Holy shit, Batman!

Pretty sure this is my first blogpost from home. Getting on the internet at home isn't convenient anymore. First of all - I should be studying (as is the case right now) and then you have find a computer, turn it on (wait), then find a comfortable place to sit with it where it can be plugged in (unless it's just a quick surfing trip), then you can finally open your window and do your internet business. Of course, now that I write that out, I'm not really sure what the problem is. Maybe it's just because there is always something else to do at home now (like studying!) and by the time we finish doing stuff and settle in at night, we're too lazy to go thru those steps. Oh well.

ANYWAY, I'm completely off track here. The reason I'm neglecting the studying that I'm way behind on is to drop in and let you know that I FINALLY passed my first part of the CPA exam!!!!!! Ok, yeah, I'm pretty sure 100% of the 3 people who read this blog already know that, but if there is one person left in the world that i haven't told and there is the vaguest possibility that he/she will stop by here - then I have to share!! I want EVERYONE to know!!!! (I'm gonna feel pretty dumb 18 months from now when I haven't passed the other 3 parts and I'm about to lose this part, huh?) Oh well, cross that bridge when I get to it.

Other than that, not much going on around here. Husband has been out of town on business all week but will hopefully return tomorrow (yay!!). Turns out our house is creepy as fuck after dark when you're alone ::shiver:: and I don't like it. I'm not sure what I think is going to happen, especially considering there is an 84 year old woman who lives in front of us who has lived there alone for 7 years and nothing has ever happened to her, but she's a lot closer to the road (at least that's what my paranoia keeps whispering in my ear). So basically what I'm saying is that the main things that drew me to this house in the first place (no neighbors, seclusion, privacy, for real darkness at night) are the very things that are unnerving me completely this week. Hmm...lesson learned. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I have an ulcer now from sitting out in the living room freaking out all evening for 3 nights in a row.

Right now, I'm in bed (getting ready to study some more!) with all the doors in the house locked, the bedroom door is locked and I have 3 dogs, a shotgun and a 357 in here with me and I'm scared. Nothing on earth is more dangerous than a scared woman with a loaded gun (with no safety). I warned Husband not to come home unannounced unless he wanted to get his ass shot off.

Ok, I gotta get back to ignoring the 30 million sounds I hear every minute and get some more studying done.

Finally Friday (or...How a 4 Day Week Can Stretch into Eternity)

So today is Friday. That's cool. I've been at work for an hour and haven't accomplished a single thing...not cool. But, I figured since I haven't done anything yet, might as well publish a blog post and then get started...no sense rushing things.

This weekend, we painted our living room/kitchen. Our house pretty much has an open floor plan so the living room runs into the kitchen and painting them one at a time really wasn't an option. We started some time ago painting the places we could reach because, you see, we have vaulted ceilings that are at least 12' high at the peaks. Naturally though, that wasn't the problem. The problem is when you look at our house, there are dormers on the front, but no attic, instead, the windows are 2 stories up in the wall, one in the kitchen, one in the living room. Then, when they put those in, they cut a place back into the ceiling and painted it wall colored (I know that doesn't make any sense, but I don't know how to describe it any better than that...I'll post a pic of it one day). So the real problem is that one of those is directly over the stairs going down to the basement, which technically, makes it 3 stories off the ground. Fun! Even better? The scaffolding won't fit in the stairs. So what I ended up doing was getting up into the dormer on the 10' scaffolding, then reaching across the stairwell with a "brush-on-a-stick" (patent pending) and painting it like that. The "brush-on-a-stick" is simply a paint brush duct taped to the end of an extension pole. Good stuff.

We started on Friday when I got home, then discovered we'd need an extension ladder (a.k.a. Rickety Fuck)l, so my in-laws brought us a couple and we continued working. We worked until about 11pm that night, then started bright and early Saturday and worked until about 9pm then went out to dinner to celebrate the living room being done. Sunday we did the kitchen and finished the woodwork and got done about 5pm. We worked on putting everything back together Sunday and Monday, but we still have a ways to go there. We are waiting for the paint to cure good before hanging a lot of stuff back up and we need to get my china cabinet moved back in the living room so I can get all my glass put back in it. It was a long process and we both felt like dealth on Saturday and Sunday (and possibly on Monday too), but we're so glad it's finally done and we don't have to stare at that nasty green paint anymore. It looked like Swamp Thing came in and took a shit on our walls.

In the kitchen, there is a chair rail in the "breakfast nook" (area where the table sits) and we painted blue below that. The rest of the room is just cream colored because we wanted it very neutral as we never intend to paint it again, but that gives a little pop of color and we can change it whenever cause it's a small, easy to get to area.

We purchased tile for our half bath and we're going to repaint it the same blue as we used in the kitchen, but it probably isn't going to happen until the weekend after Thanksgiving. We wanted to do it sooner, but I have to study for this next part of the exam and I only have 3 weekends (counting this one) before the test, so I don't have any free time to devote to the bathroom. But that's ok, I'd rather do it when we can be all leisurely about it anyway. After that (or maybe before) Husband is going to start working on finishing the room in the basement so he can move all of his stuff down there. I guess we'll turn the room he's using upstairs into an actual guest room - even though we have no guests. But that way we could have our friends come up and visit and they'd have a place to sleep since we live about 3 hours from them now.

Well, this has turned into a book so I better get back to work. I have so much sinus pressure in my left cheek I'm pretty sure it's about to explode - not pleasant. Not to mention, this time change and darkness and season changing is being pretty rough on me this week, so I'll be glad when this day is over and maybe I can find some cheerful this weekend. Later dudes.

Ever notice...

How the bloggers you really love never seem to post enough and the ones that really grate on your nerves (and yet, you can't stop reading) can't seem to STFU??

Or is that just me? heh

We started some home improvement projects this weekend, decided to put a big one (hardwood floors) off for a little while because of the $$ and added another quick one to the list (re-tiling the floor in the half bath), so that's pretty sweet. Tonight we'll finish painting the guest bathroom and it'll finally be usable again, after a long time of being out of commission while we tried to figure out what color to paint it (finally settled on a mocha-like color called "Wool Coat"). After that, we'll carry on with painting the living room, an on-going project. At some point, we will have painted everything we can reach and we'll be down to renting scaffolding. Fun.

After we re-tile the half bath, it will most likely need a new coat of paint as well, but it's a tiny room and the toilet and sink will be out of it at that point so that'll be super-duper easy.

I'm not sure what's next on the list. Probably finishing the small room in the basement so Husband can move all his stuff down there. That'll clean out one of the spare bedrooms upstairs, I guess we'll turn it into a real live guest room at that point, although I'm not really sure why. No one ever stays the night with us because they all live close enough to just drive home. I need to get all my stuff organized and get my room painted at some point too I'm not sure when that'll happen though because I am still studying so I don't exactly have unlimited amounts of free time just hanging around. Anyway, that particular task seems overwhelming, so for now, I'm just ignoring it.

Well, better get back to work, there is some time off in my future, so I need to try to get things caught up around here.

keeping the mystery alive

Because I'm loving this idea of B.W.O. (blogging without obligation), I'm not going to tell you where I've been. HA. :-)

I've decided that there are some bloggers out there that I really dislike. Of course, I don't know these people in real life, they may be perfectly wonderful people, but something about the images and descriptions of their lives, the way they make it all see like butter in their asses and lollipops in their mouths* makes me puke. You know the ones. They post a picture of something "random" and every single thing in the picture is places *just so*, it's all spotless, wonderful, like a fairy tale, or a Stanley Kubrik movie. Bullshit. If I post a pic, you can bet your sweet ass there will be dog hair on the floor, or crap piled on the tables, or a giant weed-patch growing in the background that I will swear is a garden (look back to the post about the tractor). Holy crap - I'm pretty sure with the baby guineas I even posted a pic with actual shit in it.

Geez - I'm hateful today, huh? My bad, I just saw a picture on a blog a few minutes ago that ruffled my feathers. I'm over it now.

So October 15th is fast approaching - no more extensions for the individual returns - which translates to "I'm totally fucked because there is no way I'll get all this shit done in time". So I'm working late tonight, that's my point. Why am I on here posting and wasting time, you ask? Because my brain is fried and I needed a break, that's why.

Oh, also, took the 3rd part of the exam on October 2nd (or something like that), will not find out my grade until sometime in November, maybe the end of November even. I'm re-taking the first part I ever took on October 20th, so after the 15th passes, I'm taking off the 16th (Friday) and the 19th (Monday) to study. Been trying to study since I took the last one but I've been busy as fuck and working overtime and just haven't been able to properly motivate myself. I'm working on that.

Ok, gotta get back to work.

Baby, its cold outside.

Fall has officially fallen and I couldn't be more ready for it. This summer, while fun and productive, was exhausting. I'm ready to snuggle in, to read (for pleasure!!), to wrap myself and the chihuahua in a blanket and watch crappy TV and eat yummy comfort food until March. Maybe April. :-) I have 3 exams scheduled between now and Thanksgiving, the first of which being this Friday. I feel as positive as I can about it in light of having failed the first 2 I took. I'm studying, reviewing, really trying to be hopeful. Then the next one is October 20th - just 17 days to study 20 chapters. But I've studied for and taken this one before and scored 2 points below passing, so it seems possible. Then the next is the Monday before Thanksgiving. That one is new, I'm not sure how it'll go.

After that, I'm going to try to take off Tuesday and Wednesday to cook and clean because we're hosting Thanksgiving. Hosting used to be difficult for me, I stressed out about every little detail and would inevitably work myself like a dog until the wee hours of the morning the night before. Nothing seemed right - it wasn't clean enough, tasty enough, something enough. But somewhere along the way, I've given up on all that silliness. My house is what it is, if I think it's clean and, more importantly really, if Husband thinks its clean enough, then it is. everyone else can,effectively, suck it. I know I cook decently well and if people don't like my food they are more than welcome to stop at McDonald's on their way home. And I'm not trying to be a bitch here - I want people to enjoy our home and my cooking and to have a good time when they come to our house, but I don't worry about it like I used to, which probably makes it all run smoother, actually. I make our home they way Husband wants it and the way I want it and that is good enough. We're having my parents, my sister, her husband, our neice and hopefully my in-laws for dinner. A big crowd for me since we have such a tiny family.

Right now though, I have a nasty case of poison ivy. It started on my left wrist, I thought it was a bug bite and I scratched it. The next morning, it was all over the inside of my wrist. The next day, it has jumped to the other arm and now it is all on the side of my left boob and all over my stomach. It is slowly creeping around my sides too, I'm hoping it'll stop spreading before it gets all the way around! My arms are fine but my stomach itches like a mother!!

I gotta get back to work right now, but to end this on a happy note, I weighed in at -5 pounds this morning!! Yeeeah, biaotches!!

Happy - then crappy.

So this morning I hopped on the scale and found myself at -2 pounds. Boo-yah!!

Then I sat thru 2 1/2 hours of team meeting at work - my back hurts, my ass is numb and I'm almost asleep.

Then I logged on and saw that my exam score was finally posted. And I failed it. Miserably.

Fuck.

Tuesday.

Hey! I still exist! What do you know about that. Crazy, huh? So I've made it - thru tax season, thru 5 of my co-workers being fired and 2 managers quitting, thru the Sept. 15th deadline and now we're heading into the October 15th deadline then it will be smooth sailing (HA!) until tax season starts again in about 3 months. Joy.

Since I last posted, work has just been insane and there hasn't been time to turn around much less turn around, sit down, log into blogger and post something. I've been reading and keeping up (for the most part) with my blogroll, but that's been the extent of my accomplishments. I've even been relatively quiet on twitter - and how hard is it to spit out less than 140 characters a couple times a day??

Right now, I'm studying for my 3rd part of the ever-present CPA exam and anxiously awaiting my results on the 2nd part (and getting more than mildly annoyed at how long those results are taking to materialize). I feel certain I didn't pass it, but I want to know, dammit!!

Nothing else is new really. I don't have time for anything but studying at this point, and won't until the Monday before Thanksgiving. Then I'll get a few merciful days off and it will be awesome. But until then, I'm just trying to make time for studying, still trying to cook for my Man *most* nights, trying to keep the house at least liveable, taking care of the guineas, the dogs, the Man, AND being available to help with home improvement projects, etc. Unfortunately, the whole working out thing has fallen by the wayside. And I hate that, but I'm just overwhelmed right now, to say the least.

We have, however, been on a diet for a few weeks now. Well, "diet" isn't really the right word. We're just making better decisions, not eating out, limiting desserts and sweets and fixing healthy stuff for lunches and dinners. So far, I've lost about 9 pounds. And trust me, we've still been out and there has been ice cream consumed (very little, but still). I have a weight that I call the "magic number". Once I got above that number (no, I won't say how much it is), I've never gotten below it. (At the worst point, I was 20 pounds ABOVE that number, about 6 years ago.) I mean, I have been below it, but only by a pound or two and only very briefly. Our diets have always been derailed right about the time I get back down to that number. Perhaps you have that number too. It's so ingrained at this point that I think of my weight in terms of that number.

Let's say the number is 100 pounds (HA-HA-HA), if I get on the scale and weigh 112, I don't think, "I weight 112 pounds", I think "I'm 12 pounds over." And by the same token, if I weigh 98 pounds, I think, "Ooo, I'm down 2 pounds!!" So this morning, I weigh 0. And I'm stoked!! Our diet is going along swimmingly, I don't see any reason it will derail on me and right now I'm at 0, so the only place to go from here is into negative numbers!!

Hopefully one day I'll have a new "magic number". I can imagine in my head what I'd like the next one to be, and the one after that, but I'm not sure what I'd like my Long-Term Magic Number to be. I guess I'll know when (IF) I get there. I feel motivated to exercise now, to speed up my progression toward my new number. Hopefully I'll be able to start working that into the schedule again.

Ok, right now, lunch is over and it's time for me to get back to work.

We put the "labor" in Labor Day

I have to be honest - I'm not really sure what Labor Day is, I'm not sure what we're celebrating. But it's a day when you can take off work and no one minds, so I'm down with it. This year, as usual, we spent our long weekend working way too hard.

My sister and her husband had a get-together on Saturday afternoon. I had big plans to paint something or clean something or something-something before that, but I had a headache Friday night and woke up with it Saturday and accomplished dick on Saturday morning. We went to their house but I had to come home after the food smells permeated the house. Ugh. So the day was a wash.

Still, over the rest of the weekend, we managed to buy ourselves a new kitchen sink (yes, we are slowly rebuilding our entire house) and installed that (I'm a plumber!! And my crack doesn't even hang out!!), then we finished painting the back doors and the hallway. I clipped the chihuahua's nails and we did a ton of laundry (there is still a ton more to do). I also managed to keep up with my studying schedule. The studying seems to be going a lot better for this section of the exam than it did for the other two. I'm not sure if it's the use of the audio cd's - I can listen to them in my car on the way to and from work, which gives me an extra 1 1/2 hrs a day with the material - or if it's just that this stuff is easier than the other stuff. My progress so far is that I failed the first section I took (Business Environment & Concepts, or BEC) and I'm awaiting my scores on the second section (Financial Accounting & Reporting or FAR).

Here's my schedule now:
AUD (Auditing): Friday, October 2nd
BEC (Business Environment & Concepts): Tuesday, October 20th
REG (Regulation): Monday, November 23rd

If I didn't pass FAR (likely) I probably won't be able to retake it until January because December is a dark month (no testing). I can't even begin to express how glad I'll be when this is over.

About the sink replacement - our old sink was stainless steel, nothing wrong with that, but it was only about 6 inches deep. Something majorly wrong with that. You can hardly wash dishes in a sink that shallow and when you rinse them off, the water flies everywhere. But the deal-breaker was when the plumbing under the sink fell apart and I had to use a thing of a dog shampoo and a bottle of Goo-B-Gone to hold the p-trap in place. At that point, we were going to have to re-plumb the thing anyway, right? So we bought this shiny black cast iron (yes, it weighs a billion pounds) Kohler sink - it is a thing of beauty. Every time I walk through the kitchen I stroke it and say, "Hello, Lover"...pretty sure Husband is getting jealous. :-) We debated over faucets and decided to stick with the kind with the separate sprayer, not the attached sprayer. Our faucet is beautiful too - brushed nickle to match the cabinet handles. And it's deep, like 8 or 9 inches (I can't remember) and that part is the most wonderful of all!! I'm so tickled with this sink, I'll have to post pics of it soon.

Same as it ever was

As it turns out, I have not perished or disappeared from the face of the earth although, admittedly, there has been very little evidence to the contrary lately.

When we got back from vacation, everyone at work was in a mass panic because of the 09/15 deadline that is swiftly approaching and the new giant client. You know, the one the entire tax staff has been working on, pretty much exclusively, since last Wednesday. So we've been working OT and then I go home (sometimes after Husband gets there) and I have to figure out how to cook dinner, attempt to keep the house livable, keep the dogs in food and water, take care of the guineas and still find time to study. This is not easy, let me tell you. As you can probably imagine, the working out has fallen by the wayside recently. I did really good until we left for vacation and I've been a loser since then. But I really want to get back to it and I really plan to - I'm just thinking this isn't the week.

However, we have gone on a diet. Not a starve-yourself-and-be-miserable diet, just an eat-right-and-make-better-choices diet. So far, I've lost 5 pounds. I'm pretty stoked about that. I mean, right now 5 pounds is like pissing in the ocean, but I'm still pleased. So I figure the weight loss will increase, at least for a little while, once I get back to working out and that's an exciting prospect. But I can't let the studying slide, I just can't.

This super nice girl that i work with recently passed the exam and she gave me her audio cd's of the part I'm currently studying for and access to the online feature too (it has quizzes and simulations, etc) and that is really helping. I can listen to the lectures on the way to and from work, which gives me an extra hour and a half of time with the material each day. And also, once I've heard the lecture, I'm more familiar with the material once I start reading and so that part goes faster now too, so that's pretty sweet. If I didn't pass this last part I took (won't get the scores until at least Sept. 15), then I think I'm going to buy the cd's for it to study with next time.

One nice thing that has happened is that I've met a group of women in my local area - well, I've only talked to one online so far, but I'm going to meet them all on Sept. 12. We met via a website for "farmgirls" that has local groups setup all around the country. The woman who setup up this group lives about 20 minutes from me. So they're having a meeting on the 12th and I'm gonna go meet everyone. Regardless of what they're like, it will be nice to at least know some people in the area, so I'm looking forward to that.

Oh, and, very exciting, the guineas are putting themselves to bed!! About 8:30pm they all pile back in their house and them scream for me to come down and lock the door - it is too cute. Last night they ventured out into the front yard (outside the dog fence). We have no idea how long they were up there, but they stayed close to the house and when I went down to put food in their coop for their bedtime snack, they all came running down the hill, so they still knew where their house was. So our little fowl are growing up!! It's so precious.

Ok, I really have to get back to work.

Boo Hiss

Work has been very "Boo Hiss" since I got back from vacation (aka yesterday and today). I came back right in the midst of a deadline crunch and not just any deadline crunch, but one that involves a brand new, HUGE client (and by huge I mean it has 26 trial balances, 26 different entities all rolled into one, not to mention 5 or 6 other related companies that are actually separate...and this is not all we do, this is just ONE client). So, yeah, it has sucked. But tomorrow is Friday and that rocks.

Vacation was fun, it was a decent mix of 'together with the family' and 'alone with the Husband' time, so that's good.

We came home on Monday night and my in-laws brought one of our dogs back home (they keep the 12 year old chihuahua, the big, young girls go to the kennel) and while they were there, we decided to let the guineas out of their coop for the first time! It took about 30 minutes for all of them to figure out how to get out (after I physically crawled inside the coop and brought one out to show the others that escape was possible). They had a lot of fun walking in grass for the first time ever and eating real bugs (instead of man-made food) and flying. Apparently the flying is made of awesome. They all celebrate everytime any one of them flies - it is very, very exciting. So Monday night we had to pick them all up and put them back in their coop. Then Tuesday evening we let them out for a couple more hours and had to pick them up and put them back in there again. Last night, however, they actually walked up the stairs into the coop on their own!! We did have to encourage them, but didn't have to touch them. So we're hoping that they'll catch on and just start putting themselves to bed at night and I'll just have to go down there and lock the door to their coop. That would be sweet.

Oh, that part of the exam that I took last week was fucking horrible. And that's putting it lightly. If I passed that, it will seriously be the biggest shock of my life. Ever. Dude, it was awful. And believe me, it is getting tougher and tougher to stay motivated to study for this damn thing. Ugh.

Time flies...

...when you're not paying attention!! Sorry I've let so much time go by between posts...when things are crazy at work (as they are now and will be until 10/15) I don't have much time to post.

I'll catch you up on what's new, then I gotta get back to work:

• I've done decent keeping at the working out, although I don't feel like I'm making any real progress yet. I've done pilates a few times and I incorporated a biceps/triceps workout that really made my arms sore the next day. The next thing we'll be purchasing is dumbells so I can keep up with the arm work.
• I got my grade on the 1st part of the CPA exam I took back on July 1st. I got a 73. You need a 75 to pass. So for 2 fucking points, I'll be paying another $200 and taking the damn thing again. Fun. While I'm glad I got a halfway respectable score, I'm still quite unhappy about it - just disappointed in myself I guess, and pissed at all that studying time that now feels wasted.
• I have my 2nd part of the exam this Thursday at 9am. It is taking everything I have at this point to stay committed to my study schedule and to keep putting all the effort I can into it, even though I really fear that, once again, my best won't be good enough. If I fail two sections in a row, I'll be devastated, which is making me a lot more nervous for this one than I was the first one.
• The new test taking schedule looks like this: Financial August 20, Auditing October 2, Business Environment & Concepts (the section I failed) October 19, and Regulations November 23. So I will have taken all 4 parts (and one part twice) by the end of the year.
• We're going on vacation this weekend with my family for my Dad's 70th birthday. We'll be gone Friday-Monday to Gatlinburg, TN, then we're taking Tuesday off work to spend with the dogs and whatnot. Then I'll starting studying again on Wednesday.

Ok, gotta get back to work.

Here's what I've learned...

You can't start running with a weak powerhouse. Oh, and the woman on the Pilates video is a she-devil, in the most evil sense of the word.

Any attempts at running and/or fast walking, have been thwarted by back pain, brought on by weak abs, etc. So I thought to myself, "Self, let's do some pilates with our heavy bag routines and build up those core muscles (the "powerhouse"), THEN we'll worry about running." Besides, more muscle = more fat burning. Friday night we did some pilates. The bitch...er...lady on the DVD said that I should start with 5 or 6 (out of 18) of the exercises and then work up to doing the entire routine. So that's what I (attempted to do) did. Keep in mind - I have no mat and I'm working on a HARDwood floor. I had to skip one move because "roll like a ball" doesn't happen on a HARDwood floor with no mat. Not when my tailbone is involved. No way, no how.

Anyway, I did 5 or 6 of her moves...after a while, when the blood was gone from my brain and my tailbone was screaming in pain and the dog was licking my face while I attempted unnatural acts on the living room floor (with my pelvis in "neutral position" and my spine in alignment)...I lost count. I actually didn't stop because of my muscles, I stopped because after one move that was done on my stomach, when I sat up to do the next move, my head started pounding in a way that I was certain...certain...would be the end of me and I had to stop. All the while, that smiling, blonde harbinger of death was on my television screen bending and flexing and stretching and smiling. God, I hate that woman.

In the end, I thought, Well, maybe pilates isn't for me. I guess I can't do enough of that to help because of the inexplicable pounding in my head. But...turns out I was wrong. Turns out it really is the quality of your movements and not the quantity. And I guess I really was holding everything in and flexing and whatever I was supposed to be doing because my powerhouse killed all day Saturday. It hurt yesterday too but not nearly as bad and today I can only tell anything happened when I suck it all in and flex those muscles. So I guess I was doing something right. The only thing I'm wondering now is if I should have done it again yesterday, since the pain was fading or if I should have waited until today when the pain is almost all gone. I'm definately doing more tonight - it was awesome! And to finally do something so quick and simple that left me with such soreness that it MUST have done something - that's awesome too. Now I just need a mat, before my tailbone stages a revolt.

In other news, I'm still studying, my next part of the exam is next Thursday (August 20th) and Husband worked until midnight Friday night, then went in at 8:30am Saturday and got home about 6pm, so I got caught up on my studying and I put a coat of primer on the hallway. We finished the woodwork yesterday and put a topcoat on the walls, so just one more coat on the walls and that'll be another area of the house painted...sweet.

Here it is.

So I say to Husband last night, "So, you wanna run a marathon?" to which He replies, "Um, not right now." Gotta love him. Then I told him about my plan and he says, "How are you going to do that with studying and everything?" I didn't really expect resistance from that angle, but that just made me more determined because it's not impossible to do this, but it does kind of seem impossible.

The new master plan for the blog (and for my life, really) is to run a marathon. I haven't set a date and said, "I'm going to run X marathon on X date" which is probably what I should do, but that seems huge. So I'm going to run a 5k first...gotta start small. I know that I need to start that small because I found a 5 week training program for a 5k race and there's no way I can do that yet. I'm so out of shape it isn't even funny. So my current goal is to work my way up to starting the 5k training. I figure it'll take about a month. I'm going to start with the heavy bag tonight - basically working on stamina (with hopeful upper arm improvements!).

I'm going to try for a 5week pre-training training program. There will be heavy bag workouts and run/walks and I found a general strength training program that seems like a good idea. I need to get a reasonable schedule worked out - both to keep this realistic (it's not like the CPA exam just disappeared or anything) and because I just function better with a schedule (hence, the studying schedule). Once I get a schedule worked out, I'll post it here and we'll go from there.

I will have beginning numbers (weight, measurements, etc) but the overwhelming shame will not allow me to post those here - not just yet. Once I'm far enough away from those numbers, I'll tell you what they were, but not until they're a thing of the past. Besides, losing weight or being thin or whatever isn't my goal here. My goal is to pick something I want to do, something I could totally accomplish if I put my mind to it and am committed to it, and DO THAT THING. If I drop a bunch of weight and become a total hottie in the process - BONUS.

Hump Day

You know, having to work sucks sometimes and being independently wealthy would win out over working for a living any day. Guess I should start playing the lottery if I ever expect to live out my lifelong dreams of sloth and gluttony.

I announced to Husband the other night that once I pass my CPA and we get some money saved up, I'm going to go back to school to become a nurse. I believe he thinks I've lost my mind completely this time. But I've had these nurse fantasies (not like that!!) for a long time now, so I think I'll go for it. It's never too late to have dreams, I suppose. Of course...does it make sense to aspire to a career with worse hours and lower pay than the career I have now? I suppose not. Maybe I'll just become a candy striper after I retire. ;-)

I'm having trouble staying (getting) motivated today. Lord knows I have enough work to do, they keep piling it on ad nauseum, but I just don't feel like doing it. I want to go home and...oh, I don't know....chillax?? :-) Actually, I'd like to be studying right now - that would at least feel like I was accomplishing something. I never thought I'd get into the whole CPA exam thing, but I'm totally obessessed with it. I don't want to do anything except study. At all. Until I'm finished. Husband complains about how much I study and wants to know why I didn't take a break between tests, or why I have to study EVERY NIGHT FOR SIX WEEKS. Because I want to be done with this test, you know? I don't want to take it 15 times, I don't want to half-ass it and drag it out forever. I want to study hard now, learn this shit and be done. I want to pass all 4 parts on the first try. Who knows if I will (or if I have) but I want to, and not studying will not facillitate that. It's hard to explain this kind of obessession to someone who is not experiencing it, and even harder to ask them to be understanding about it.

Tests, animals, life.

I'm back. Took some time off and had a lot of catching up to do at work yesterday, so no time for blogging. Wednesday was my first part of the CPA exam...BEC...Business Environment and Concepts. Lots of crap about partnerships, s-corps, c-corps, stocks, bonds, present value of money, information technology, international markets, etc, etc, etc. It's kind of the random-crap section of the exam. I sincerely hope I passed it, not just because I have a fear of failure, but also because if I have to study that boring ass shit again, I'll probably have to hurt someone. Then Thursday, Friday and Saturday we took a little trip to celebrate our anniversary. Saturday we came home, gathered the dogs, then grilled out some veggies for dinner and set off fireworks in the front yard. It was fun and I look forward to buying even more explosives next year!! Oddly enough, it is legal to buy the big fireworks in our state, but illegal to actually set them off. Needless to say, we ignored that last part of the law.

Saturday was our anniversary. We've been married 11 years. I keep saying that and it keeps blowing my mind. It is amazing how young we were when we got together and when we got married and how we've managed to stay together. So much shit has gone down since we got married, not just with us, but with all the people in our wedding. Let's look at my bride's maids. One of them had a baby, got married and had another baby (in that order), another one came out of the closet and lives happily with her girlfriend, another one got married and divored twice, got married again and had a baby, and the fourth one had a baby and got divorced. Then there's the groomsmen. The best man had a baby, got divorced, then married a woman who already has 4 kids. Another one had triplets, one had 2 kids and the fourth got divorced and is now a musician. That's a whole lot of crap happening, lots of marriages and divorces and babies for 8 people!! And what have we done? Well, no divorces or babies here. We did move to another city, finish college, got real jobs, moved again...out of state that time. And then of course, there were all manner of interesting developments and things changing...as I think you'd expect when two people essentially grow up together. I mean, I was only 18 and a month out of high school when we started dating. And now I'm 31 years old. Geez.

At work, my office mate is back. Yuck. I got used to having my own office (he was gone for a month...he's an auditor and they spend a lot of time in the field). As it turns out, I really took to talking to myself while he was gone too, so I've had to get that in check. And I got used to listening to my iPod too, but I can't do that with him in here either. But the good news is that he's here this week then gone again next week. Sweet.

At home, all is well. I'm studying again for the 2nd part of the exam which is scheduled for August 20th. This one is FAR - Financial Accounting and Reporting. I'm trying to get the house cleaned too, I accomplished the kitchen this weekend, that's been about it. Maybe tonight I'll knock out a bathroom or something. However, after the duck tragedies and the baby deer and all that sadness, my faith in the Disney cartoon status of our property has been restored. Sunday I went in the laundry room to hang something up and I looked out the window and there was a deer and 3 babies!! Triplets are very, very rare for deer so it was amazing. I yelled for Husband to come look and we stood at the window watching them. There is a patch in the middle of our front yard that contains our burn pile. We haven't had an opportunity to burn it and the grass/weeds have grown up around it. The fawns used it like a race track and chased each other in circles around it. It was hilarious!! The mother just stood watching them and eating grass, very calm. They moved over near the woods and we went on the back porch and watched them a while longer (they were kind of beside the house at that point). Finally they went into the woods. I took some pictures and will share them as soon as I can sweet-talk Husband into uploading them from the camera. Then this morning, I stepped out on the front porch and 5 deer ran across the driveway. They must have been grazing in the front yard and I startled them and they scampered off into the long grass in the field next to us. Not to sound like a big dork, but it was pretty magical. I mean, they're such beautiful creatures and for them to feel safe enough to just graze and hang out and bring their babies out so close to our house is pretty cool. So this morning's count was 5 deer, 1 indigo bunting and 1 baby bunny (we're overrun with bunnies...want some??)