Pay it forward

Hopefully I'll have time to make a full blog post later, but for now I just wanted to share with you a story I heard on the Morning Zoo on WNCI this morning:

A woman wrote in to the Morning Zoo to tell them about an experience she recently had. She said that this past year has been rough for her, as both she and her husband lost their jobs. Her husband has been working at a temp agency, and she has been cleaning houses part-time. So they were really excited to get their tax refund in the mail. As soon as they got it, they deposited it and went to Walmart (the one I go to!). She said they 'went crazy' in Walmart, picking out clothes and tons of household items that were falling apart at their house, making them depressed since, until this day, they couldn't afford to replace these broken-down things. When they were finished, they went to check out and found out it had totaled $609, which is obviously a ton, especially to a family that is struggling. However, the check would cover it. Unfortunately, they found out that the check hadn't cleared yet, so her credit card was declined. She called the credit card company and they told her it would be another 24 hours before it cleared. She said she was incredibly embarrassed, so she was speaking with the manager about holding the items for her until the next day. While this happened, the manager asked her to please wait a minute, and went to speak with the customer behind her in line (I think the customer called him over or something). A few minutes later, the manager came back, gave her a receipt, and told this woman that her entire order ($609!) had been taken care of by the customer behind her in line. The woman ran to catch up with this other woman in the parking lot, and she said, "I think you've made a mistake..." and the woman replied, "Just let it happen. I'm just trying to pay it forward." and with that, she got in her car and drove away. So this woman who wrote into WNCI was basically letting people know that people really do pay it forward. She said something like, "Obviously I can't pay for someone's $600 grocery bill, but I'm so determined to find something I can do to pay it forward."

Is that not just the greatest story ever? I cried haha. Little stories like this just make my day :)

Lots going on!

Lots going on recently... here's my quick attempt while procrastinating on studying for the CPA exam:

• Computer broke. Lost my draft of the exit exam for my program. Luckily it wasn't too far along, but still. Annoying. Paid $150 to have them tell me my computer was broken. Paid $400 for a new laptop (a great deal, but I still don't have that money just laying around). Luckily parents are helping me out!
• Beyond annoyed at my parents for inviting NINE people to my MAcc graduation ceremony. It's NOT like the official commencement... it's like a small, intimate gathering. So inviting the equivalent of 10% of my MAcc program is not exactly going to go unnoticed. I'm so embarrassed. Everyone else is bringing 2-3 people. Awesome. Just awesome. The best part is that my parents were thoughtful enough to email the woman in charge of the ceremony to see if SHE thought it was acceptable to invite that many people... but they failed to ask ME if I thought it was okay. You know, it's only MY graduation. No big deal. I realize that it's really, really awesome that that many family members are willing to fly in to see me at this ceremony, but I just would have appreciated being contacted first.
  
• Going to Pittsburgh this weekend... suuuuuper excited but also trying not to stress about the infinite amounts of work I will NOT be doing while I'm there.
• Saw a movie last night... sneak peek for a movie that'll be out in June. Hilarious at parts, but overall not so great. I already forget the movie title... oops? Anyway, it was fun going.
• Overwhelmed by my mergers & acquisitions class. It's awful. I would have dropped it if i knew of any other good classes to take. but i don't so... here i am. stuck. my group presents a case on thursday and it's killing me. not to mention the punk ass girl that's in my group that i want to strangle. she's the type of person who... well let me just tell you what she did. We present on Thursday. The case was made available online on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday afternoon, she had finished the entire case (at LEAST 3-4 hours of work) and emailed it to our group. Like... I'm sorry, I thought this was a GROUP project? THEN she gets mad when I bring up potential problems with her answers. Like... bia, you could have just waited to do this as a group. Don't get so defensive. UGH. Not my fault you're such a ridiculous overachiever. And she is sending emails to the whole group that are addressed to me... "Britney, you're being contradictory in what you wrote in the last sentence to #7D..." um... okay. whatevs. sorry for trying to help out on our GROUP project. And then we like split up the parts for our presentation via email... how awesome for her that she chose the EASIEST section. Like, what?!?! you had the balls to take over the entire case, including the REALLY hard parts! freaking have the balls to explain it in class!
• speaking of this presentation, i'm terrified. our professor is just... so intimidating. at the end of our presentations, she doesn't just let us sit down. she makes you stand up there and GRILLS you for about 15 minutes on topics we don't really understand. if someone doesn't know the answer, she just stares at you. seriously. she does not say a word. After awhile, she'll just say, "Okay. My next question is..." and never tells us the answer to the first question!!! what the heck! how are we supposed to learn from that?! bizarre. just bizarre.
• the only class i like right now is my governmental/not for profit accounting class which is OF COURSE the one class i dont have any real grades in. like... its the ONE class i could find motivation to study for. we don't get our first grade until 1 week before finals week. omg. what. we also only have 2 grades... a presentation and a case study. sigh.
• i'm over a week behind on the cpa studying. fab.
• i'm trying really, really hard to not be so negative but i just feel like i've been beat down constantly lately. i've just had issue after issue (computer, allergies, M&A group, this graduation drama with my mom, etc.) and i just want to be issue-free for like, a day or two. i know it'll come sometime, but sooner rather than later would be wooonderful.

i'm going to make myself say some good things because this entry has been somewhat emo. let's see...

• my rent is $30 cheaper this month because we didn't have to use the heat so much last month! YAY!
• pittsburgh will be wonderful. pittsburgh will be wonderful. pittsburgh will be wonderful. PLUS donny's roommate bought a 55 inch tv... yesssssssss.
• less than 2 months until graduation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• less than 6 months until real money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

phew

Dixie Carter

Sad news in the entertainment world (at least for me)… Dixie Carter died :( If you didn’t know me in middle school, you likely don’t know how much she meant to me. If you don’t know who she is, she was an actress, most famous for her role as Julia Sugarbaker in the tv show Designing Women. She was basically a badass, loud-mouthed, but classy as hell feminist. Aka my role model haha. Seriously. I started watching Designing Women when it was on Lifetime when I was like, in sixth grade. How ridiculous haha. How many sixth graders watch Lifetime? Actually, my earliest memory of Designing Women/Dixie Carter is actually one of my first memories EVER... I was about 3 or 4 years old and I was watching Designing Women with my mom (when it was actually airing for the first time!) and I went into the kitchen to get something to drink during a commercial break, and I had my mom's HUGE late 80's glasses for some reason. I was dangling them in my fingers like Julia Sugarbaker so often did, and I said, 'I'm Julia Sugarbaker, S-U-G-A-R-B-A-K-E-R," and I must have been repeating a line from that episode, which, now that I've seen all the episodes, I actually know well. See, I was a fan from a very, very young age :)

Anyway, for some reason, the show just SPOKE to me; I don’t know. I’m not Southern and I’m not an interior designer, but the themes the show addressed just like… made sense to me. I would record (on a VHS… ha) the shows because they would be on right after I got home from school, and I always had to do my homework right when I got home. Then I’d spend the night just watching the episodes. I was OBSESSED. Julia Sugarbaker was by far my favorite character, and I just wanted to be everything about her. I wanted to be classy and educated enough that I could just RIP someone apart that insulted me or made me mad haha. Her speeches on the show and the things she fought for truly shaped me. As an impressionable young 10 year old, I learned about issues relating to women’s rights, because the show’s main writer was a huge feminist. Social issues were really featured on the show and really influenced me. Julia was kind of the liberal feminist of the show and her tirades were famous on the show… here’s a few samplings:

Allison: Oh, Julia, just so you know, the next time you see your lawyer on company time, it's going on your record.
Julia: Just so YOU know... The next time you speak to me in that tone of voice, you're going to the moon.

[Background: a guy wanted to come take pictures of their design firm to feature them in an article called ‘Women of Atlanta’ but then when he got there he was trying to take all these super sexy pictures of them…]
Julia: I'm saying I want you and your equipment out of here now. If you are looking for somebody to suck pearls, then I suggest you try finding yourself an oyster. Because I am not a woman who does that, as a matter of fact, I don't know any woman who does that, because it's stupid. And it doesn't have any more to do with decorating than having cleavage and looking sexy has to do with working in a bank. These are not pictures about the women of Atlanta. These are about just the same thing they're always about. And it doesn't matter whether the clothes are on or off... it's just the same ol' message. And I don't care how many pictures you've taken of movie stars - when you start snapping photos of serious, successful businessmen like Donald Trump and Lee Iacocca in unzipped jumpsuits with wet lips, straddling chairs, then we'll talk.

So anyway. I’m incredibly bummed. Dixie Carter was just as classy and awesome as her character and she will be greatly missed.

Now they just need to hurry up and release every episode ever of Designing Women. I mean, I have the first few seasons on DVD, but seriously… all of them, please. Kthx.

Oh, my. Oh, my.

So. I took the CPA exam today. Well, the first of four sections.

People keep asking me how it went. I have no idea, honestly. I could have passed. I could have failed. Who knows. Some questions I just stared at and thought, "Fuck if I know," before just randomly selecting an answer that wasn't a round number (ususally the answers like 430,293 are more likely to be correct than the 450,000 answers). Some I flew through easily, which was nice. There was one section that I bombed... whatevs.

But let me start at the beginning of the day, because, really, that just kind of sets up what sort of day this has turned out to be.

I set my alarm (well, like, 8 alarms) for 6 AM. I knew I had to leave my apartment by like... 7:10 to get there when I wanted to. That left me about an hour to study (obviously I had no intention of showering, etc.). So I woke up, walked to my computer, and attempted to turn it on. Yes, attempted. Turns out my computer would not turn on. Turns out my computer IS BROKEN. Seriously. OF ALL DAYS.

So I woke up an hour early for nothing. I wasn't able to do practice problems, like I had planned. If I fail this exam, I honestly would like to sue HP for the $300 it cost me to take the exam. It's completely their fault. Kind of.

Anyway, LUCKILY I had already printed out my 'notice to schedule' which was a piece of paper I was required to bring to the test. Like... what if I hadn't printed it out ahead of time? I wouldn't have been able to print it. Aka I wouldn't have been able to take the exam. It's not like the library is open at 6 AM so I could have gone there. Nope, nowhere to print. So thank goodness I'm OCD and had it printed out like, 2 weeks ago.

So then I get to the testing center, and it's fine. They actually let me start at like, 7:45 which was nice. I went through the whole test, and then I hit submit. It looked like it was sending, and all of a sudden it was like, "error." ummm awesome. I'm like, getting upset thinking about it so I'm going to stop talking about it now, but let's just say that I'm not 100% sure my test even went through. I THINK it did, but I can't be positive. AWESOMEEEEE.

And that's my life. On top of my horrid, horrid allergies and my sinus infection and my ear infection. And I think I lost my 'fearlessness' necklace which... I also can't talk about without getting upset.

omg. vom. Off to take my computer somewhere to see how horribly it's broken... luckily it'll only cost me $150 to even have them LOOK at it... because clearly I have that kind of cash laying around.

Whew.

I'm falling asleep as I write this, so let's hope I make it to the end.

Donny and I spent a full day looking at/researching apartments. This included 3-4 appointments at various places. I think we have it kind of narrowed down. There's only one place that we're completely sold on, like YES, we want to live there. The only problem is that it's a very small community, so it's completely possible that a unit won't even be open when we would need to move in. They're townhouses that like, legit families live in, so it's not like people are coming and going every year. There's probably only about 50 townhouses at the MOST, so... yeah. We'll see. We don't really have a back-up plan yet, so that's what we're working on now. PS... going apartment shopping with your boyfriend immediately makes you feel really, really old.

I came home tonight (to Westerville) to spend the night here before waking up in the morning to do Easter baskets (yes, I still get one, and they're AMAZING) and the Easter egg hunt (my 13 year old sister insisted we still continue this haha) and then heading to my grandparents for lunch. My family decorated the Easter eggs today (this is the first year I've missed doing it... booooo)... i got to look at them when I came home. My family is just... absurd. A sampling of the things written on the Easter eggs:

• "My name is Britney and I'm love-nest shopping."
• "Green." (the egg was green.)
• "AK-47" (This was one of like, 4 eggs my brother decorated with various gun names.)
• "Mark loves boys"
• "Mark sucks"
• "Mark really sucks"
  
• "The person who decorated this egg loves Nick"

There were also numerous puke-green eggs dyed by my dad. My dad also likes to draw pictures on his eggs... so we have an egg with goldfish, an egg with my cat, etc. We also have two eggs that say Ohio State, but none that say Miami because my mom refused to put Miami on an egg.

This is seriously my life.