Yay :)

Things have been going just... so well lately. Some highlights:

- Jamie came home this weekend and we spent a wonderful Friday together shopping, stuffing our faces with the Pizza Hut lunch buffet (omg yum) and laying out!
- I also got to see a lot of friends I don't usually get to see... Laura, Sam, and Heather!!!
- I PASSED THE AUDIT SECTION OF THE CPA EXAM!!!!!!!! And please keep in mind that this is the one I took in May... I still haven't found out the score from the financial section which I took in April. Dumbest thing ever, but oh well. I passed!! I got an 83... a 75 is a passing grade. However, I feel like I did better on audit than on financial, which worries me because that means I did WORSE than an 83 on that section... not a lot of wiggle room. Eek. Fingers crossed, because I do NOT want to take ANY of these again.
- First paycheck from the call center comes on Fridaaaayyyyy!! AND I found out today that I will be getting an extra FIFTY dollars on my paycheck because I had both the highest average order (a $25 prize) and the highest percentage of people upgrade to a better threadcount (another $25). Yesssss. Granted, it's not really fair, because I was only there for like 4 days, so my percentages are a little skewed (for example, getting people to upgrade on 6/8 calls is obviously a lot easier to do than 600/800 calls)... pretty sure I'm not going to win any more of these contests for the rest of the summer haha. So I'll take it while I can!
- I have seriously gotten like 15 books in the last few days from my Amazon orders. This makes me happy to no end. I'm such a dork.
- Donny graduates in just over a month, and then that means he and I will FINALLY be permanently in the same city!!! I don't even know what to do about that. It's going to be a huge change. But a very, very exciting one.
- I probably shouldn't be happy about another person's misery, but... oh well. The NASBA coordinator for Ohio was fired recently. This is the guy that ignored my 10+ calls/emails/voicemails. It's his fault it took me 9 weeks (instead of 6) to get my notice to schedule for the CPA exam. He's just... a disaster. When I couldn't get ahold of him, I ended up calling the Accountancy Board of Ohio, and they were NOT happy with him... so I'm wondering if that's what kind of set this in progress. Oops. Oh well. For something as important as a CPA license, they should NOT have idiots in charge. We're all better off now. Like, seriously. That's exactly like having someone in the Bar Association just ignoring calls of prospective lawyers who are trying to take the bar exam. You can't do that. And it feels like a small personal victory for me haha.
- My boss from OSU just emailed me asking if I wanted to help grade papers/be an assistant for the Pre-MAcc program in September!! Hooraaaay extra money!!! (It's $11 an hour to grade papers... yes please.) The PreMacc is basically a program for students going into the MAcc that did not have accounting as their undergrad degree, so they may still need to get some prereqs out of the way or just brush up on what they've already taken but probably forgotten. Thank goodness for extra moneyyyy.

Wonderful day so far!

My day is going wonderfully so far! Reasons are listed below:

1. Perhaps most exciting... Donny and I got the townhouse we wanted!!!!!!! We'll be moving in late August. I'm SO excited, you have no idea!! Twice the room I have now for barely $100 more a month, too!
2. It's finally NOT 90 degrees outside! It's beautiful!
3. I spoke to Cindy McCain on the phone today. Like... John McCain's wife. Seriously. She called the call center to check to see if we got her fax order. I was suspicious it was her, because their address was in Arizona, but obviously I wasn't going to ask. I looked at her student's name and sure enough, it's one of her children's names. CRAZY. She was really nice, although I basically made a complete idiot of myself. I was trying to look up her order by using her last name and zip code and I couldn't hear her because she was speaking so softly, so I asked her to spell her name for me. Then she did and I was like ah. yes. And I rambled on for ages about how we may not have entered the order into the system yet because we don't always enter fax orders in the day we get them... blah blah blah. Like, glad I just wasted 5 minutes of Cindy McCain's time. Anyway, while I could certainly not be called a McCain supporter, it was nice to know that she's doing all these menial tasks herself! I'm sure she's incredibly busy.
4. I've started to get shipments from Amazon on the HUGE purchase I made a few days ago... HOORAY! I love getting new books :)
5. I got my diploma in the mail today! ... in a shitty looking cardboard folder, but oh well. I'm going to get it framed eventually, I suppose. Anyway, it was exciting to see in the mail!
6. I'm ALMOST caught up on CPA studying... almost.
7. I'm going to a farmer's market near campus with Raymond in a bit, and then later tonight the midnight showing of Toy Story 3 with some friends :) Should be a good time!

A few thoughts

A few thoughts:

- The Westerville Public Library is far too big to have such a dinky parking lot. Please fix. Thanks.
- I was a moron today at said library. When trying to do self-checkout, I kept scanning the book's original barcode, not the library's. So then I waited in line at the front desk for 10 minutes, claiming that my card must have something wrong with it. The woman at the desk was like um... no, you're just scanning them wrong. Ooooops.
- Second day at the call center and it's ALREADY a long summer. AND I'm only working part time. I can't imagine my attitude if I was working full-time. However, I have a new supervisor this year and he is quality.
- The only thing I like about working at the call center again is that I get to be in Westerville again for little spurts of time :)

Year end wrap up

I'm officially (well... kind of) finished with my MASTER'S program. It just seems too crazy to even type.

I say 'kind of' because I'm really not even finished with my finals yet. I'm just close enough to make this blog post haha. I just turned in my final paper for one class this afternoon. I have a final on Monday morning at 7:30 AM (seriously?) and a take-home final due Monday at 9:30 AM. Siiiick. I've been working on the take-home final on and off since Wednesday... probably about SEVEN HOURS combined so far, and I'm not at all near finished. Like... honestly, is that necessary to make an exam that difficult? I can't even google the answers. Anyway, so Monday at 9:30 AM I'll be finished with all of my work. Then I get to do NOTHING all week (!!!) until Friday which is our MAcc pre-commencement ceremony. I'm not going to the REAL commencement, so I'm considering this my real graduation And it's only going to be like an hour long, HOORAY! They've requested that we wear business formal... I'm not really sure what that is. If they mean business professional, that means wearing a suit... and HELL NO am I wearing a suit at 4:30 PM in the middle of June. No no no. So I bought a cute sleeveless professional-ish dress. Meh.

I'm also excited for the bar crawl on Thursday! Goal = not to still be hungover at 4:30 PM the next day haha. My favorite part about this upcoming bar crawl is that since we're doing it as a group (ALL Fisher grad students), we are having a twitter feed for where we are hahahhaa. Like, omg. Business students WOULD use twitter to update everyone about where we are. Love iiiiitttt.

Anyway, I've been wanting to do this since Jake started doing them ages ago... so yes, I'm completely copying off you, Jake...

here it is, my year in the MAcc program:

Classes taken: 11
Amount I will have paid after interest on my student loans for ONE YEAR of school: $32,000
Times I have cried after taking a test: 3
Times I have cried WHILE taking a test: 3 (2 of which are during my take-home final for the class I mentioned above... sad face. And yes, this means 1 was during an actual exam in a classroom. Embarrassing.)
High school GPA: 4.22
College GPA: 3.72
Grad school GPA: 3.4 (notice a trend?)
MAcc phone numbers in my phone: 21
People I will probably talk to after a year or so: 3
People I will be working with at E&Y: 1
Hours I worked as an ambassador: 300
International interviews performed: 29
Students I took on visits: 15
Amount by which my starting salary for E&Y was decreased: $2,500
Additional amount I was supposed to earn at E&Y for having my Master's: $2,500
Hours spent studying for the CPA exam so far: 263 hours
Sections of the CPA exam taken: 2 (of 4)
Amount paid for the CPA exam: $963 (not counting the $3,000 more I would have had to pay for my review materials if E&Y wasn't amazing)
Weeks I waited for my notice to schedule for the CPA exam: 9
Weeks my classmates waited: 2 (story of my life)
Presentations given: 10
Times I have cursed myself for taking Accounting for Mergers & Acquisitions: Every day of my life since beginning the class
Subway points accumulated: 68
Times I've cursed Taco Bell for being located so close to my apartment: countless
Lunches that turned into drinking at the Varsity Club: 2
Times I've been to Gateway this year: 3 horrible, horrible mistakes.
Lokos I've attempted to choke down: 2
Diet Cokes I've purchased in the Gerlach vending machine: Dear lord. Probably close to 150. Yiiikes.
Times jumping in Mirror Lake: 1
As of this fall, number of people in my immediate family who will have gone to Ohio State: 4. The only 4 that are college-aged. We are kind of sickening.

Others:
Most enjoyable class: governmental/not-for-profit accounting. I liked the subject (this is my second time taking it), I liked the professor, and I liked only having two projects.
Least enjoyable class: Accounting for Mergers & Acquisitions. God-awful. The professor is clearly just there for research. She's just... not good. The exams were horrible. Every class was an hour and 48 minutes of hell.
Worst class I know I'll be glad I took later: Financial Management 2. All sorts of awful things like hedging and derivatives and credit swaps. Ughhhh. This is also the class I took where I cried during an exam. But I also know I'm going to need to know this stuff for my job so... gross.

I'm sick of making this list. 05. 05 has pretty much been my motto for the entire MAcc program, so I guess that's fitting haha.

Recipes!

I've decided to make a recipe box. I had a binder where I put recipes, but I decided that wasn't cute. When I was little, I LOVED reading my mom's recipes on cute index cards so I decided that, although I don't have any adorable recipe cards (does anyone know where they sell them?!), I do have index cards, and I'd love to have the same sort of system. I think there's something just... so traditional and cute about having your recipes on little cards. You can give them to others to borrow, you can keep them in a nice tidy box... overall just really adorable.

So I've added all the recipes I have to this box (90% of which I haven't actually attempted haha). I color-coded them, too... pink is desserts (duh they need their own category), yellow is entrees, green is appetizers, and orange is random stuff... haha as of now, orange solely consists of really yummy-sounding cocktail recipes I've stolen from Cosmo and other similar places. Mehhh.

Do you guys have any recipes to share?? I'd love to add to my collection! ... Keep in mind that I don't like any chunky foods. Haha.

Here's a SUPER simple one... I probably shouldn't even call it a recipe, it's that easy. It's basically a take on an ice cream sandwich... just like, a thousand times better for you and I personally think it tastes better:

Graham Cracker Ice Cream Sandwich
Ingredients:
Low-fat graham crackers
Low-fat or sugar free Cool Whip

Um... that's basically it. Put one or two spoonfuls of cool whip in between two graham cracker halves. Freeze them in a big Tupperware containers, and enjoy!

Best part: They're 100 calories. Compare this with your average ice cream sandwich which is 240 calories. They're also very low in fat, since you're using low-fat stuff... only about 4-5% of your total saturated fat. The average ice cream sandwich (At least the ones I found online) are 25% of your total saturated fat. Soooo yummy, too, and very light. Perfect for summer :) The only problem is actually only eating one at a time.

A few random things

1. No, I have not yet received my CPA scores from the first section. I could get them anywhere from today until June 30. You know, any time in between. Ridiculous. At this point, I'd rather NOT know my scores until after I take the next section (one week from today! YIKES)... because if it turns out I failed it, my confidence is going to be completely shot.
2. People have just been bugging me today. Especially drivers. Seriously, water being on the road does not mean we all must drive 20 mph under the speed limit. You will be just fine if you go the prescribed speed limit. Promise.
3. I'm getting a temporary roommate tomorrow! Merrie will be living with me for a few weeks while she looks for another place to live. I'm slightly nervous, considering I haven't had to think about anyone else for the whole school year haha. I think I got used to living alone pretty quickly. But it'll be nice to have someone around... it'll make me less lonely and less likely to pig out on food. And more likely to actually try to productive so she doesn't think I'm a loser. Ha.
4. In case anyone is keeping up with Donny's travels, he is in India at the moment... he's been doing some traveling, but he's headed for Delhi either today or tomorrow where he'll spend the last week of his trip. The highs for this week are around 113 or 114 degrees. I'm not joking. Ewwww. He also thinks it's the beginning of monsoon season. That pretty much sounds like my two of my least favorite things in the world: sweating and lots of rain.
5. I'm watching an E! True Hollywood Story about women who date rapists and murderers even while they're in prison and it's creeping me out.
6. I CANNOT WAIT for this year to be over! So close! Less than 25 days, to be exact. Holding me back are four case studies/papers (one of which also includes a 30 minute presentation) and two finals. Bah. Just hurry up already.
7. I haven't really studied much for the CPA exam in the last couple of days. I am struggling. This time, the material is much different. In the last section, it was like... PURE rules and math and 'calculate this' and whatnot. This section is NO math... just a lot of rules. It's so difficult. Everything sounds similar. And, as mentioned in another post, there are like infinite amounts of mnemonic devices and it just makes me want to puke. I feel like all of my energy went to the first section and now I'm just like meh. I hope I can get my shit together and actually start studying hard.
8. SVU finale tonight!!!!!!!!!

Ohhh, Nicaraguan grandma.

My Nicaraguan grandma (my dad's mom) is just.. so weird. I have never really liked her. She's just not a nice person. She is SO rude to my mom and is just generally pretty obnoxious.

That being said, since I've been trying to find out more about my ancestry, I decided to email her.

Some background info: My grandma immigrated to the US in the 1950s (I think) from Nicaragua with her brother and sister. I think they ended up in California. As I said in an earlier blog post, my opa immigrated from Germany in the 50s as well. He went to Missouri, but then ended up in California, which is where my dad says the two of them met. They had five boys (and a girl who apparently died when she was 1, which I didn't know about until like a year ago), my dad being one of them. They divorced in the mid 1990s and don't really get along. They're just really awkward people. For example: at my Miami graduation, my family was arriving to my apartment. My Opa comes in and says, "Where is my ex-wife? I would like to say hello to my ex-wife." This is like... in front of all of my friends and other side of the family. Who says that? Who asks for their ex-wife? Just say her name or something. Ugh.

So... 1) clearly I don't know a lot about my dad's side of the family, and want to know more and 2) even though my grandparents dont really like each other, I knew my grandma would still want to see the manifest of the ship my opa came to the US on. So I attached it to the email I sent her, just showing her what sort of things I could find on ancestry.com and I told her I'd love to find out more about her family.

This is the email I receive in reply (copied and pasted)

Please let me have day of rest and I will answer your most welcome letter. You should have a lot of information on your Opa's side as Hittler checked them out to make sure they were pure arian. I just got back today from Uncle Kurt and Aunt Doris. Came to find some of the switches don't work for the outside lights. The Security system I have, called me twice that the alarm had gone off. They called the police, for a false alarm and they are not happy. They left a note to the effect. Love Grandma

...........

Like... seriously? 1) Thank you for the history lesson, but I am actually already aware of who Hitler was and what he did. 2) I don't really understand how Hitler's Aryan race means I have a lot of information about my Opa's side. I am not really seeing the connection? I have info on Opa because he told me, not because of Hitler...? Whatever. 3) It sounds like you are very angry about Opa coming from Nazi Germany. Um... you didn't have to marry him? That was your choice. 4) You need a day of rest to talk about your family, but you can write me an email about your security system? Seriously? 5) I have no idea what you're talking about with your security system.

She is just... so weird.