I had too many pictures for one post...
Here are my mini roses, I have 5 buds that will be opening in the next week or two. As prissy as they are, the roses are pretty rewarding.
I got more indoor plants this week too, I ordered an African Violet from Bluebird Greenhouse - By the way, they are *awesome* - The plants came in beautiful condition, and they sent me a free gift plant! I decided to go with a fancy greenhouse because I didn't want to risk getting a buggy plant from Lowes or Home Depot.
This is the one I ordered, Newton Quiet Resolve. I have seen picture's of other people's plants on the web, and this one often has very variagated leaves. Mine aren't showing much in the way of variagation yet, but the plant will be in my office under my flourescent desk lamp 9 hours a day, so the variagation will hopefully become more pronounced. (Check out the one about 1/3 of the way down on this page)
This is the free gift, Aca's Passionate. This one is going to live in my bedroom.
For those of you that are following the progress of my garden, here are this week's pictures: Please excuse my complete inability to work the autofocus this week.
The enormous tomato: (It's a one-plant jungle) I finally did give in and loosely tie the stems to the hanging hook with old knee-highs, since I was starting to feel concerned that the stems were getting *really* heavy.
Here's a cluster of little tomatoes:
And here's the tomato I showed you guys last week. It's cherry-sized, but instead of being round, it's shaped like a regular tomato!
The experimental tomato, however, is still languishing. Not dead, but not really all that alive either:
The pepper is taking off, it's covered in buds, and I'm really looking forward to having a huge crop of habaneros in a month or two:
The strawberries? The plants look healthy enough, but they are still not growing flowers:
Finally, check out my morning glories/moonflowers: (I've made them a trellis out of jute twine) Despite the look of the picture, they are not speeding acoss my balcony at 60mph!
I've been on the forum forever. Like, I joined when it wasn't even bpal.org yet. I have a double-digit member number, and what looks like a ton of posts, but when you spread it out over how long I've been here... Anyway, the forum has gotten huge, and I don't feel like I connect very much anymore. I feel like the bulk of the community (at least the people talking) are students or artists, or whatever. And my spreadsheet-jockey, buisiness-casual lifestyle really doesn't fit in.
And the funny thing is, I feel like I used to. Certainly the community has opened up to wholeheartedly embrace all kinds of people, but every thread that bashes private colleges or higher education just turns my stomach. Every thread that dumps on people essentially for having disposable income and then, gasp, spending it! Maybe I'm just being over-sensitive, but I'm not taking away from anyone else by being successful, and the pattern of every time lifestyle/socioeconomic class/income/etc comes up in a thread, the undercurrent is that is is somehow inherently immoral to be well off just irritates the crap out of me. I work hard, have a valuable skill, and made some good choices. I earned my good life.
I did not grow up rich. I did not grow up priveledged. We moved to the US when I was a little kid, My dad was a professor at a state college, and my mom was a post-doc. But they worked hard, and I learned a lot about what it takes to "make it."
I am not evil. I am envionmentally conscious. I drive a fairly fuel-efficient car, and live close to work so I won't have a crazy commute. I grow vegetables on my balcony. I believe in universal access to health care, and education. I believe in having a social safety net. But I also believe that once you give everyone the same opportunity for success, that's it. People deserve the same opportunities, they don't deserve the same outcomes. Your life is what you make of it. My life is what I made of it too.
I don't know what brought this on... Certainly not a specific thread recently... I guess I'm just feeling like I like it a lot better over here on the blog side where the community is a lot smaller, and we're all following each other's lives in a personal way. Over here, I don't feel reduced to a cartoon yuppie. I don't feel like a freak for my "egg brain" I don't feel like I'm making anyone else feel bad about themselves over here, either. Grr.
I'm omitting pictures of my Strawberries, herbs, and the experimental tomato - they all look pretty much the same as they did last week. (The experimental tomato plant actually has a couple of teeny tiny tomatoes forming under spent blossoms)
So, without further ado...
Check out my tomato!!!! Right now, it's about the size of a large blueberry. I have a couple of other really tiny ones starting to form elsewhere as well.
The plant itself is turning into a one-plant jungle:
We had a big thunderstorm over the weekend, and the Habanero took off! Two buds are open now, I'm really looking forward to having real home-grown peppers.
My Morning Glories/Moonflowers have started actually making vines. I will be making a twine treliss for them this weekend, as soon as I'm sure where on the balcony I want them to grow.
And finally, I rescued an aloe from Lowes this weekend. It was the only one they had, there was barely any soil in the pot, the poor thing was just rattling around in the pot. It did, however, look essentially healthy, so I had to bring it home. I trimmed two of the leaves, the bent one in the front, so it would have a clean cut to heal, and the one directly in the back, because it had a lot of dark spots.
Anyway, I took it to work on Monday. I read up on re-potting aloes, and consequently, I haven't actually watered it yet so that the roots can heal from being disturbed before getting wet. I'm going to try and hold off until monday before watering it, but it's hard, because I really want to baby it.
So Rusty had to go back in to work today. He left at 6, and I was expecting him at home around 8-ish.
Just before 8, I heard an indistinct scratching rattle noise outside. I thought it was Rusty digging through his pockets for his keys. To be nice, I opened the front door. Immediately, something furry ran in, and I squealed and ran out.
Anyway, I hung out in the breezeway, nearly hyperventilating, for about 10-15 minutes until he got home, and met him out in the parking lot, then explained quite panickedly about the situation and why I couldn't go back inside until he took care of the unidentified creature.
Please note we have the worlds two most useless cats. Carmen is old and very blase about such things, she would not wake up from her beauty sleep for some random woodland creature. Pushkin just gets bewildered.
Anyway, Pushkin was some use, he was able to lead Rusty to where the creature was cowering. Rusty ended up putting a box over it, and sliding another piece of cardboard underneath. We took the box out to the nearest stand of trees (our apartment complex is kind-of built around existing clumps of trees. It looks beautiful, but sometimes I feel like we're a little *too* close to nature)
It turns out the unexpected houseguest was a very cute, but completely terrified squirrel. Poor guy. I wonder what convinced him to scratch on my door to get in.
Strawberries: These are going nowhere. Not dying, but not thriving either.
Roses: I'm so sick of these fussy bitches. I am seriously tired of the fact that the relatively benign incecticidal soap I'm using only keeps the aphids at bay for about 3 days at a time.
Habanero: It's putting out glossy green leaves all over, and there's almost a dozen buds on top.
Hanging Tomato: If you scroll down, a week ago, the plant came half way up to the hook, now they're way up there, I'm curious how huge this thing will get! It's got 2 sets of open flowers, and 2 sets of brand new buds. I will hopefully have a ton of tomatoes.
Experimental Tomato: It's clearly not thriving, but it's not dead yet either. It's also got a cluster of flowers.
Morning Glories and Moonflowers: Both have started growing vines. I'm curious just how fast they're really going to take off.
So I took the exam about 3 weeks ago...
It took me this long to recover enough to be willing to blog about it!
Anyway, The test was 4 hours and 35 questions. All calculation/numerical questions, but multiple choice, so no opportunity for partial credit if you make arithmetic mistakes.
Although it's against the rules, a lot of people take their MC letter answers out of the test. The evening of the test (after the sittings are done in all time zones) one person will usually volunteer to run the PAK (popular answer key), and everybody sends them their answers. They then create a key based on the idea that usually wrong answers are fairly evenly distributed between the different wrong answer choices (with the exception of tricky questions that trick people into one specific wrong answer) so that the right answers are usually the plurality of answers for each question. The PAK is usually right to within a question or 2.
According to the PAK, I got 24/35. The pass mark is usually 21-22. (The pass mark is set each sitting after the tests are all scored. Although the societies say that the exams are not "curved", it's pretty clear that the pass mark is usually set to keep the passing percentage pretty steady)
I'm not going to tempt fate by claiming I passed, but the odds are pretty decent I may have pulled it off. I won't know officially until July 14.
Because the forum limits the number of pictures per post, I had to split it up.
My miniature roses: I had a bad aphid infestation while these buds were forming, so these flowers are a little ratty looking, but there are a ton of new buds that should look beautiful when they open!
My pot of morning glories and moonflowers: I planted 2 of each, I'm planning to grow them up the balcony railing. I planted them kind of in the 4 corners, but I guess some sloppy watering moved them around a bit. The two little sprouts are the morning glories, and the two moonflowers are sprouting as we speak!
My moonflower seeds breaking through the soil: How awesome is that?!? I feel like I'm in 1st grade again! I am planning to take more pictures of them in a few hours to see how far they've come
My moonflower seeds 24 hours later:
My strawberries:
My Habanero pepper:
My hanging basket tomato: I swear it's growing so fast I can almost see it happening!
My "Experimental" tomato: - I'm trying it out in a self-watering container made from a 3 liter bottle. I know it won't produce well or have the best-tasting tomatoes, but it amuses me. I'm going to wrap the container in mylar to keep the roots from burning.
My herbs: Thyme and basil
Just 18 hours to go!
So anxious. I think I'm pretty ready, but I won't know for sure until tommorrow morning. Ooof. Unfortunately, there is a lot more on these exams than can be tested in 35 questions, so the tests are *very* different from sitting to sitting. There is a certain element of chance about whether or not the material on the exam overlaps well enough with the stuff I've studied. I could get blindsided.
Anyway, thanks for all of your well wishes!
he exam is on wednesday. I am barreling full speed ahead towards it. Today I am at work (8 hours of distraction intended to save my sanity.) Tommorrow I'm home studying all day.
Overthe weekend, I spent each morning taking a 4 hour timed practice exam (Last May's test saturday morning, and last November's on sunday) Then the afternoons/evenings were spent working problems in areas I was weak on. Tonight, I will be doing more of the same. Tommorrow is the last all-day push to make sure I have firmly memorized everything that needs memorization. No theory, just drilling myself over and over on all of the equations.
So yeah, I am barreling headlong towards burnout. It's a race against the clock at this point. I am already looking up chiropracters to make an apointment for next week to try and undo some of the damage from spending 2 months hunched over a desk. This morning, I woke up with such a pain in my neck that I had to pick my perfume this morning that wouldn't conflict with the smell of the IcyHot I had rubbed into the entier back of my neck and shoulders. I went with Lick It. It definately smoother out the sharpness of the menthol in the IcyHot. There's a layering combination you don't hear about often.
And my parents are coming into town on Friday. The apartment is in shambles, so wednesday after the exam, I will be cleaning like *mad*. Actually, I suspect it won't be that bad. I'm planning on getting a handful of big rubbermaid containers to pack up with winter clothing, spare bedding, etc. and put on the top shelves in the closets. I don't think the problem is so much mess as this apartment has kinda crappy closets, so storage has been a problem. Once I organize that, I think the rest of it will just be vacuuming, laundry and a little thoughtful aranging. Which isn't nothing, but it's not insurmountable.
Rusty was supposed to be cleaning house this weekend, but #1) his standards of what constitutes "clean" are a lot lower than mine, and #2) he hasn't developed that skill of breaking down big tasks into smaller, manageable components, so to him it *does* seem insurmountable. It's irritating, but I've pretty much given up on the idea that he will ever wake up in the morning with a burning desire to keep the house clean and organized.
I'll be putting off planting the balcony garden until the weekend, since there won't be time for both cleaning and planting on wednesday.
So this is what burnout looks like : mild panic, physical pain, and distracting myself in daydreams of cleaning house. Wow - so miserable, yet so banal.
I've been studying all day.
I just stomped out into the living room and had a very nice ranty monologue about how the two problems on the May 05 exam that involved Buhlmann credibility with Poisson distributions were very easy credibility problems, *but* one expected you to just look at the distribution function and just *know* that it's a Pareto distribution, and the other relied on knowing the formula for solving gamma integrals, which I guess is just one more thing to memorize, but seriously, has nothing to do with Buhlmann credibilty at all, it's a computational technique.
Imagine me going into a *lot* more detail about my displeasure. Imagine my boyfriend smiling sympathetically, and nodding in all the right places. Then asking me, "did you have a nice conversation with yourself?" It wasn't mean the way he said it, just cute.
Anyway, It's going to be a tough 4 days, but I think Wednseday, I have a pretty good chance to nail it.
I had a big performance last night. I danced at a big dance show at a theater at Washington University (not at a bellydance-community event, but at an event where there were dancers from all over the city, and people payed $20/ticket to see the show!
Our school danced to two songs, the first was more traditionally bellydance, and the 2nd was to a song that was a cross between arabic and afro-cuban styles of music, and the dancing was a blend as well. It's super-cute. I was in the traditional piece. There were 5 of us dancing with veils, and we formed a semicircle type shape around 3 dancers with swords. I was the center veil dancer, which was most cool.
As a completely unrelated aside, the ballet dancers wear the ugliest crap backstage... baggy sweatpant overalls, grungy insulated socks... oh those poor things, too skinny to keep themselves warm. Also some of them were grumbling about how the cosumes we and the Indian dancers were wearing were a lot cooler than theirs. I would be grumbling too if the skirt of my dress was cut to look like mis-proportioned flower petals.
Anyway, so right up until like an hour before the show, the veil dancers are still going over stuff. At rehersal yesterday afternoon, my veil shrink wrapped itself to my face while I was dancing. We were all anticipating a disaster. But when we got on stage, it went off without a hitch. Our teachers take on it was, "Have you guys been shitting me for the last 3 weeks? Did you guys just know it all along and mess up in practice just to freak me out?" I twas awesome. The audience was clapping along with our music, it was great.
I learned a lesson from it too: We thought we were unprepared, but we had practiced hard, and when it came time to do it, adrenaline pulled us through. I think that's where I'm at with my exam: If I make a solid push of studying these last 10 days, and I consitently do well on my practice exams, then adrenalyn should help me pull through with enough of a margin to feel pretty confident about my score.
Also, my micro roses are developing buds. I'm going to have real live roses that I grew all by myself on my balcony!
I took my first practice half-exam today (18 questions in 2 hours). I was tired, had a headache, was forgetting shit right and left. And through all that, I still got 50% of the questions right. That pass mark on this test is usually about 60%, and about 30-40% of people who take each sitting pass.
I have two weeks to go, and a lot of formulas to memorize, but it's in my grasp. The questions I got wrong, most of them I knew what needed to be done, but couldn't remember the formulas or the details. That's easy enough to brush up on in the next two weeks.
I have a dance performance on Friday, that will involve about 4-5 hours sitting around back stage. I will be sitting around with my flash cards, and I think it will be a huge shot in the arm for me, since 4 hours of memorization will do me a lot of good.
Breathe.
I got my bottle of Baku earlier this week. I've been wearing it to bed every night to try to slow down my racing mind. When I track down my scotch tape, I'm going to move it to a roller ball, to keep by the bed.
Still Breathing.
I have a good friend who has had a lot of trouble with her finances. My boyfriend has trashed his too. His stupid brother makes 6 figures, and is still so damn broke that he sometimes has to borrow money to pay for groceries at the end of the month.
I am constantly frustrated with finding out just what my friends *don't* know about personal finance. I'm not talking about investing in stocks, etc. Just simple things, like how to maintain a little savings, manage their credit cards, shop for basic insurance, etc.
I hate the fact that society somehow assumes you lear about money management at home, but the fact of the matter is that most people's parents aren't capable of giving the advice their kids need. Now that people get married when they're older, a lot of people have to figure out how to get their finances off to a good start when they're still single, while their parents may have already been married and living off two incomes at their age. Also, let's face it, the economy has changed a lot since most of our parents were 25.
The number one piece of bad advice that too many of my friends have tried and failed at: "Make a detailed budget and stick to it."
Ha!
Only the most compulsive among us can actually make that work. That's not to say a budget isn't a valuable tool. I have one. I break costs down into general categories, and use it not to plan future spending, but instead to track retrospectively where my money goes.
The simple fact is that purchases expand to use all available money. I get paid twice a month. So on the first of the month, I pay all of the bills due in the first half of the month, and on the 15th, I pay all the bills due in the 2nd half of the month.
Also on the 1st and 15th, I have a set amount automatically transfered into my savings account. Personal Finance books call this "paying yourself first". After my savings is taken care of, I spend whatever is left however I want with no guilt.
Anyway, it's true what they say. If you take it out at the beginning, you really don't miss it. When you're worried all month about coming in under budget, it's stressful. When you know you've already taken care of savings, money management is much more straightforward day-to-day. Even if you just put $25 out of each paycheck in the bank, in a year, you'll have $600 in the bank. And even though that doesn't sound like much, it represents a helpful financial cushion in case you have sudden expenses. If you can slowly increase the amount you put away, you come out even further ahead.
As for a budget... At the end of every month, I download all of my transactions from my bank, pull it into excel, then sort them all out into categories: Rent/Food/Gas/Bellydance/Eating Out/Etc. Each month I sit down and go over them, and take stock of where my money is going. If I find that something is out of balance, I try to make practical changes. For example, if I see that I have been going overboard on eating out, I make that something to be conscious of in the following month. I don't aim to be compulsive about my spending, just conscious of it.
I think that is most of my friends' biggest problem. They spend unconsciously. If they just asked themselves, "Will this item be worth as much benefit to me as the amount of time I have to spend working to make the money to pay for it?" - BPAL, a great vacation, etc are things that meet that criteria for me. More brightly-colored knicknacks from Target don't.
Anyway, I'm done ranting now.
Sometimes, when I'm really wrapped up in studying and stuff, I get hit in the head with this incredibly intense melencholy. Out of nowhere, I suddenly get all sad about being so boring, so unsatified with my un-rock-star-ness.
I get all nostalgic for nights spent up all night talking music and philosophy, ending up at a crepe shop for breakfast, our makeup all smeared, exhausted and intelectually sated. Or working the door at crazy shows. Or rolling at parties, being all talkative and one with the universe.
I start getting this thought like I wish I had some musical talent, so then I could be in a band, then I'd *really* be a rock star. But I know tons of people in bands, and I know the whole rock star thing, doesn't really happen. And even when people give it a go, it's not really all that much fun.
Well, then maybe I need a glamorous, exciting, interesting hobby. Then I smack myself upside the head. I have the single most beutiful belly dance dress ever made hanging in my closet as we speak, and I'll be dancing in it in a week and a half in front of a giant theater full of people. I *do* have a glamorous hobby.
I guess I'm mostly just lamenting getting too old for those up-all-night talking music, art, and the nature of the universe things.
I watched "Say Anything" again tonight. (for like the 1000th time)
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.
I'm a brain. Unfortunately, *not* trapped in the body of a game show hostess.
My boyfriend basically shares Lloyd's worldview. He's not into the whole buy/sell/process worldview. He doen't have a degree, and although he has a good job in computers, I don't think he's figured out what he wants to do when he grows up.
Plenty of aquaintances have questioned what the hell the two of us are doing together. He makes me laugh. He's sweet to me. He's the kind of guy who would point out glass for me walk around. I spent about 11 or 12 hours studying today. He brought me a warm lunch, and warm dinner. He's been cleaning the apartment. He makes the whole house run while I focus on my studying.
---
I was discussing relationships with other actuaries at a seminar a couple of weeks ago... And we all realized that of the sucessful corporate high-ups we knew, most of them did not have high-powered spouses. Even the female partners at the consulting firm I used to work for, their husbands were artists, caterers, one owned a fly-fishing shop... All good careers, but not corporate. And the men too, their wives didn't work, or also had similar non-corporate careers.
I think there's a lot of value in having both people in the relationship working in fields with very different challenges and very different definitions of success. I think it makes it easier. You get stressed over different things, and not always at the same time, kind of makes it easier to be there for each other.
That, and for people in very time-consuming or high-stress careers, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be with someone who is more home-oriented than career oriented. I don't think it's a gender role thing, after all, I'm the one working all the time, and who spent the first couple of years as the primary income in our household. But, you know, *someone* needs to keep the home fires burning.
I'm PMS-ing. I have had a couple of little smudges in my panties today, but it really hasn't gotten started yet.
I have a seriously bitchy headache. My skull feels brittle. I feel like the right side of my brain is swolen. I tried to study for a couple of hours then gave up. I'm drinking strawberry chocolate iced tea and waiting for the advil to kick in.
This is my first summer using cloth pads, and I was a little afraid it would be hot to have flannel in my panties. I am pleasantly surprised. Yeah they're a little warm, but not *nearly* as hot as disposables. Also, forgive the TMI, but I am somewhat prone to getting a sweaty crotch... since the wings that wrap around are absorbant flannel as well, I don't get clammy around my upper thighs.
Rusty is out at the Drinking Liberally social tonight. Honestly, I'm kinda glad he's out of the house. I like the alone time. I'm feeling cranky and antisocial.
To feed my antisocialness, I'm watching Top Chef. Mmm. Snarky.
inkdark moon wrote:
I was going to comment in response, but then my comment turned into a novel, and I decided to re-think my response and write it up here instead.
I can say with absolute certainty that I am happy with my life now.
I mean, in a moment-to-moment sense, I am frustrated with the exam process I have to complete for my career, and I'm busy and tired, but in an overall sense,. I'm happy.
But, the thing is, it's the things that are causing all of that busy-ness that make me happy. I have, by grace or luck, stumbled into a career that I enjoy. And the whole exam thing means that every day, when I get up, I know I will spend anywhere from 4 to 8 hours that day, studying, learning new things and intellectually challenging myself. And studying it all on my own makes it way more rewarding than college ever was.
The biggest misery in my life is to be bored. I hate it. Everything around me can be falling to pieces, but If I am setting goals and occationally achieving them, I'm happy. If I'm learning new things, and having to stretch my brain to do it, I'm happy.
So I guess what I'm saying is that my own happiness is both an internal thing *and* the result of my interacting with the world. My happiness comes from knowing I can rise to a challenge. My goals and my challenges are different from everyone elses, and the things that are important to me aren't important to others... But I have found the things that I am passionate about, and the *path* I am taking to get there makes me happy. I've succeeded in the realm of my career to find a job that challenges me intelectually.
And I have been lucky in my love life to find a guy who loves me so much, he gently holds me to my *own* standards instead of his. Seriously, that's love. He wants me to meet my own goals and grow in the direction I chose. It's a daily struggle for me, but I try to do the same for him.
As for why there are so many depressed people... I think the modern world, for all of the supposed choices we have in every part of our lives, is actually very disempowering. We are all constantly overstimulated with exhausting trivia, and by the time we start looking inwards at what we want and need, we're too tired, and our heads are too full of marketing and other people's opinions.
I'm not saying I'm above it. I'm there just as much as anyone, asking myself, "Is this what I want? What my parents want? What my friends think is best for me? What is "socially acceptable"? What I have been conditioned to believe someone of my social/financial/whatever station should do?"
I think one lucky thing that happened to me was studying TaeKwon Do as a teenager. Right in the middle of those very formative years, I had a chance to learn a little about setting and achieving goals as I moved up the ranks. As I advanced, I was given more and more responsability, and, cliched as it sounds, I really did learn the satisfaction that comes from a job well done. I learned how good it felt to push myself so far beyond the limits I thought I had.
I know I have more thoughts on the subject, but I'll leave it here for now.
Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to take pictures of your own hands? Excuse the fact that I'm tossing in a ton of pictures but no one picture really captures it.
A close up of the ring on my finger:
A close up of the ring with the ring I wear on my left middle finger (It's a bonzai tree, it was a gift from my dad):
A little less close-up:
In context with the other ring and my watch:
The amazing glow in the saphire:
Today, for no particular occation, my boyfriend gave me:
This Titanium Ring!!!!!
It's not an engagement ring, we're not getting married until I finish my actuarial exams and he cleans up his credit. I had lost the stone from my old ring, and had jokingly told him he should get me a ring for my birthday. He told me he got this one for me just because he loves me.
The center stone is white saphire, the two larger side stones are moisenite, and the 4 smaller side stones are rubies. I'll try to get pics tommorrow.
I am totally twitterpatted.
I got home from Atlanta yesterday.
I was there for a weeklong exam-prep seminar. I've mentioned on the forum that I am an actuary, midway through the 9 exam process of becoming fully credentialed as a Fellow of the Casualty Actuary Society.
So, this exam covers a number of topics:
Loss Modeling
Survival Models
Credibility Theory
Simulation
Interpolation and fitting
It took 4.5 full days to take a sprint through all of the material, including problem solving techniques. I would guess that the material covered would take about 3 full semester college classes. Unfortunately, outside of a handful of colleges with actuarial science programs (which generally only prepare people for the first 4 exams, anyway), the whole actuarial exam thing is all self-study. I've been studying for two months now, and the seminar I went to was basically an opportunity to fine tune which topics need more study, and to learn useful clues to look for in the wording of problems to simplify solving.
I have 5 weeks left before the exam. I have scheduled for myself 32 hours a week outside of work for studying:
4 hours per day - Mon, Tues, Wed, Fri
Tursday nights off for dance class and sanity
8 Hours per day Saturday and Sunday
Ooof. This is going to be a rough 5 weeks. To get in at least *some* excercise, I am planning morning yoga a couple of mornings a week. I'm home for lunch today, and doing laundry. I will have to fit chores in at odd times, and will be needing all of my boyfriend's support. He's a sweetie though, and very understanding.
I was talking to a number of actuarial students this past week whose spouses/partners didn't get it. Like, "Come on honey, you've been studying for like 2 hours. I'm sure you'll be fine. Put it down and spend time with me!" That's the nasty part, most study guides say that it takes 300-500 hours of study time to pass each of these exams. That takes a lot more than 2 hours each saturday morning. I had a boyfriend like that, and my abject misery at failing exams over and over didn't help the relationship any.
Anyway, I have to go move the laundry to the dryer and head back to work. Oof.
I must say, even though I am not usually the kind of person who waxes poetic about commercial services... I could have the turbotax people's babies this morning.
I've been using Turbotax for the web for the past 5 years (Which is cool on its own, since they have PDFs of my last 5 tax returns available right there online.) It's a great tool, I've been really happy with it when I didn't have very complicated taxes. Since I don't own a house, I usually take the standard deduction, super easy.
When I first moved to California, though, That first year I had to file state taxes in both California and Kentucky. At that point in time, Turbotax only let you do one state tax return. It was a total headache. States don't make it easy, at all.
Anyway, this year, I have to file taxes in both California and Missouri. I was looking forward to the messy process of trying to figure out if I should file resident or non resident in each state, and figuring out how to deduct one state's taxes in the calculation for the other and all that stupid crap, when, lo and behold, Turbotax for the web tells me it can do up to 3 state income taxes and make them all work amongst themselves correctly. Dude, how awesome is that? I have to pay a whole new fee for each state's return, but I know that that extra $30 is saving me hours of confusion, and I sure as hell know that my time is worth it.
I did all of my taxes in an hour this morning. I think this deserves a trip to Starbucks.
Now that I've totally geeked out on some of the forum blog technical details, I think it's time to settle into actually posting.
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This spring it seems that I'm traveling like mad. This would be great for someone who liked traveling, but I don't. I can't help it. I hate sleeping away from home. even the nicest hotel comes in 2nd place to my own bed in my own room.
Last week, I was in England. Five days in Oxford, and 2 in London. I was totally enchanted by Oxford. London, on the other hand, was so gray and dismal. I loved the museums, but beyond that... Also, I don't think of myself as a prude, after all, I loved living in San Francisco, but... Walking down what seem to be normal downtown shopping streets and seeing sex shops and casinos just mixed in with the cafes and stores just seemed odd and a littledissonant. Also, what's with all the betting parlors? On every block, almost.
I unfortunately missed out on two places I wanted to go: I was planning to take a day trip to Stonehenge, but when I called the tour company, they were totally booked. Then I thought I'd take the train to Bletchley Park (where they cracked the Enigma code) but their museum was going to be closed until April 1. I was sad.
Everyone has been asking me about the food. Well, Oxford and London were both covered in very nice French boulangeries, which have great coffee, tea, and chocolate croisants. Many of them also serve sandwiches where they take a length of baguette, make a cheese-heavy sandwich with it, then smoosh it on a panini grill. The long narrow shape makes them much easier to eat than the kind of paninis we have here.
Also, the Indian food is spectacular. I can see why people joke about it being the national cuisine of England. The non-ethnic restaurants we went to were less impressive. They really do sadly overcook their vegetables.
I had fish and chips at a pub in Oxford (it was away from the tourist areas and was populated mostly by locals (I got chatted up by a handful, so I'm sure they were local). They served it on a regular plate, and it didn't taste any different from fish and chips you would have in the US. On the plus side though, the pub had Strongbow on tap. I love Strongbow...
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I took lots of pictures, so hopefully soon I will have some to post!
In her post, please be upstanding for the mayor of simpleton, Clover asked:
Even though I'm writing this here, I'm going to "ping" her post, so that when she goes to look at it, she'll see that this post is in reference to hers.
Hi, Clover!!!
