to eat, figuring out how many food points to assign a bagel, and then proceeding to buy, eat and keep written notes of everything that went into my mouth.

It will get easier, I’m told, but all those unrecoverable hours could have been spent watching “Lost” re-runs and downing chocolate-covered malasadas, so this had better work.

To help you over the post-holiday hump, you can check out these sites, both with a geeky bent:

• Diet Tips or How to Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web Site

• The Hacker’s Diet

So with the usual disclaimers about checking with your doctor before dropping 100 pounds, tell us what steps, big and small, you are taking to deflate that Michelin tire.