Gothic · Memories

Wouldn't you believe it? It was beautiful all yesterday afternoon, but I of course didn't want to break my rhythm and run a day early, so instead I got up this morning and slogged 14 miles through the rain. Then what happens? The sun breaks out by 1PM and it's beautiful everywhere I look! Just my luck I guess.

In all honestly, I was a little worried that I'd see a repeat of last weekend, where I waited till the afternoon on Sunday to run and ended up running through a hail storm for the better part of 20 minutes. That was even less cool, and I eventually had to seek shelter under a willow tree. It seems like I just keep hitting these bad stints of weather on Sunday, and then have great weather to stare at from my office window for the rest of the week.

So other than my general complaints about the weather, life has been continuing on rather uneventfully. I'm only a few weeks away from the end of tax season at this point, and have been working about 65 hours a week for a while now. Even though it doesn't leave a lot of free time, I do enjoy having plenty to keep me occupied these first couple months of the year. I'm still trying to decide what I'll do with myself once I pass April 15th. Probably spend even more time running.

I did go and see "Watchmen" with Kami two weeks ago up at the IMAX theater in Seattle. I have to say that while I enjoyed the film, I can understand why it got the reviews that it did. I enjoyed the comic, and while I didn't have any problems with the original stories, some parts of it just do not translate to film no matter how hard you try, which I rather sad since I could tell that the director was trying extremely hard. Here's to hoping that this doesn't prevent him from making any more great films like 300.

Last weekend I began making my own granola, on account of the versions I was finding at the store being either too expense of too full of fat. I came up with a receipe from one of my cookbooks that I then modified to suit my tastes. It's based around a formula of Old fashioned oats, bran, and dried cranberries. It's mucho tasty. Who knows, if I can refine the recipe, maybe I'll go into business selling it myself ^_^

And that is sadly all that has been going on in my life. I don't really have time for much else when I have only one day a week to slow down enough to think, let alone catch my breath. And then I go running for part of it, so I'm not really catching my breath anyway. Huh. Well, I have my first race of the season coming up on May 3rd with the Tacoma Marathon, so I've got plenty to prepare for. If anyone is in the area that day, be sure to keep an eye out; you might see me run by!

So today marks the last day of any relaxing stretch of time that I'll get to have until after April 15th. I was able to enjoy a 3 day weekend on account of my boss telling us all not to come in on Friday in order to make up for missing the ski trip we were supposed to take last weekend (which we were unable to reach on account of all of Tacoma being an island from flooding all around us). So Kami and I made the most of it by playing City of Heroes, watching anime, and generally being lazy as only the truly skilled can be. Currently we're discussing what to do today, such as go to the $2 movie theater, the Grand, Half-Price Books, or something else entirely.

I can't say that this weekend has been entirely lazy though, as yesterday we did have a big shopping fest in order to fill our second freezer in preparation for the above mentioned tax season. Picked up a lot of frozen lasagna, vegetables, fish, extra loaves of bread, all the things that form those core meal items so that hopefully nothing will run low while I'm working. Nothing worse than going to make the next day's lunch on Sunday night and discovering that there's no bread in the house.

Speaking of bread, I finally found some place in Tacoma that actually sells Roman Meal Bread. Roman Meal is a local bread making company (and by local I mean that their main facility is only a few blocks away from our house) that offers a wide variety of whole grain products. Sadly, even though they are local, their products are not carried by most of the major stores around here. I finally located some of their bread at Top Foods, which works out since this is my favorite major grocery store around here anyway. I was really interested in trying their bread after I started reading about how Roman soldiers ate mostly vegetarian diets, consisting primarily on grains and Roman wine (apparently it was considered bad form for Roman soldiers to eat meat and drink beer, which put them quite at odds with the Germanic tribes who believed quite the opposite). Since this reflects the dietary habits that I've been maintaining for several years now, I thought it would be worth checking out the products of a company that follows the same ideals, and is local to boot.

So, I finally got my hands on some of their bread, and let me just say this first and foremost- if you can find a store near you that carries this bread, BUY IT. It is some of the sweetest, softest bread I have ever tasted. It is an entirely whole grain bread, and includes the wheat germ as well as the bran, and has flax mixed in to boot, but it has the taste and softness of white bread. I've gotten so used to eating rough whole grain breads that are always slightly too dry and feel like they're going to cut the roof of my mouth that I almost didn't believe what I was eating when I tried my first piece. It made for a great peanut butter sandwich, worked excellent for toast this morning, and I'll probably be using it for a cucumber sandwich later this afternoon. It is a little more pricey than a normal whole grain loaf, however. I paid $3.50 for a 24oz loaf at Top Foods, compared to the usual $2.50 that I pay for an Orowheat loaf at Costco (and for those of you that still buy the $1 cheap loaves and are currently balking at the above prices, I would suggest you change your habits immediately). Personally I prefer to pay a little bit more for quality food, so I don't really mind the higher price, but I would at least recommend that you try the stuff at least once, even if you don't make it a part of your regular purchases.

Alright, one more thing to say about bread, and then I'll shut up on this topic. Last weekend Kami and I got our hands on some of the Debbi Meyer brown bags (for storing bread). We've been using her patented green bags (for storing vegetables) for several months now, and I've been really happy with the way they can keep vegetables looking newly purchased for weeks. Well, I'm happy to report that her bread bags seem to work just as effectively, even for breads that we're just keeping out on the counter. If you want to keep your food looking nice for a much longer period of time, I suggest giving them a try.

Alright, I promise not to go plugging so many products in my next entry. I just get so excited when it comes to delicious things. In any case, that's all I really have to report. Starting tomorrow I'll be working 10-11 hours a day, six days a week, so don't be surprised if these entries get a little darker and bleaker for a while. I'll do my best to keep a bright outlook, especially since I'll have four weeks of available vacation days awaiting me at the end of it. Hurray for side benefits!

So I was working away through my last study chapter for the Auditing Exam this morning, when I felt something tap my shoulders. Now mind you that I was listening to a lecture over headphones at the time, and with as rapidly as the professor speaks I can't really hear much else going around me. Since our cats have a habit of climbing my chair and batting at my headphones while I'm wearing them, I just assumed it was one of them and turned around to bat back at her. However, I turn and see a human hand on my shoulder. Before my brain can register that its probably just Kami, I let out a yelp and slide back the other direction. My heart was racing, and I must have had a funny look on my face because Kami looks like she doesn't know whether she should laugh or be worried. Really, you would think that by now my wife would know not to sneak up on a person that suffers from Necroanimusphobia (fear of zombies). It really not good for either of our healths.

So anyway, I'm pretty much ready for my last section of the CPA exam, which I'll be sitting for Tuesday. If all goes according to plan you should see me posting many happy things here about the middle of February. Sadly, since I'll be in the middle of tax season at that point I won't really have the opportunity to celebrate, but just knowing that I won't have sit for any more exams will be worth it. Plus finally getting to add the "comma CPA" to my business cards will just be awesome.

I did have an interesting moment while reading today where my accounting life crossed paths with my gaming life. I was reviewing some auditing terminology, and I came across the word "kiting", which caused me no end of confusion for the rest of the time I was reading about it. Those of you who are gamers probably already figured out why, but for the people reading that do not game or are not familiar with obscure accounting terminology, here are the two definitions:

Kiting (accounting) - to transfer money from one bank account to another, but not record the decrease in cash to the first bank account, thereby falsely inflating the amount of cash on hand.

Kiting (gaming) - a popular method of killing mobs (monsters) by staying at a distance, using ranged attacks, and running whenever the enemy comes near. (taken from Wikipedia)

As you can see, they don't really have much to do with each other, but they're getting terribly jumbled in my mind right now, which is something I don't need after all of the other facts that I've had to cram in lately. Hopefully the term won't come up on the exam, because I'll probably freak out.

Well, that's about all I have to say that's worth mentioning, other than Kami and I went and saw the movie "Doubt" last night, and it was amazing. Each of the three main characters is played to absolute perfection, and you get to see deep facets of their lives in only a short amount of time (I think the runtime for the film was about 1 hour, 40 minutes). I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a serious film to watch. Even the subject matter of the film is handled very carefully, and presented in a way that it can be talked about freely without ever really talking about it.

Alright, I'm off to game for a while.

Wee, its the first of January. That means only two weeks until work begins to pick up and my life becomes a constant slog of long work hours, short sleep hours, hastily eaten meals and general aching all over. I can't wait! Seriously, despite everything I just said I do actually enjoy tax season on some level. If nothing else, it's good to wake up every morning and know that there's an assignment waiting on your desk that needs to be completed (or even better, five or six). Considering that both November and December were virtually dead work wise, I think it'll be good to stretch my brain a bit.

Speaking of stretching my brain, I've so far passed three of my four sections of the CPA exam, with only Auditing left to go. It figures that the one that I have yet to pass would be the longest and most detail intensive of all of them (If I remember right, the allotted time for it is 4 1/2 hours). I'll be taking it right after the company ski trip, which is next weekend. What a great thing to have on my mind the whole time that I'm supposed to be relaxing. I suppose it'll at least ensure that I have plenty to read on the trip down.

Kami and I spent last night up in Enumclaw with my parents and a bunch of old friends from high school. I somehow managed to stay up until midnight, which I hadn't really intended since it threw off my sleep schedule (and thus the rest of my plans) for today, but I suppose it was worth it in order to hang out with everyone a bit longer. In the end, rather than spending the whole day today studying as I probably should have, I ended up sleeping in and lounging, with my intention to bust apart the books this weekend. Nothing like adding a little pressure to ensure maximum study performance, right? Right.

So I ended up loading and trying out a game that Stephen gave me for Christmas called "Assassin's Creed". It's an interesting little play, but I definately agree with what Yatzee here had to say with it. Quite a bit of repetition, especially if you aren't a fan of long collection quests in order to get obscure prizes (hunting for bugs in Twilight Princess anyone?). Still, it has an entertaining enough story to engage, and I doubt I'll get tired of jumping off of rooftops onto guards any time soon.

Well, back to work tomorrow, then the weekend off, then three more days of work, and then four days off, and then tax season begins. I tell you, the crazy vacation schedules may drive me crazy before tax season does.

Somehow without my noticing I've reached December already. I'm not entirely sure what happened to November. Between my zoning out while Kami was in England and the following Thanksgiving vacation, the whole month just kind of shot by without any real level of productivity on my part. I suppose I must have finished a few projects at work, but I can't think of any of them at the moment.

Regardless, December is here, and that means everything around the office is all hustle and bustle as we all try to get the last bits of enjoyment we can before tax season strikes again. I'm feeling rather good about this coming year, if only because lately I've been working hard to implement a new piece of software that will allow for easier tracking of our various assignments, which in turn should allow us to plan our schedules much more efficiently. Myself and another coworker are to be the test subjects this next season, and if successful then the rest of the firm will probably follow suit. Of course, it could also fail horribly and make tax season even worse than it already might be, but I'm optimistic at the moment.

Kami and I have moved on from our Kung-Fu classes, and have joined the local gym, and by local I mean just on the other side of I-5. Its a HUGE facility with just about everything you can imagine, including an olympic sized swimming pool. I'm intending to start going in the morning before work, which I've decided will be much easier to maintain during tax season than going after, on account of at least being able to choose when I start work in the morning. Hopefully that will turn out to work better than my exercise routine last year.

While I think I've called just about everyone who is in the area and would even care to show up, I figured I'd mention it here: because my parents want a chance to show off my house to their relatives and friends, they are having Kami and me host an open house tomorrow afternoon. Since I could use some friendly faces, anyone who is interested in driving all the way here is more than welcome to. Just shoot me a note and I'll get you the address if you don't have it already.

Well, I should probably get outside and mow the lawn for said party before it starts to rain again, so that's all I have to report for the moment.