Aaaaannnddd.... Now We're in Fall
This morning at work, I flipped my daily calendar over to September 22, and the page indicated that there are only 100 days left in 2010. Looks like we're getting into the home stretch folks!
Well, sadly, summer is now over, officially, unofficially, weather-wise, school-wise, however you may look at it. And if you can assess from my infrequent LJ postings, summer happened in about three posts. Although the real contributor to my lack of posting was a combination of school ending, an entire section of the CPA exam (which, by the way, I PASSED!!), and a concentration of domestic travel, summer still felt like it went by as quickly as three posts.
Following our Wisconsin trip, I got back into the academic swing of Fall by beginning to review for a new section of the CPA exam: Audit. I wouldn't be surprised if Audit ends up being my least favorite section of the entire exam, but, at the very least, I have a much better instructor than my sorry excuse of an audit professor I had at DePaul. Most of it is learning how auditors think and talk. Once you've got that down, the questions really aren't that bad. It's very, very subjective though, which is one of several reasons I don't like it.
If you couldn't tell, I used a glut of my annual vacation days in the summer, between final exams for school, Jeremy's visit, the CPA exam, the Yellowstone roadtrip, and the Boston/Rhode Island trip. That leaves me with a total of four days left to use before the end of the year, one of which is already tied up with taking the Audit section of the exam, so it's really only three. Combine that with teetering on falling behind at work, due to said vacation days as well as still not finding a replacement for a member of our department that left in early June, and I'll be grinding out full 5-day work weeks well into October. One nice part about that is I don't feel rushed at work. Another nice part is no shit happens at work where I can't be here to either a) rectify the situation, and/or b) defend myself. This happened on Friday when my boss tried to pull a fast one on me for something that was actually her doing, and I had the e-mail and scanned image to prove it. But anyway, when you're working back-to-back full work weeks with traditional 2-day weekends, you just sorta get into a groove of normalcy, like when I did ten straight 5-day weeks from after New Years until St. Patrick's Day at the beginning of the year.
Following the first full week of work and CPA review sessions was the weekend. Alex's mom was in town to say hello and see the new apartment, so he was preoccupied with her all weekend. He took Friday off and spent the morning switching our cable & internet from Comcast to RCN (we now have Tivo!!!!), then spent the afternoon preparing his wonderful homemade marinara sauce, turkey/chorizo meatballs, and a cheesecake from scratch. Once I got home from work, we cooked the pasta and made a delicious spaghetti & meatballs dinner with cheesecake for dessert. We then watched the movie "Extract" that I got from Netflix, which was decent. Most of it was just semi-entertaining to watch, although there was one hilarious scene where Jason Bateman and Ben Affleck go to some guy's apartment, and the guy has an enormous bong that, after taking a hit, caused him to exhale for about 10 seconds straight. Everything else was hardly worth watching. After that, we watched a little bit of Dave and Craig, then called it a night.
On Saturday, I spent most of the day studying for the Audit portion of the exam, but in the late afternoon, I met up with Eric and walked over to Roscoe Village for the Guinness Oyster Fest to see a band I really like- Neon Trees. We got there about 45 minutes before the scheduled start time, there was already a number of people in front of the stage. Fortunately I was only about three people back from the stage barrier. As showtime got closer, well over a hundred people started crowding behind me. Probably more.
They were about 20 minutes late starting, but the nice part was there was no opening act. And once the group blasted on to stage, their live show was awesome. The lead singer, Tyler Glenn, is totally in his element. You can tell this man grew up wanting to be a rock star, and he is absolutely thrilled to be actually doing this in real life. His energy was off the charts. He gave it his all, and was a sweaty mess as a result. I came to sing along and dance and jump, and while I did all that, it was nearly impossible not to keep your eyes glued to this man with his high-kicks, mike tricks, killer mohawk, somewhat scary facial expressions, and reach-outs to the audience. It was also hard not to pay attention to the throngs of teenage girls swooning over him. Oh, rock shows. I still had a great time. They played all but two songs from "Habits", and those two are probably my least favorite anyway, so I was pleased with the song selection. They also did a couple other ones; I couldn't tell if they were covers or songs from their 2nd album, whenever that comes out. I know at least one of them was a cover because it was "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS, which I also have on my iPod thanks to the opening scene of the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko, one of my all-time favorite movies. And they closed with my favorite song on the album ("Sins of My Youth").
Following the concert, we hopped on the Belmont bus over to Lakeview, where we met up with Gina in her apartment to chat and such before going to dinner at Falafill. Falafill is a place where they give you a pita pocket with the falafel in it, but no condiments. Then you go to their extensive condiment bar and fill it up to your heart's delight. It's amazing. We took them back to Gina's and chowed down. I over-stuffed mine so much that I needed a fork and knife to eat it, because it was ripping apart in my hands.
After Falafill gorging, Eric and I made our way down to Piece in Wicker Park, via Brown Line & North Ave bus, to join Dana and Steve (visiting from DC) for live band kareoke. Steve performed, the rest of us watched, and many others came on stage and, for the most part, were pretty awful. But the beer was fresh and delicious, and the pizza was, as usual, some of the best thin-crust you can find in this city. I'll tell you though, after the concert, my ears were rather sensitive, and the live band kareoke was BLASTING. Amps were up far too much, and we were pretty close to the stage too. Still, we stayed until close at 2:00, then took a cab home.
On Sunday, there was more mom-entertaining to be done, as well as Audit studying, and some grocery shopping, but that's about it.
Oh it feels so good to be posting weekly again!!
With love,
Updated Bitch
Well, sadly, summer is now over, officially, unofficially, weather-wise, school-wise, however you may look at it. And if you can assess from my infrequent LJ postings, summer happened in about three posts. Although the real contributor to my lack of posting was a combination of school ending, an entire section of the CPA exam (which, by the way, I PASSED!!), and a concentration of domestic travel, summer still felt like it went by as quickly as three posts.
Following our Wisconsin trip, I got back into the academic swing of Fall by beginning to review for a new section of the CPA exam: Audit. I wouldn't be surprised if Audit ends up being my least favorite section of the entire exam, but, at the very least, I have a much better instructor than my sorry excuse of an audit professor I had at DePaul. Most of it is learning how auditors think and talk. Once you've got that down, the questions really aren't that bad. It's very, very subjective though, which is one of several reasons I don't like it.
If you couldn't tell, I used a glut of my annual vacation days in the summer, between final exams for school, Jeremy's visit, the CPA exam, the Yellowstone roadtrip, and the Boston/Rhode Island trip. That leaves me with a total of four days left to use before the end of the year, one of which is already tied up with taking the Audit section of the exam, so it's really only three. Combine that with teetering on falling behind at work, due to said vacation days as well as still not finding a replacement for a member of our department that left in early June, and I'll be grinding out full 5-day work weeks well into October. One nice part about that is I don't feel rushed at work. Another nice part is no shit happens at work where I can't be here to either a) rectify the situation, and/or b) defend myself. This happened on Friday when my boss tried to pull a fast one on me for something that was actually her doing, and I had the e-mail and scanned image to prove it. But anyway, when you're working back-to-back full work weeks with traditional 2-day weekends, you just sorta get into a groove of normalcy, like when I did ten straight 5-day weeks from after New Years until St. Patrick's Day at the beginning of the year.
Following the first full week of work and CPA review sessions was the weekend. Alex's mom was in town to say hello and see the new apartment, so he was preoccupied with her all weekend. He took Friday off and spent the morning switching our cable & internet from Comcast to RCN (we now have Tivo!!!!), then spent the afternoon preparing his wonderful homemade marinara sauce, turkey/chorizo meatballs, and a cheesecake from scratch. Once I got home from work, we cooked the pasta and made a delicious spaghetti & meatballs dinner with cheesecake for dessert. We then watched the movie "Extract" that I got from Netflix, which was decent. Most of it was just semi-entertaining to watch, although there was one hilarious scene where Jason Bateman and Ben Affleck go to some guy's apartment, and the guy has an enormous bong that, after taking a hit, caused him to exhale for about 10 seconds straight. Everything else was hardly worth watching. After that, we watched a little bit of Dave and Craig, then called it a night.
On Saturday, I spent most of the day studying for the Audit portion of the exam, but in the late afternoon, I met up with Eric and walked over to Roscoe Village for the Guinness Oyster Fest to see a band I really like- Neon Trees. We got there about 45 minutes before the scheduled start time, there was already a number of people in front of the stage. Fortunately I was only about three people back from the stage barrier. As showtime got closer, well over a hundred people started crowding behind me. Probably more.
They were about 20 minutes late starting, but the nice part was there was no opening act. And once the group blasted on to stage, their live show was awesome. The lead singer, Tyler Glenn, is totally in his element. You can tell this man grew up wanting to be a rock star, and he is absolutely thrilled to be actually doing this in real life. His energy was off the charts. He gave it his all, and was a sweaty mess as a result. I came to sing along and dance and jump, and while I did all that, it was nearly impossible not to keep your eyes glued to this man with his high-kicks, mike tricks, killer mohawk, somewhat scary facial expressions, and reach-outs to the audience. It was also hard not to pay attention to the throngs of teenage girls swooning over him. Oh, rock shows. I still had a great time. They played all but two songs from "Habits", and those two are probably my least favorite anyway, so I was pleased with the song selection. They also did a couple other ones; I couldn't tell if they were covers or songs from their 2nd album, whenever that comes out. I know at least one of them was a cover because it was "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS, which I also have on my iPod thanks to the opening scene of the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko, one of my all-time favorite movies. And they closed with my favorite song on the album ("Sins of My Youth").
Following the concert, we hopped on the Belmont bus over to Lakeview, where we met up with Gina in her apartment to chat and such before going to dinner at Falafill. Falafill is a place where they give you a pita pocket with the falafel in it, but no condiments. Then you go to their extensive condiment bar and fill it up to your heart's delight. It's amazing. We took them back to Gina's and chowed down. I over-stuffed mine so much that I needed a fork and knife to eat it, because it was ripping apart in my hands.
After Falafill gorging, Eric and I made our way down to Piece in Wicker Park, via Brown Line & North Ave bus, to join Dana and Steve (visiting from DC) for live band kareoke. Steve performed, the rest of us watched, and many others came on stage and, for the most part, were pretty awful. But the beer was fresh and delicious, and the pizza was, as usual, some of the best thin-crust you can find in this city. I'll tell you though, after the concert, my ears were rather sensitive, and the live band kareoke was BLASTING. Amps were up far too much, and we were pretty close to the stage too. Still, we stayed until close at 2:00, then took a cab home.
On Sunday, there was more mom-entertaining to be done, as well as Audit studying, and some grocery shopping, but that's about it.
Oh it feels so good to be posting weekly again!!
With love,
Updated Bitch