Yesterday was my first day as a paid employee of St. Michael's, after years of volunteer work on the website and months of unpaid work (my choice) doing the weekly deposit. So far I've basically sat for one low-key training session with people who already know me. I can see there will be a lot of procedural stuff to learn, and a small, easy learning curve on Quickbooks and Church Windows software. And I'll need to get used to fund accounting, a staple of the non-profit environment. I will inevitably feel slightly nervous about all this until I've sat in the chair and done it a few times, but the rational part of me expects no major challenges learning to do the job competently.
Today, I had a job interview! No, I'm not looking to dump my brand new part-time job with the church I've attended for more than a decade; this would be in addition to, not instead of. Someone from the parish forwarded my resume with a local CPA firm that works with small businesses. The job would be part time with variable hours, at a reasonable-for-the-circumstances hourly wage. It would mean getting to work with some standard areas of accounting I've only touched upon in my professional life so far, and other areas I've done a lot. And it would mean working directly under a CPA, which is a requirement for getting my own CPA certification down the line. I could have met that requirement during my First Magnus days, but I didn't know to get the requisite piece of paper signed, and have no idea where the CPAs I worked with then may be found now.
Anyway, I think the interview went well - but then again, I always think that. If this job comes through, I'll have gone from no jobs to two jobs in a short period of time, which is a big improvement! No benefits, but I'm on John's health savings account now, so that's only a minor loss. My schedules at both jobs should be somewhat flexible, which would facilitate a trip to Disneyland or an sf convention or at least Phoenix from time to time, assuming our finances allow it. John probably hasn't been outside Pima County in over 2 years and if feeling antsy. I don't blame him a bit!
So wish me luck with this second job. It may not be the well-paid full-time permanent position I've been looking for, but it could conceivably become that. In the meantime, it beats the heck out of sitting behind my computer at home all day, accomplishing nothing much!
Karen
Showing posts with label CPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CPA. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Stuck
In theory, the local office of a well-known charity was to make a decision earlier this week about hiring its new staff accountant, who would do billing and act as liaison to their regional accounting operation. I interviewed for the job a few weeks ago. To date the recruiter who got me the interview has not given me a word of feedback - not in response to the interview itself or my call to her afterward, and not in response to the phone message I left on Monday this week.
It's nice to feel valued and wanted and appreciated. At the moment, as far as the recruiters are concerned, I'm none of the above. But I do think I'm entitled to a returned phone call, even if it's to say, "You didn't get it," or "They haven't made a decision yet."
It's likely at this point that I didn't get it. Drat. I'm back to being without so much as a nibble on a job, as stuck in place as the old soccer ball that someone jammed into a tree at the dog park a couple weeks ago. I'm still plugging away at my Auditing seminar and that's going well, unlike the Financial Accounting and Reporting one that I dropped a couple of times and will ultimately need to tackle again. But it will be a while before I even register to take the CPA exam. And even once I pass all four parts of it, I still won't be certified as a CPA, because for all my experience I've never gotten a piece of paper signed by a CPA I worked under for a year or more. I could have gotten one at First Magnus had I known. Ah, well. So actually becoming a CPA will have to wait until I'm employed again. Whenever that will be.
I recently got a letter from the Arizona Department of Economic Security, dated March 5, about a change in my unemployment compensation due to the economic stimulus bill passing. According to the letter, my benefit will go up $25 in Federal dollars as of the end of February. I checked, though, and as of last week I was still getting the same $240 as before. But I read the letter more closely today, and it says it will take several weeks to get the system updated to include the money. It will then be paid retroactively. Thanks, President Obama! I really do appreciate it.
One additional worry, though. The DES web page that tracks how much unemployment I have left is showing me just a few weeks away from it being all gone, 26 weeks from when I got the ball rolling after my last temp job (aside for the tax service debacle) ended. According to another page, it gets automatically extended if the state unemployment rate is over 6%, which it is. But I worry whether I read it correctly, and whether it will really kick in. I need to face up to researching it further.
Meanwhile the tax refunds have come in, and today is the day Pepper gets her first professional grooming since we got her. Cayenne, meanwhile, will get her nails trimmed. So I have something to look forward to, sort of.
Karen
Monday, February 16, 2009
Actual Progress, Actually Being Made
I went to bed just now, only to realize about a minute later that I hadn't blogged yet. Oh noes!
That probably shows you the level of my distraction at the moment. Aside from some unnecessary but enjoyable messing around on Facebook, I've taken on yet another volunteer task at church - have I mentioned this? - and I'm back to studying for the CPA exam, AND I'm actively editing Heirs of Mâvarin. Let's discuss these one at a time:
There's a game on Facebook called Dragon Wars. It's not a full-fledged online role-playing game, but a sort of simplified one that focuses more on end results than individual actions. Key attributes such as health, energy, stamina and real estate income offset by maintenance expense (no, really!) are slowly replenished on a timed basis, so by and large it's a game of planning strategies and waiting to do the next thing. That leaves lots of time to do something else, such as an AUD lesson, while waiting to do the next quest or deposit the next payment of rental income.
As I edited the screen shot above just now, I realized belatedly that someone had slammed my character in a massive and/or multiple attack, and my health points were suddenly dangerously low. The main interplayer activities or the game are forming alliances and attacking other characters' alliances. I've reached the point in the game at which many players with similar experience levels have formed alliances of dozens or even hundreds of players. There's little I can do with my alliance of seven characters to prevent someone with an alliance of 103 from doing my character a lot of damage in a hurry. Fortunately, in this game, health can be regained, and death is not the end. Still, I could really use for allies. Wanna play?
Meanwhile at church, I'm still webmastering. In the next day or so I need to delete a mass from the schedule due to an elderly priest's infirmity, post the weekly announcements from three sources, edit and post a photo from coffee hour, and maybe set up a MySpace page. I'm also doing some light bookkeeping now at church on a volunteer basis, essentially a data entry and reconciliation task. I had my first session on Friday. There was a vague offer to pay me a small fee, but that would complicate the unemployment issue and benefit no one.
On the employability front, tonight I finished my second AUD assignment, with strong understanding of the material and perfect test scores. I was right: the Auditing section of the CPA review course is much easier for me than the FAR section, especially with the video lectures the company threw in for that section as part of the December special. I'll still need to conquer the long slog of FAR material, but I'm nevertheless feeling much less discouraged now.
As for the novel, I'm editing Chapter 8, on page 300 in my doublespaced manuscript files. I had been stalled for a while, but now I'm going on at a good clip, tightening prose and fixing problems in flow and logic. Just tonight I had to rearrange two paragraphs when a minor character suddenly changed the order of his thoughts, and was right to do so. Also, a strictly offstage character announced that he made the deadly necklace in Chapter 12, and I had to go back to Chapter Six to get his name. And finally, when I finished editing Chapter 7, I realized that Chapters 6 and 7 needed to swap titles to fit the content of the scenes. Fun stuff, and more to the point, it all represents an incremental improvement in the book.
But other than that, and the dishes, and the dog park, and getting ready to do the taxes, and online job hunting, I'm not doing nuttin'!
Karen
That probably shows you the level of my distraction at the moment. Aside from some unnecessary but enjoyable messing around on Facebook, I've taken on yet another volunteer task at church - have I mentioned this? - and I'm back to studying for the CPA exam, AND I'm actively editing Heirs of Mâvarin. Let's discuss these one at a time:
There's a game on Facebook called Dragon Wars. It's not a full-fledged online role-playing game, but a sort of simplified one that focuses more on end results than individual actions. Key attributes such as health, energy, stamina and real estate income offset by maintenance expense (no, really!) are slowly replenished on a timed basis, so by and large it's a game of planning strategies and waiting to do the next thing. That leaves lots of time to do something else, such as an AUD lesson, while waiting to do the next quest or deposit the next payment of rental income.
As I edited the screen shot above just now, I realized belatedly that someone had slammed my character in a massive and/or multiple attack, and my health points were suddenly dangerously low. The main interplayer activities or the game are forming alliances and attacking other characters' alliances. I've reached the point in the game at which many players with similar experience levels have formed alliances of dozens or even hundreds of players. There's little I can do with my alliance of seven characters to prevent someone with an alliance of 103 from doing my character a lot of damage in a hurry. Fortunately, in this game, health can be regained, and death is not the end. Still, I could really use for allies. Wanna play?
Meanwhile at church, I'm still webmastering. In the next day or so I need to delete a mass from the schedule due to an elderly priest's infirmity, post the weekly announcements from three sources, edit and post a photo from coffee hour, and maybe set up a MySpace page. I'm also doing some light bookkeeping now at church on a volunteer basis, essentially a data entry and reconciliation task. I had my first session on Friday. There was a vague offer to pay me a small fee, but that would complicate the unemployment issue and benefit no one.
On the employability front, tonight I finished my second AUD assignment, with strong understanding of the material and perfect test scores. I was right: the Auditing section of the CPA review course is much easier for me than the FAR section, especially with the video lectures the company threw in for that section as part of the December special. I'll still need to conquer the long slog of FAR material, but I'm nevertheless feeling much less discouraged now.
As for the novel, I'm editing Chapter 8, on page 300 in my doublespaced manuscript files. I had been stalled for a while, but now I'm going on at a good clip, tightening prose and fixing problems in flow and logic. Just tonight I had to rearrange two paragraphs when a minor character suddenly changed the order of his thoughts, and was right to do so. Also, a strictly offstage character announced that he made the deadly necklace in Chapter 12, and I had to go back to Chapter Six to get his name. And finally, when I finished editing Chapter 7, I realized that Chapters 6 and 7 needed to swap titles to fit the content of the scenes. Fun stuff, and more to the point, it all represents an incremental improvement in the book.
But other than that, and the dishes, and the dog park, and getting ready to do the taxes, and online job hunting, I'm not doing nuttin'!
Karen
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Have I Mentioned How Frustrating This Is?
I've said it at least a dozen times today: "This is killing me," or, at least, "I hate this." No, it's not really killing me, but it is frustrating the heck out of me. What the heck am I talking about? My online CPA review seminar thingy.
Here's the basic problem. My accounting courses at the University of Phoenix began in early 2003 and ended around the fall of 2004. This means that the last time I was exposed to Earnings Per Share, Loan Impairments, and a thousand other accounting concepts was over four years ago, in some cases closer to five years ago. While it's true that I've worked as an accountant since then, doing a variety of tasks, roughly 90% of what I've been studying recently has little or nothing to do with what I've done for a living to date. My practical knowledge is limited and specialized, at least compared to the breadth of knowledge required to pass a CPA exam.
Now, I knew this going in, and expected to have to work hard to refresh my stale knowledge of all this stuff. The problem is that this online seminar I'm attempting is not calibrated for the staleness of my knowledge or, God help me, the ability of my aging brain to relearn it quickly. Even this 61-day course, the longest available, has more material due in a given time frame than I can effectively cover. On nearly every unit (or lesson or segment or topic or whatever it's called), it takes me significantly longer than the average student to complete, as reported by the software. In order to finish by the time the assignment is graded, I find myself memorizing the dollar amount of the right answer rather than the concept and calculations used to arrive at it. Needless to say, remembering for the next 30 minutes that the answer to the question about Bee Company is $24,000 will avail me nothing in a CPA exam six months from now.
And yes, I admit that I got a late start on Assignment 2, but that only exacerbates the problem. It doesn't cause it. If I start right in on Assignment 3 at midnight tonight, and spread it out over three days as I should, it's still going to take me far longer than other students to understand it all and retain it, as opposed to getting the answers right once by a combination of answer memorization and guessing and sorta-kinda understanding parts of it. If I were working, it would be flat-out impossible for me to do this FAR course in 61 days, short of continual cheating that does no one any good. Even without a job, I've been at this computer for 11 hours to do eight lessons, minus an hour in which I went to the dog park, read half a lesson there, and hit the Taco Bell drive thru on the way back. And that's with only a vague understanding of half of the stuff I supposedly just "learned" (or "reviewed"). To do it right would have taken far longer, which renders my achievement, such as it is, nearly useless. In order to actually pass a CPA exam, I'll pretty much need to study the same material all over again. In fact, I'm seriously thinking about rereading my Intermediate Accounting textbook and redoing some of my old homework from four years ago, just to ram all these concepts back into my head.
Now, I'm not saying the course is deficient or poorly written or anything like that. The truth of it is the equivalent of that old break-up line: "It's not you, it's me." If I had taken this review course when I was four years younger and fresh out of school, I'm sure I would have done better. It's meant to be a review of stuff I know, not a retraining from (almost) scratch.
Maybe it will get better as concept builds on concept, or I hit more areas that relate to past jobs. More sleep (although I got 7 hours last night) and better study habits would also help. So here's the plan. I've going to give Assignment 3 my best shot, spreading out the work, trying for lots of sleep, and taking twice the time anyone else takes to do it if that's what I need. And if that doesn't work, I'll drop the damn seminar again, and do the AUD (Auditing) one instead. That's even more likely to be far from my recent experience, but it's less math-oriented and more conceptual, I think, and there's just plain less of it. Over time I can try to get through FAR on my own, and then maybe use that seminar for review when it actually is a review, after I relearn most of the material, one way or another.
Y'know, I can be fairly arrogant about my intelligence. But this thing knocks the wind out of me.
Aargh.
Karen
Here's the basic problem. My accounting courses at the University of Phoenix began in early 2003 and ended around the fall of 2004. This means that the last time I was exposed to Earnings Per Share, Loan Impairments, and a thousand other accounting concepts was over four years ago, in some cases closer to five years ago. While it's true that I've worked as an accountant since then, doing a variety of tasks, roughly 90% of what I've been studying recently has little or nothing to do with what I've done for a living to date. My practical knowledge is limited and specialized, at least compared to the breadth of knowledge required to pass a CPA exam.
Now, I knew this going in, and expected to have to work hard to refresh my stale knowledge of all this stuff. The problem is that this online seminar I'm attempting is not calibrated for the staleness of my knowledge or, God help me, the ability of my aging brain to relearn it quickly. Even this 61-day course, the longest available, has more material due in a given time frame than I can effectively cover. On nearly every unit (or lesson or segment or topic or whatever it's called), it takes me significantly longer than the average student to complete, as reported by the software. In order to finish by the time the assignment is graded, I find myself memorizing the dollar amount of the right answer rather than the concept and calculations used to arrive at it. Needless to say, remembering for the next 30 minutes that the answer to the question about Bee Company is $24,000 will avail me nothing in a CPA exam six months from now.And yes, I admit that I got a late start on Assignment 2, but that only exacerbates the problem. It doesn't cause it. If I start right in on Assignment 3 at midnight tonight, and spread it out over three days as I should, it's still going to take me far longer than other students to understand it all and retain it, as opposed to getting the answers right once by a combination of answer memorization and guessing and sorta-kinda understanding parts of it. If I were working, it would be flat-out impossible for me to do this FAR course in 61 days, short of continual cheating that does no one any good. Even without a job, I've been at this computer for 11 hours to do eight lessons, minus an hour in which I went to the dog park, read half a lesson there, and hit the Taco Bell drive thru on the way back. And that's with only a vague understanding of half of the stuff I supposedly just "learned" (or "reviewed"). To do it right would have taken far longer, which renders my achievement, such as it is, nearly useless. In order to actually pass a CPA exam, I'll pretty much need to study the same material all over again. In fact, I'm seriously thinking about rereading my Intermediate Accounting textbook and redoing some of my old homework from four years ago, just to ram all these concepts back into my head.
Now, I'm not saying the course is deficient or poorly written or anything like that. The truth of it is the equivalent of that old break-up line: "It's not you, it's me." If I had taken this review course when I was four years younger and fresh out of school, I'm sure I would have done better. It's meant to be a review of stuff I know, not a retraining from (almost) scratch.
Maybe it will get better as concept builds on concept, or I hit more areas that relate to past jobs. More sleep (although I got 7 hours last night) and better study habits would also help. So here's the plan. I've going to give Assignment 3 my best shot, spreading out the work, trying for lots of sleep, and taking twice the time anyone else takes to do it if that's what I need. And if that doesn't work, I'll drop the damn seminar again, and do the AUD (Auditing) one instead. That's even more likely to be far from my recent experience, but it's less math-oriented and more conceptual, I think, and there's just plain less of it. Over time I can try to get through FAR on my own, and then maybe use that seminar for review when it actually is a review, after I relearn most of the material, one way or another.
Y'know, I can be fairly arrogant about my intelligence. But this thing knocks the wind out of me.
Aargh.
Karen
Sunday, February 01, 2009
What Is Brain?
Aw, man, this CPA review lark is going to take it out of me, I can tell. My new 61-day seminar had the exact same first assignment as the 41-day one, and I got a late start on the four units I didn't do the first time around. I struggled to get back into the mindset of it, and studied Earnings Per Share 2 all over again, ending up with probably twice as much study time on it as the posted average. Statement of Cash Flows 1 and 2 proved to be easy, but Statement of Cash Flows 3 was a killer. I did a lot of floundering on some of the test questions before I finally finished it off and got to bed at 9:30 AM. It was a long night!
The grading turns out to be automated, as far as I can tell, from the most recent scores on each unit's two tests. Even after sleeping five hours (all the dogs and my brain allowed me) I was too tired to go back and redo each test for which I had settled for a score of 92 or 96 (although I did redo one or two). I therefore ended up with a grade of 99 on proficiency questions and 100 on the past exam questions.
At midnight Sunday morning the second assignment arrived in my email.. It doesn't look too bad - only 9 units compared to Assignment 1's 14 - but the time and brain cells required will depend on the complexity of each unit, how much calculation is involved and how many test questions there are.
Tonight's grading does confirm something I'd suspected but didn't count on. Each assignment is supposed to be 3 days, but it arrives at midnight and the due date and grading is said to be on the third day. If one takes this literally, it effectively means the student only has two days from the arrival of the email, which says to try to get it done "before the" third day. Hence my all-nighter, hoping that getting it done the morning of the third day would be close enough. But it looks like the actual grading takes place at the end of the third day, so I needn't kill myself over it next time. I hope!
Meanwhile, all afternoon and evening I've been too awake to take a nap, but too wasted to accomplish anything much. I looked over a few of the Assignment 1 units a bit more, and did the dog park thing (in much-needed new sneakers, thanks to John). I also did a lot of messing around online and started reading The Mislaid Magician. (Hi Pat!)
The one moderately productive activity I managed was to finish editing Heirs Chapter Four and update the word count for Chapters Three and Four, having done a major continuity fix for each. Remarkably, my many Chapter Three edits yielded an identical page count. That's all right; I was going for better, not shorter. I've got Chapter 5 open now, and I'm five pages into that. (Later: make that 13.)
Gee, I'm tired. No all-nighter tonight. After church tomorrow I'll need to start in on Ratio Analysis and Changing Prices and Financial Reporting, plus the more familiar territory of Cash and Bank Reconciliation. No wonder I had zombies on the brain last night. I was slowly turning into one. Not a Republican one, though, I'm happy to report.
Karen
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Police Drama
You would not believe the day I'm having. It's a tale of police action, mystery and intrigue. Blog at 11. via Twitter -
Karen
Monday, January 19, 2009
Unusual or Infrequent Items
If you're not an accountant or frequent user of financial statements, you probably just looked at my subject line and said Wha...? It's a phrase that cost me at least an hour of confusion Sunday night, because of two nearly identical questions in a CPA review module in which I missed the fact that one said "unusual or infrequent" and the other said "unusual and infrequent," and my unfamiliarity with the way the module shows you where you went wrong. If it's both unusual and infrequent, it's called an "extraordinary item." If it's only one or the other, by GAAP criteria, it's not extraordinary.
By those standards, I guess today wasn't extraordinary.
Starting this entry with the above is what's known in an entirely different profession as "burying the lede." But I have my reasons.
I got a job today. I wish I were more happy about it.
As per my usual ethical stance on discussing my job online, I'm not going to say too much about it. I can tell you that it's a seasonal position doing income taxes, something I haven't been applying for because my only income tax experience consists of one class 3 1/2 years ago, doing my own taxes using TurboTax, messing around with TaxCut, and doing my mom's 1040EZ exactly once circa 2001. I figured I wasn't qualified, not without some training, at least.
I start this job at ten o'clock MST tomorrow morning, pretty much the exact time Barack Obama starts his new job on the East Coast. I may or may not get some training when I arrive at work. Otherwise, I'll have to refer people to another location or ask them to come back later in the week or something. Don't worry; I won't do anyone's taxes tomorrow morning on unfamiliar software while someone sits at my desk. Probably. The good news is that I'm very good at learning new software, the venue is expected to have mostly people with very simple returns, and I'll be referring anything tricky to a CPA offsite.
The money isn't terribly good, but it beats the heck out of McDonald's or unemployment payments. And tax accounting is a good skill to pick up for future employability.
Why am I not thrilled to finally get a job? One is that I'll be paid a lower wage than I would have considered four months ago. Two is that it's another temp thing, so I'm still not secure. Three I'm not prepared to discuss. I'm hoping that it will all be worth it, though, good experience and a good bridge to a better job when the economy starts recovering.
Meanwhile, it's led me to a decision I hadn't even considered until about half an hour ago. As you may know, I've been spending many hours at this computer the last few days, struggling through an assignment for an online seminar. The first assignment, emailed Saturday night at 11PM MST, was to complete all the reading and get a score of at least 90% on all the online tests for the following modules:
I had already done the first two when the email arrived, but that left me with 13 more to do in approximately two days. Since the grading is Tuesday and no time was listed, I was shooting for having it all done by 9AM Tuesday, which would leave me all day to watch the inauguration, visit my 103-year-old friend Eva, give blood, and get a jump on the next assignment before it arrived.
I have started using my old textbook to help with concepts I've forgotten.
Only I'll now be working 10-7 tomorrow. And as of tonight, after hours or struggle with Earnings Per Share I, I still have four modules to get through by morning, none of which have anything to do with reviewing personal income tax concepts. I'm taking much longer than the average student on many of these things, probably because my original coursework was in 2003 and 2004 and I'm getting a little distracted at times. (A little? Ha!) I could get it all done by tomorrow morning, but only if I start a new job on three or four hours of sleep. And how do I complete another 15 modules every two or three days once I'm working full time?
Dug out my income tax textbook, too!
Fortunately, I have an alternative. The course is set up so that I can add or drop a seminar at any time. So I just dropped the January 18, 41-day seminar, and picked up the 61-day one that starts January 29. This means I've already put a dent in the coursework for the later course, which will give me a little time to get even farther ahead, and see if there are any modules that will help me develop a better conceptual basis for the new job.
I kind of feel as though I've been defeated by the 41-day course, and I'm being a quitter. But I know better. I'm basically adding 11+15=26 days to my preparation time for an exam I haven't even applied to take yet. And it gives me a much more rational schedule to accomplish things in, given my unusual or infrequent (but not both) new job circumstance. I can even use the lag time to get through more modules of the AUD (Auditing) course, which is 8% completed already.
But for tonight, I'm saying goodbye to earnings per share. I'm going to look up info on the tax software I'll be using, study income tax in general a little bit, watch a little Doctor Who, and try for a good night's sleep.
My last weekday sunset at the dog park for a while.
Yeah. I feel better already.
Karen
By those standards, I guess today wasn't extraordinary.
Starting this entry with the above is what's known in an entirely different profession as "burying the lede." But I have my reasons.
I got a job today. I wish I were more happy about it.
As per my usual ethical stance on discussing my job online, I'm not going to say too much about it. I can tell you that it's a seasonal position doing income taxes, something I haven't been applying for because my only income tax experience consists of one class 3 1/2 years ago, doing my own taxes using TurboTax, messing around with TaxCut, and doing my mom's 1040EZ exactly once circa 2001. I figured I wasn't qualified, not without some training, at least.
I start this job at ten o'clock MST tomorrow morning, pretty much the exact time Barack Obama starts his new job on the East Coast. I may or may not get some training when I arrive at work. Otherwise, I'll have to refer people to another location or ask them to come back later in the week or something. Don't worry; I won't do anyone's taxes tomorrow morning on unfamiliar software while someone sits at my desk. Probably. The good news is that I'm very good at learning new software, the venue is expected to have mostly people with very simple returns, and I'll be referring anything tricky to a CPA offsite.
The money isn't terribly good, but it beats the heck out of McDonald's or unemployment payments. And tax accounting is a good skill to pick up for future employability.
Why am I not thrilled to finally get a job? One is that I'll be paid a lower wage than I would have considered four months ago. Two is that it's another temp thing, so I'm still not secure. Three I'm not prepared to discuss. I'm hoping that it will all be worth it, though, good experience and a good bridge to a better job when the economy starts recovering.
Meanwhile, it's led me to a decision I hadn't even considered until about half an hour ago. As you may know, I've been spending many hours at this computer the last few days, struggling through an assignment for an online seminar. The first assignment, emailed Saturday night at 11PM MST, was to complete all the reading and get a score of at least 90% on all the online tests for the following modules:
- Environment of Financial Accounting
- Financial Accounting
- FASB's Conceptual Framework 1
- FASB's Conceptual Framework 2
- The Balance Sheet and Disclosures
- Related Party and Subsequent Events
- Income Statement
- Discontinued Operations
- Extraordinary Items
- Comprehensive Income
- Earnings Per Share 1
- Earnings Per Share 2
- Statement of Cash Flows 1
- Statement of Cash Flows 2
- Statement of Cash Flows 3
I had already done the first two when the email arrived, but that left me with 13 more to do in approximately two days. Since the grading is Tuesday and no time was listed, I was shooting for having it all done by 9AM Tuesday, which would leave me all day to watch the inauguration, visit my 103-year-old friend Eva, give blood, and get a jump on the next assignment before it arrived.
I have started using my old textbook to help with concepts I've forgotten.
Only I'll now be working 10-7 tomorrow. And as of tonight, after hours or struggle with Earnings Per Share I, I still have four modules to get through by morning, none of which have anything to do with reviewing personal income tax concepts. I'm taking much longer than the average student on many of these things, probably because my original coursework was in 2003 and 2004 and I'm getting a little distracted at times. (A little? Ha!) I could get it all done by tomorrow morning, but only if I start a new job on three or four hours of sleep. And how do I complete another 15 modules every two or three days once I'm working full time?
Dug out my income tax textbook, too!
Fortunately, I have an alternative. The course is set up so that I can add or drop a seminar at any time. So I just dropped the January 18, 41-day seminar, and picked up the 61-day one that starts January 29. This means I've already put a dent in the coursework for the later course, which will give me a little time to get even farther ahead, and see if there are any modules that will help me develop a better conceptual basis for the new job.
I kind of feel as though I've been defeated by the 41-day course, and I'm being a quitter. But I know better. I'm basically adding 11+15=26 days to my preparation time for an exam I haven't even applied to take yet. And it gives me a much more rational schedule to accomplish things in, given my unusual or infrequent (but not both) new job circumstance. I can even use the lag time to get through more modules of the AUD (Auditing) course, which is 8% completed already.
But for tonight, I'm saying goodbye to earnings per share. I'm going to look up info on the tax software I'll be using, study income tax in general a little bit, watch a little Doctor Who, and try for a good night's sleep.
My last weekday sunset at the dog park for a while.
Yeah. I feel better already.
Karen
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Busy, Busy
"I went to your blog this morning," John said as I was about to leave for church, "expecting to read that you were about to be terribly busy and wouldn't be blogging much." Obviously, what he saw instead was last night's entry about all the time I put in yesterday on the two web sites. Why didn't I write about how busy I was about to be? Simple. I've been so busy that I hadn't gotten around to this entry yet. If you're keeping track, this is my Saturday night entry, being posted on Sunday afternoon.
Last night, as I went through those pages about Father Smith's pilgrimage over and over, fixing old links and unhelpful font sizes and adding links to the new page I built, four things happened.
One, I put in a little time trying to reassure and motivate a friend, something I was happy to do - and I hope it helped a little.
Two, during a break, I refreshed a page tracking a package from Amazon on the USPS web site. It said the package had been delivered! What? I'd been outside earlier, taking the dogs to the park and later going off to buy groceries, and there were no boxes by the front door. But on getting this notice, I got my shoes on and went outside. Both of my boxes from Amazon were in our mailbox, which was a neat trick. The larger of the two boxes was nine inches with, and so is our mailbox! It took quite a bit of work to extricate the box; it was really wedged in there.
So now I've got the Series Four soundtrack from Doctor Who, finally, which I'll probably be playing on a continuous loop for a while, judging from the previous two soundtracks. I also received The Joys of Love by Madeleine L'Engle, an early, rejected novel of hers, published posthumously. Much as I love L'Engle's fiction, her early books have an odd writing style I've always found a little offputting. It's too soon to say whether this book has that same style, exactly, but it's clearly not her best work. The back cover excerpt is awkwardly romantic: "Elizabeth's heart winged with happiness as it always did when Kurt spoke to her in that gentle, loving way." If that sentence is typical of the book, I don't blame the publisher for saying no to it. Still, "new" L'Engle fiction, more than a year after her death, is to be treasured.
The other book that arrived is The Mislaid Magician, or Ten Years After, the third novel by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevemer about those letter writing cousins, Cecy and Kate, which I've wanted rather badly since reading the second volume back in September. Think of Jane Austin, only funnier and with magic, and you've got a fair idea what these books are like. So far I've read one and a half letters at the beginning of the book, and there I must stop for now. Because...
Three, two emails arrived from my CPA review course folks at 11 PM last night. Today, Sunday January 18th, is the official start of the 41-day FAR (Financial Accounting and Reporting) seminar I signed up for 11 days ago. I had worked ahead since then, completing two FAR lessons and six AUD (Auditing) ones. Now I much set the AUD ones aside, because I've got fifteen FAR lessons due by Tuesday! Subtracking the two I've done, that 13 in two days! (Man, that's worse than I remembered it being when I first looked at the assignment last night.) It says three days, but it also says the work will be graded on Tuesday, so I figure I need to be done by 9 AM MST Tuesday, since these folks are also based in AZ.
Well, I can do it. The lessons so far have only been hard insofar as there's a bit of rote memorization of terms here and there, and a lot of reasoning out what the question is asking, which numbers are irrelevant, and whether certain numbers need to be added or subtracted. The assignment turns out to be doing exactly what I've been doing so far anyway: read the text, do two kinds of tests in study mode in order to learn the material and reason things through, and then take the tests again, with the questions in a different order, in test mode. The second test is mostly past CPA exam questions. Study mode usually explains why an answer is right or wrong, which helps a lot. Test mode replicates the environment of the actual CPA exams, which also helps a lot.
Bottom line for now: expect short entries of mostly photos for a next coulple of days. You don;t mind, do you? 'Cause that's the way it's got to be. I don't (completely) skip a day no matter what, but clearly I've got to give priority to the CPA stuff.
Oh, and the fourth thing that happened last night? That was my computer slowing down and nearly crashing under the burden of all those Firefox and SeaMonkey and MS Word and PhotoStudio and Windows windows. I did a reboot and backup this morning before going to bed, and will try to keep the number of open apps down today.
See you when I come up for air!
Karen
Last night, as I went through those pages about Father Smith's pilgrimage over and over, fixing old links and unhelpful font sizes and adding links to the new page I built, four things happened.
One, I put in a little time trying to reassure and motivate a friend, something I was happy to do - and I hope it helped a little.
Two, during a break, I refreshed a page tracking a package from Amazon on the USPS web site. It said the package had been delivered! What? I'd been outside earlier, taking the dogs to the park and later going off to buy groceries, and there were no boxes by the front door. But on getting this notice, I got my shoes on and went outside. Both of my boxes from Amazon were in our mailbox, which was a neat trick. The larger of the two boxes was nine inches with, and so is our mailbox! It took quite a bit of work to extricate the box; it was really wedged in there.
So now I've got the Series Four soundtrack from Doctor Who, finally, which I'll probably be playing on a continuous loop for a while, judging from the previous two soundtracks. I also received The Joys of Love by Madeleine L'Engle, an early, rejected novel of hers, published posthumously. Much as I love L'Engle's fiction, her early books have an odd writing style I've always found a little offputting. It's too soon to say whether this book has that same style, exactly, but it's clearly not her best work. The back cover excerpt is awkwardly romantic: "Elizabeth's heart winged with happiness as it always did when Kurt spoke to her in that gentle, loving way." If that sentence is typical of the book, I don't blame the publisher for saying no to it. Still, "new" L'Engle fiction, more than a year after her death, is to be treasured.
The other book that arrived is The Mislaid Magician, or Ten Years After, the third novel by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevemer about those letter writing cousins, Cecy and Kate, which I've wanted rather badly since reading the second volume back in September. Think of Jane Austin, only funnier and with magic, and you've got a fair idea what these books are like. So far I've read one and a half letters at the beginning of the book, and there I must stop for now. Because...
Three, two emails arrived from my CPA review course folks at 11 PM last night. Today, Sunday January 18th, is the official start of the 41-day FAR (Financial Accounting and Reporting) seminar I signed up for 11 days ago. I had worked ahead since then, completing two FAR lessons and six AUD (Auditing) ones. Now I much set the AUD ones aside, because I've got fifteen FAR lessons due by Tuesday! Subtracking the two I've done, that 13 in two days! (Man, that's worse than I remembered it being when I first looked at the assignment last night.) It says three days, but it also says the work will be graded on Tuesday, so I figure I need to be done by 9 AM MST Tuesday, since these folks are also based in AZ.
Well, I can do it. The lessons so far have only been hard insofar as there's a bit of rote memorization of terms here and there, and a lot of reasoning out what the question is asking, which numbers are irrelevant, and whether certain numbers need to be added or subtracted. The assignment turns out to be doing exactly what I've been doing so far anyway: read the text, do two kinds of tests in study mode in order to learn the material and reason things through, and then take the tests again, with the questions in a different order, in test mode. The second test is mostly past CPA exam questions. Study mode usually explains why an answer is right or wrong, which helps a lot. Test mode replicates the environment of the actual CPA exams, which also helps a lot.
Bottom line for now: expect short entries of mostly photos for a next coulple of days. You don;t mind, do you? 'Cause that's the way it's got to be. I don't (completely) skip a day no matter what, but clearly I've got to give priority to the CPA stuff.
Oh, and the fourth thing that happened last night? That was my computer slowing down and nearly crashing under the burden of all those Firefox and SeaMonkey and MS Word and PhotoStudio and Windows windows. I did a reboot and backup this morning before going to bed, and will try to keep the number of open apps down today.
See you when I come up for air!
Karen
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Loose Ends
Four days (but only two business days) since my most recent job interview, five days before my scheduled FAR accounting seminar, one week from the inauguration of President Obama, one day after writing five pages of my first promising piece of non-Mâvarin fiction in years, and yet I feel curiously timeless. Each day except Sunday has no particular marker. Sleep in, get up, feed the dogs, check my email (where there might be a lead on a job), blog if I didn't do it the night before, study (maybe; got to be more consistent on that), dog park, dinner, and an evening and night of MSNBC and more online stuff: Facebook, HTML wrangling, blog jogging, etc., and maybe studying or novel-editing. The night ends, as often as not, with some Doctor Who at 3 AM or later. It could be Monday or Wednesday or Saturday, and sometimes I have to check to see what day it actually is.
This particular--I checked--Tuesday, I've already fed the dogs and updated a page on the St. Michael's web site. Now I'm considering whether to study online or to take the physical books I paid for and go sit at B&N or Austin's or Borders or Golden Corral for a while. When I was in college the second time, actually getting my accounting degree, I did a lot of my studying at Barnes and Noble, mostly to get out of reach of the Internet, and maybe have a slice of pumpkin cheesecake in season. I wrote papers during my lunch break at Golden Corral, taking my laptop along on the afternoon before class. Before I went back to school, I wrote most of Mages of Mâvarin in notebooks during lunch at Austin's, back when that restaurant was almost next door to Worldwide Travel.
But this is a different time, and the old strategies may not work. The CPA review course can be done online on the computer, offline on the computer, or by reading hard copy. But there are advantages to the online iteration - it automatically tracks your progress and the professors of each seminar can probably see where you stand. The only advantage to sitting with a book is that I can't lose concentration after two minutes and go see if anyone sent me a virtual plant in (Lil) Green Patch. No, instead I can wander off to look at books, or eat something. No strategy is perfect. Yet I know I can do this. I've accomplished big things before, and can do so again.
And I shouldn't waste time worrying about whether every entry on this blog is compellingly interesting, at the expense of more urgent things. But I do, of course. There's a Widgetbox Musings channel on my sidebar, and at one time the Outpost was the #4 blog on it. Now I'm more like #14, er, #16. Ouch! The number of blogs on the channel is up from about nine to 82, but it still offends my silly pride. I want to come up with something deep and amazing and amusing and universal for you all, every single day. Is that too much to ask?
Sigh. Well, I'd better get on with it. Tell you what. I'll pay some bills and then start with the online FAR for a bit. If I get too restless I'll, I don't know, take my laptop to a coffee shop. I know: I won't be fooling anyone.
Update: I took a textbook to the food court at Park Place Mall, and it worked out well, at least on the studying front. I'm actually not feeling well today, and couldn't eat much of the gyros platter I bought.
Update #2: Dog park time. But look: Ta-dah!
Update #3: By the end of the day, I'd completed three AUD lessons also, checked in with a recruiter and applied for a job online. Go me!
Karen
This particular--I checked--Tuesday, I've already fed the dogs and updated a page on the St. Michael's web site. Now I'm considering whether to study online or to take the physical books I paid for and go sit at B&N or Austin's or Borders or Golden Corral for a while. When I was in college the second time, actually getting my accounting degree, I did a lot of my studying at Barnes and Noble, mostly to get out of reach of the Internet, and maybe have a slice of pumpkin cheesecake in season. I wrote papers during my lunch break at Golden Corral, taking my laptop along on the afternoon before class. Before I went back to school, I wrote most of Mages of Mâvarin in notebooks during lunch at Austin's, back when that restaurant was almost next door to Worldwide Travel.
But this is a different time, and the old strategies may not work. The CPA review course can be done online on the computer, offline on the computer, or by reading hard copy. But there are advantages to the online iteration - it automatically tracks your progress and the professors of each seminar can probably see where you stand. The only advantage to sitting with a book is that I can't lose concentration after two minutes and go see if anyone sent me a virtual plant in (Lil) Green Patch. No, instead I can wander off to look at books, or eat something. No strategy is perfect. Yet I know I can do this. I've accomplished big things before, and can do so again.
And I shouldn't waste time worrying about whether every entry on this blog is compellingly interesting, at the expense of more urgent things. But I do, of course. There's a Widgetbox Musings channel on my sidebar, and at one time the Outpost was the #4 blog on it. Now I'm more like #14, er, #16. Ouch! The number of blogs on the channel is up from about nine to 82, but it still offends my silly pride. I want to come up with something deep and amazing and amusing and universal for you all, every single day. Is that too much to ask?
Sigh. Well, I'd better get on with it. Tell you what. I'll pay some bills and then start with the online FAR for a bit. If I get too restless I'll, I don't know, take my laptop to a coffee shop. I know: I won't be fooling anyone.
Update: I took a textbook to the food court at Park Place Mall, and it worked out well, at least on the studying front. I'm actually not feeling well today, and couldn't eat much of the gyros platter I bought.
Update #2: Dog park time. But look: Ta-dah!
Update #3: By the end of the day, I'd completed three AUD lessons also, checked in with a recruiter and applied for a job online. Go me!
Karen
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Productivity
Funny how for months I've been unemployed and yet my days have been just packed, somehow, and I've accomplished very little. But now that I'm adding this CPA stuff to my routine, I seem to be more motivated to get other stuff done as well.
Wednesday evening
Wednesday night
Last night, for example, I took down the vintage aluminum Christmas tree and put the ornaments away. Getting that done in the wee hours of January 8th doesn't sound the least bit impressive, I know. But consider this: we often put it off until late January or even February, getting it done on Candlemass, if then. I distinctly remember, our last Christmas but one in Columbus, Ohio (1984), we took down the long-since dried out, real Christmas tree at Easter. So I count taking it down the night I said I would, right after Epiphany, as a minor triumph.
Thursday night.
One last thing cleaned up: the ottoman the tree was on.
Then today, I took down the rest of the Christmas stuff, such as it was, basically the stuff on the mantle, the tree stand and the color wheel. The tricky part was repacking the big Christmas bins so they could be closed and put away. I found and removed several things that shouldn't have been in those, including my water-damaged, broken-framed, irreplaceable Quantum Leap prop photo from the episode "Good Night, Dear Heart," my Arizona license plate from before I got the one that says MAVARIN back in 2002, and a state quarters collection folder. I need to do something about the photo, before it deteriorates further.
Anyway, the point is that the Christmas stuff is all done except for the heavy lifting, which I leave to John. In the kitchen, I've scrubbed the burners and the protective metal bases, the latter of which John will be rewrapping in foil to keep them from getting stained. I finished a single lesson (2 total now) in the CPA review software, including passing the section tests. I also revamped the contacts page of the church site, which I was having a little trouble with earlier this evening. As I fussed with the alignment on the page's first table, the house was suddenly plunged into darkness. Our whole neighborhood was without power!
With limited batter life and no desire to sit in the dark offline, I packed up the computer and headed over the Borders. I didn't feel like spending five or six bucks to connect to their wi-fi for half an hour, so I did some editing on Chapter Three of Heirs and then came home to the re-powered house.
See? Productive.
And a good thing happened today that was beyond my control. Wednesday one of my recruiters had called with another nibble from a potential employer. The job description called for some mortgage-related tasks that I haven't actually done, but which shouldn't be a problem to learn. Today my recruiter called back to set up an interview. It's Friday at 2:30 PM. I don't expect the pay to be as high as the last two nibbles, but it shouldn't be a pay cut, either. More important, it's more than a nibble. I'll let you know how it goes. Overall, though, I'm very pleased with the way 2009 is going so far, and have renewed hope that this streak of unemployment is almost over.
If there is one thing that's fallen by the wayside a bit in my evolving schedule, it's blogging. My old evening blogging routine long since became an after-midnight thing, and then early morning, and most recently the following afternoon. Now I seem to have come round to the following evening again, which probably means I owe you a posting, somewhere in there. Let's just count in one of this Fridays in which I posted both a Feline and Furball Friday and a Weekend Assignment entry, okay? Or maybe tonight's two postings will do it. The new Weekend Assignment entry should be up before I go to bed. Now, if I can just come up with a topic...!
Karen
Wednesday evening
Wednesday night
Last night, for example, I took down the vintage aluminum Christmas tree and put the ornaments away. Getting that done in the wee hours of January 8th doesn't sound the least bit impressive, I know. But consider this: we often put it off until late January or even February, getting it done on Candlemass, if then. I distinctly remember, our last Christmas but one in Columbus, Ohio (1984), we took down the long-since dried out, real Christmas tree at Easter. So I count taking it down the night I said I would, right after Epiphany, as a minor triumph.
Thursday night.
One last thing cleaned up: the ottoman the tree was on.
Then today, I took down the rest of the Christmas stuff, such as it was, basically the stuff on the mantle, the tree stand and the color wheel. The tricky part was repacking the big Christmas bins so they could be closed and put away. I found and removed several things that shouldn't have been in those, including my water-damaged, broken-framed, irreplaceable Quantum Leap prop photo from the episode "Good Night, Dear Heart," my Arizona license plate from before I got the one that says MAVARIN back in 2002, and a state quarters collection folder. I need to do something about the photo, before it deteriorates further.
Anyway, the point is that the Christmas stuff is all done except for the heavy lifting, which I leave to John. In the kitchen, I've scrubbed the burners and the protective metal bases, the latter of which John will be rewrapping in foil to keep them from getting stained. I finished a single lesson (2 total now) in the CPA review software, including passing the section tests. I also revamped the contacts page of the church site, which I was having a little trouble with earlier this evening. As I fussed with the alignment on the page's first table, the house was suddenly plunged into darkness. Our whole neighborhood was without power!
With limited batter life and no desire to sit in the dark offline, I packed up the computer and headed over the Borders. I didn't feel like spending five or six bucks to connect to their wi-fi for half an hour, so I did some editing on Chapter Three of Heirs and then came home to the re-powered house.
See? Productive.
And a good thing happened today that was beyond my control. Wednesday one of my recruiters had called with another nibble from a potential employer. The job description called for some mortgage-related tasks that I haven't actually done, but which shouldn't be a problem to learn. Today my recruiter called back to set up an interview. It's Friday at 2:30 PM. I don't expect the pay to be as high as the last two nibbles, but it shouldn't be a pay cut, either. More important, it's more than a nibble. I'll let you know how it goes. Overall, though, I'm very pleased with the way 2009 is going so far, and have renewed hope that this streak of unemployment is almost over.
If there is one thing that's fallen by the wayside a bit in my evolving schedule, it's blogging. My old evening blogging routine long since became an after-midnight thing, and then early morning, and most recently the following afternoon. Now I seem to have come round to the following evening again, which probably means I owe you a posting, somewhere in there. Let's just count in one of this Fridays in which I posted both a Feline and Furball Friday and a Weekend Assignment entry, okay? Or maybe tonight's two postings will do it. The new Weekend Assignment entry should be up before I go to bed. Now, if I can just come up with a topic...!
Karen
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
The Adventure of the Epiphany Cake
Seven days in, I have no complaints about 2009 so far. I've had several job nibbles, two of them for very good money, the dogs are healthy and so are the Blochers.
I'm about to brag a little, and you should take it with a grain of salt. In my experience, going back over 30 years into high school and beyond, when I brag that I'm doing something or about to do something, promising some great self-reform, the final result tends to be underwhelming most of the time. On the other hand I have, at different periods in the past, lost 70 pounds, finished the first full draft of a novel, and graduated from college with an accounting degree while working full time. It's not as if I'm incapable of accomplishing anything.
So where do I stand, seven days into the new year? At this moment in a separate window, I am logged into CPAExcel, where I've watched some introductory video and read part of the introduction to the AUD (Auditing and Attestation) course. I've also registered today for the 40-day guided seminar of the FAR (Financial Accounting and Reporting) course, to prepare for the largest, most crucial part of the CPA exam. That doesn't start until January 18th. I could have started one of the courses yesterday or today, but first I want to get my feet wet, get back into studying mode and sample the different sections in case I decide to start with a different one. I just applied for an entry-level (sort of) auditing position, so I may well want to start there. Also, I got the impression that 40 days was about the right length for the FAR section, and the current course starts are not for that length. I don't want to try to cram it into 30 days, or stretch it into 60, at least not before I get a better idea where I stand given the extent of my practical experience and the rustiness of my academic study.
Reorganized shelves...
...and clean desk.
What else have I been up to, aside from obsessing about the dogs and Doctor Who? (John says, "You realize that most of your entries lately are about dogs.") Well, I've done some organizing of the shelves in the den, and a fearsome number of dishes, and cleaned the top of the stove. The burner top thingies are currently soaking in the sink, although I'm sure they will never be clean again. Tonight, now that the Twelve Days of Christmas are officially over, I will pack up the Christmas tree.
The aftermath of Epiphany cake, Karen-style.
And yesterday I celebrated Epiphany with the Adventure of the Epiphany Cake. See, as I understand it (my knowledge of all this is admittedly rather vague), Epiphany Cake (or King Cake) is sort of a fruitcake / Christmas pudding variant, served between Epiphany and Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras). At St. Michael's each year there's a pot luck after the Epiphany mass on January 6th, at which Epiphany cake is served. Baked into it, or hidden inside after baking, are three items:
Last year I got a yellow plastic thimble inside my piece of cake. I have no idea where that is now, but it doesn't matter. I also have a toy ring somewhere from a previous year, which I likewise could not find. The point is, for January 6th, 2009 it was my randomly-designated turn to make the Epiphany cake. To be honest, I'd been looking forward to that for years. I'm not much of a cook and even less of a baker, but I've always wanted St. Michael's to end up with an Epiphany cake that was at least something like a traditional Epiphany cake, whatever that might be.
But January came around, and I hadn't researched recipes, or even bought the candied fruit for my conception of what the cake should be. Mindful of my joblessness, and possibly aware of my lack of baking prowess, Father Smith offered to have the church buy a spice cake on my behalf, but I declined the offer. I wanted a cake that at least had some elements of fruitcake - not the alcohol, not the aging, but at least the fruit. So I went to Safeway and bought a spice cake mix and a cranberry orange muffin mix, plus walnuts, milk and vegetable oil. But they were out of the candied fruit! So was Albertson's, were I got the eggs. Finally at Fry's I found multicolor candied pineapple for only 50 cents per container. I also got two disposable aluminum pans, two kinds of frosting and some whipping cream to make the frosting more light and less sugary.
Yesterday afternoon, I preheated the oven and proceeded to make an awful mess. The cranberry stuff was easy - just add water, mix, fold in the canned cranberries and bake. I found a 9 inch round cake pan and poured in most of the mix, along with half a container of the pineapple; but put the rest of the batter in one of the big aluminum pans. It clearly wasn't going to be enough batter to be baked adequately in that size pan, so I set it aside and started on the main cake. Spice cake mix, oil, water, eggs (one of which was broken in the carton), find the electric mixer and the beaters for it and start mixing. I added the leftover cranberry batter, and then the rest of the fruit and half a bag of walnut halves, and poured it in the aluminum pan. Last I pushed in the freshly-washed "favors": a dime, and a little toy ring with a smiley face on it, and one of three metal thimbles that finally turned up in the sewing box I'd been looking for since the previous week. Then I started cleaning up after myself. A bit.
Ten minutes before I was due at mass, the cranberry bread was maybe-done, and the spice cake was sorta-kinda-hope-so done. The knife came out clean, on the third try. I tried to ice the cranberry, and then read that you have to let the cake cool first. So I packed up the two cakes and the icing in the back of the car, and went to pick up Kevin. We were five or ten minutes late for mass, so we set it down in the kitchen and headed into church.
After mass I went into the kitchen. There were the icing and the cranberry cake, but where was the main cake? Someone had put it in the oven! I thought this was a mistake until I pulled it out and tried to upend it onto a serving tray. It wasn't done in the middle! So it went back into the oven.
Fortunately there were lots of non-dessert goodies that other people had brought. I thought I'd eat a plateful of that and then check on the cake, but before I finished, the person who had initially tried to bake it some more reported that it was now burned on the edges. She pulled it out and set it on the serving pan, and advised me to dribble the icing over it. ("That's the fashion now, in the fancy restaurants and on the cooking shows," she told me.) So that is what I did. It was horribly messy and lumpy, and you could still tell it was a little burned. It reminded me strongly of a book I read when I was seven years old, in which a boy named Billy tries to bake a cake for his mother. I still remember bits of it, including this:
My epiphany cake wasn't quite as extreme as that, and I hoped it would be good to eat. And in fact it pretty much was. The spice cake came out in non-cohesive lumps, but it looked and tasted quite a bit like a light, moist fruitcake. People seemed delighted with the pineapple bits and the overall flavor, and ate up every crumb, some of them strategically waiting until after the thimble was found before claiming their pieces. I got many compliments, and Father Smith was asked if he knew where I found the recipe. "I think she got it online," he told them.
Nope. I got it from Billy and his mother. And I call it a qualified success.
Karen
I'm about to brag a little, and you should take it with a grain of salt. In my experience, going back over 30 years into high school and beyond, when I brag that I'm doing something or about to do something, promising some great self-reform, the final result tends to be underwhelming most of the time. On the other hand I have, at different periods in the past, lost 70 pounds, finished the first full draft of a novel, and graduated from college with an accounting degree while working full time. It's not as if I'm incapable of accomplishing anything.
So where do I stand, seven days into the new year? At this moment in a separate window, I am logged into CPAExcel, where I've watched some introductory video and read part of the introduction to the AUD (Auditing and Attestation) course. I've also registered today for the 40-day guided seminar of the FAR (Financial Accounting and Reporting) course, to prepare for the largest, most crucial part of the CPA exam. That doesn't start until January 18th. I could have started one of the courses yesterday or today, but first I want to get my feet wet, get back into studying mode and sample the different sections in case I decide to start with a different one. I just applied for an entry-level (sort of) auditing position, so I may well want to start there. Also, I got the impression that 40 days was about the right length for the FAR section, and the current course starts are not for that length. I don't want to try to cram it into 30 days, or stretch it into 60, at least not before I get a better idea where I stand given the extent of my practical experience and the rustiness of my academic study.
Reorganized shelves...
...and clean desk.
What else have I been up to, aside from obsessing about the dogs and Doctor Who? (John says, "You realize that most of your entries lately are about dogs.") Well, I've done some organizing of the shelves in the den, and a fearsome number of dishes, and cleaned the top of the stove. The burner top thingies are currently soaking in the sink, although I'm sure they will never be clean again. Tonight, now that the Twelve Days of Christmas are officially over, I will pack up the Christmas tree.
The aftermath of Epiphany cake, Karen-style.
And yesterday I celebrated Epiphany with the Adventure of the Epiphany Cake. See, as I understand it (my knowledge of all this is admittedly rather vague), Epiphany Cake (or King Cake) is sort of a fruitcake / Christmas pudding variant, served between Epiphany and Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras). At St. Michael's each year there's a pot luck after the Epiphany mass on January 6th, at which Epiphany cake is served. Baked into it, or hidden inside after baking, are three items:
- A dime - predicting wealth,
- A ring - predicting love, and
- A thimble - predicting work.
Last year I got a yellow plastic thimble inside my piece of cake. I have no idea where that is now, but it doesn't matter. I also have a toy ring somewhere from a previous year, which I likewise could not find. The point is, for January 6th, 2009 it was my randomly-designated turn to make the Epiphany cake. To be honest, I'd been looking forward to that for years. I'm not much of a cook and even less of a baker, but I've always wanted St. Michael's to end up with an Epiphany cake that was at least something like a traditional Epiphany cake, whatever that might be.
But January came around, and I hadn't researched recipes, or even bought the candied fruit for my conception of what the cake should be. Mindful of my joblessness, and possibly aware of my lack of baking prowess, Father Smith offered to have the church buy a spice cake on my behalf, but I declined the offer. I wanted a cake that at least had some elements of fruitcake - not the alcohol, not the aging, but at least the fruit. So I went to Safeway and bought a spice cake mix and a cranberry orange muffin mix, plus walnuts, milk and vegetable oil. But they were out of the candied fruit! So was Albertson's, were I got the eggs. Finally at Fry's I found multicolor candied pineapple for only 50 cents per container. I also got two disposable aluminum pans, two kinds of frosting and some whipping cream to make the frosting more light and less sugary.
Yesterday afternoon, I preheated the oven and proceeded to make an awful mess. The cranberry stuff was easy - just add water, mix, fold in the canned cranberries and bake. I found a 9 inch round cake pan and poured in most of the mix, along with half a container of the pineapple; but put the rest of the batter in one of the big aluminum pans. It clearly wasn't going to be enough batter to be baked adequately in that size pan, so I set it aside and started on the main cake. Spice cake mix, oil, water, eggs (one of which was broken in the carton), find the electric mixer and the beaters for it and start mixing. I added the leftover cranberry batter, and then the rest of the fruit and half a bag of walnut halves, and poured it in the aluminum pan. Last I pushed in the freshly-washed "favors": a dime, and a little toy ring with a smiley face on it, and one of three metal thimbles that finally turned up in the sewing box I'd been looking for since the previous week. Then I started cleaning up after myself. A bit.
Ten minutes before I was due at mass, the cranberry bread was maybe-done, and the spice cake was sorta-kinda-hope-so done. The knife came out clean, on the third try. I tried to ice the cranberry, and then read that you have to let the cake cool first. So I packed up the two cakes and the icing in the back of the car, and went to pick up Kevin. We were five or ten minutes late for mass, so we set it down in the kitchen and headed into church.
After mass I went into the kitchen. There were the icing and the cranberry cake, but where was the main cake? Someone had put it in the oven! I thought this was a mistake until I pulled it out and tried to upend it onto a serving tray. It wasn't done in the middle! So it went back into the oven.
Fortunately there were lots of non-dessert goodies that other people had brought. I thought I'd eat a plateful of that and then check on the cake, but before I finished, the person who had initially tried to bake it some more reported that it was now burned on the edges. She pulled it out and set it on the serving pan, and advised me to dribble the icing over it. ("That's the fashion now, in the fancy restaurants and on the cooking shows," she told me.) So that is what I did. It was horribly messy and lumpy, and you could still tell it was a little burned. It reminded me strongly of a book I read when I was seven years old, in which a boy named Billy tries to bake a cake for his mother. I still remember bits of it, including this:
"Hmm. This cake looks kind of bumpy.At the end of the story, Ma, who can see signs of the 20 eggs Billy put in without breaking them first, wisely announces she will keep the cake forever rather than eat it.
Maybe Ma won't see it's lumpy.
I know it will be good to eat."
My epiphany cake wasn't quite as extreme as that, and I hoped it would be good to eat. And in fact it pretty much was. The spice cake came out in non-cohesive lumps, but it looked and tasted quite a bit like a light, moist fruitcake. People seemed delighted with the pineapple bits and the overall flavor, and ate up every crumb, some of them strategically waiting until after the thimble was found before claiming their pieces. I got many compliments, and Father Smith was asked if he knew where I found the recipe. "I think she got it online," he told them.
Nope. I got it from Billy and his mother. And I call it a qualified success.
Karen
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The Dregs of Christmas
What are you supposed to do with the other 11 days of Christmas?
I know, I know. For many people, the only way you know there was ever more than one day of Christmas is from that song with the partridge in a pear tree. For you, Christmas ends with the first serving of turkey or ham, or with the opening of the day's last gift on December 25th. Father Smith at St. Michael's mentioned in his Christmas sermon this year that early in his priesthood he once saw a discarded Christmas tree with tinsel and a few broken ornaments by a dumpster, at 9 AM on Christmas morning. I'm guessing that was a corporate tree, an office tree. Or maybe it was the tree of some divorced parent whose visitation ended with Christmas Eve, and did not want the reminder of a Christmas without the kid lingering in a lonely apartment.
In the retail and secular world, it's the run up to Christmas that matters, the shopping and the music, the decorating and the anticipation. Once the gifts are unwrapped and the food is eaten and the in-laws go home, Christmas is over. Time to take the tree down, put the Christmas music away, and figure out how to use up the rest of the turkey.
But in some Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church USA, the run up to Christmas is the four weeks of Advent. Liturgically, it's about preparing for the coming of Jesus, not just historically but at the end of the world, whatever and whenever that may be. I personally find the whole "end times" concept problematic at best, but the practical side of it is essentially carpe diem. If we don't mess things up too badly and don't get hit by too big an asteroid, and if Jesus doesn't decide to return when everything is mediocre as usual, then our species and our planet may survive for thousands more years. We as individuals, however, won't be there. It thus doesn't really matter at the individual level whether the world ends sooner or later, as long as you don't mess things up for everyone else. (I'm looking at you, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.) My high school boyfriend, Dan Cheney (no relation), was convinced by a Hal Lindsey paperback that the world would end in 1986. He was mistaken, but his personal world on Earth ended in 1978, courtesy of a drunk driver during Spring Break. My take-away from all this: we really don't know when the world will end (and Jesus said as much), and we don't know (in most cases) when our own lives will end. It therefore makes sense to prepare for all possibilities. It's like Gandhi said:
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Mahatma Gandhi
So much for my take on Advent. But what comes next on the Church calendar? That would be Christmas. The observance starts the evening before, and runs through the Feast of the Holy Name (January 1, commemorating the christening of Jesus) and into Epiphany (January 6, commemorating the arrival of the Magi). The liturgical focus is on Jesus being revealed to the world - through the angels and the shepherds, those astrologers from the East (whose number is not given in the Bible, and who probably weren't kings), the people at the christening and John and Yahweh on the banks of the Jordan.
So what am I supposed to do about it? In Western culture, you can't completely avoid the story of the birth of Jesus. It's become a stale cliche, and you certainly don't need me to tell you about it. The best I can hope for is to touch lightly on the subject here, and hope I'm not being too annoying.
And while I'm doing that, what else should I be up to? At the moment, the mundane part of these additional days of Christmas involve using up the turkey and washing an endless supply of self-regenerating dirty dishes. There's also the ceremonial using of the gift cards and the purchase of additional gifts were missed in our too-limited Christmas frugality. Gift cards from my godson's family and my friend Kevin got me most of the way to DVDs of Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest and Prince Caspian with all the extras, and I got John the calendars he needs for home and work, at the post-Christmas half-off price. Incidentally, my local Barnes and Noble completely let me down on books from my Amazon wishlist: no Scalzi hardcovers, no recent McCaffrey Pern book, no James Burke at all, no Doctor Who books of any sort, no Patricia C. Wrede I didn't already have, no copies of L'Engle's last book (which I ordered online from another gift certificate) or the audio edition thereof. It's getting to where Amazon is the only place to get anything but current bestsellers or royalty-free classics.
What does popular culture say this time is for? One goes back to the office, right? But I can't do that. Yesterday I turned down my most pathetic lead yet, for a strictly temp job in a position (Accounts Payable) ranked below anything I've done recently, for less money than I was making before I had an accounting degree. And of course I felt guilty about it, but I've got to believe that something better will come along, not necessarily at the level I'm used to or better, but certainly better than that. It's also time to make close-of-tax-year donations (we need to get the old cars hauled away - but then, we say that every year) look back upon the year that's ending (I'm already depressed enough, thanks) and start thinking about New Year's resolutions.
I guess for me, it's time to crack open the accounting books that just arrived UPS, and sign up for one of the online seminars I recently paid for. Jesus is here and Jesus is coming, maybe, and I don't know whether I have one day to live or another fifty. I'd better get moving, preparing for the possibilities.
Karen
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Alive and Well
It's 5:15 AM as I start to type this. John is in bed with the dogs, which is where I was until about an hour ago, when an allergy attack forced me to get up. Now I'm at the computer in the early winter pre-dawn, on the edge of shivers as we are trying to avoid running the heat, which doesn't reach my office anyway. (The furnace did eventually come on, John told me later.) It's 35 degrees F outside, probably in the mid-60s in my office. I'm about to put another layer of clothing on over my fleece pullover.
Noodle is unfazed by a rare white Christmas in Tucson, 1987.
None of that matters. After all, it's been snowing in half the country, and much colder than here in most places. This is unseasonably cold for Tucson, but weather is always a subjective and relative thing. In Syracuse this would be unseasonably warm. My body is no longer acclimated to genuine Syracuse weather, and hasn't been in decades. For me now, this is cold. But it still is nothing to complain about.
I'd love to see some snow here, though. Snow in Tucson is a rare commodity, and always good for some interesting pictures. But the weather forecasts don't seem to hold out any hope for snow between now and Christmas, except perhaps on the mountains. I think there have been a total of two White Christmases in Tucson since they started tracking such things. (There was also a trace of snow in 1974 and half an inch in 1911, but the four inches in 1916 comprised the only other snow that "stuck.") I've written repeatedly about the last Christmas snow in Tucson, which was in 1987.
But in the absence of snow, a job, more money for presents, etc., there's still room for celebration here this Christmas. If you read my Twitter feed (either on Twitter, on Facebook, or on this blog's sidebar) , you already know the news I got Thursday afternoon, at least in precis. I heard back from an assistant at my doctor's office. Remember that biopsy I had on December 10th for cancer? I'm going to be a little more specific now, without getting too graphic about it. At the time, Dr. L. said that what she was seeing was consistent with menopause, not cancer, and that it was just my wonky hormones causing the atypical transition that had raised my doctor's concerns as well as mine. Her observations when she did the biopsy relieved my anxiety about 99%, but the last 1% came with the test results. The assistant said it was negative. "Well, technically it says 'benign,'" she added, "but that means negative."
"So I don't have cancer," I said, just to confirm.
"You don't have cancer," she agreed.
So here we are, in a cancer-free household. The shadow is off me, and the worry, sadness and expense of Tuffy's cancer that dogged us last Christmas is behind us now, replaced by the joy of having two healthy, happy dogs. And if I start to take all this too much for granted, I need only remember other folks whose news wasn't so good. A friend of mine at church apparently is having a recurrence of her cancer, and is currently recovering from pneumonia. A friend who reads this blog had another form of cancer some years ago, and survived it. I lost yet another friend to leukemia on Good Friday, over 10 years ago now. Even Majel Barrett, whom I never met but sort of admired, died of leukemia the day I got my good news.
In the face of all that, I should celebrate being alive and well myself. Allergies are nothing, and a mostly symptom-free menopause is nothing. I will not undergo surgery, or the financial ruin of cancer without health insurance. Money is tight, but not unmanageable; and John and the dogs are a daily joy. Plus I had a WebEx-based teleconference orientation on the CPA review course, and it all looks rather promising, a well thought out and well realized system that will take me longer to get through than I'd hoped, but less long than I'd feared. Let the modest, but real, Christmas joy commence!
Karen
Noodle is unfazed by a rare white Christmas in Tucson, 1987.
None of that matters. After all, it's been snowing in half the country, and much colder than here in most places. This is unseasonably cold for Tucson, but weather is always a subjective and relative thing. In Syracuse this would be unseasonably warm. My body is no longer acclimated to genuine Syracuse weather, and hasn't been in decades. For me now, this is cold. But it still is nothing to complain about.
I'd love to see some snow here, though. Snow in Tucson is a rare commodity, and always good for some interesting pictures. But the weather forecasts don't seem to hold out any hope for snow between now and Christmas, except perhaps on the mountains. I think there have been a total of two White Christmases in Tucson since they started tracking such things. (There was also a trace of snow in 1974 and half an inch in 1911, but the four inches in 1916 comprised the only other snow that "stuck.") I've written repeatedly about the last Christmas snow in Tucson, which was in 1987.
But in the absence of snow, a job, more money for presents, etc., there's still room for celebration here this Christmas. If you read my Twitter feed (either on Twitter, on Facebook, or on this blog's sidebar) , you already know the news I got Thursday afternoon, at least in precis. I heard back from an assistant at my doctor's office. Remember that biopsy I had on December 10th for cancer? I'm going to be a little more specific now, without getting too graphic about it. At the time, Dr. L. said that what she was seeing was consistent with menopause, not cancer, and that it was just my wonky hormones causing the atypical transition that had raised my doctor's concerns as well as mine. Her observations when she did the biopsy relieved my anxiety about 99%, but the last 1% came with the test results. The assistant said it was negative. "Well, technically it says 'benign,'" she added, "but that means negative."
"So I don't have cancer," I said, just to confirm.
"You don't have cancer," she agreed.
So here we are, in a cancer-free household. The shadow is off me, and the worry, sadness and expense of Tuffy's cancer that dogged us last Christmas is behind us now, replaced by the joy of having two healthy, happy dogs. And if I start to take all this too much for granted, I need only remember other folks whose news wasn't so good. A friend of mine at church apparently is having a recurrence of her cancer, and is currently recovering from pneumonia. A friend who reads this blog had another form of cancer some years ago, and survived it. I lost yet another friend to leukemia on Good Friday, over 10 years ago now. Even Majel Barrett, whom I never met but sort of admired, died of leukemia the day I got my good news.
In the face of all that, I should celebrate being alive and well myself. Allergies are nothing, and a mostly symptom-free menopause is nothing. I will not undergo surgery, or the financial ruin of cancer without health insurance. Money is tight, but not unmanageable; and John and the dogs are a daily joy. Plus I had a WebEx-based teleconference orientation on the CPA review course, and it all looks rather promising, a well thought out and well realized system that will take me longer to get through than I'd hoped, but less long than I'd feared. Let the modest, but real, Christmas joy commence!
Karen
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sunrise, Sunset, and Adventures in Plastic
I have new sunset photos for you from the last couple of days (Saturday and Monday, to be precise), a sunrise and a few completely unrelated bits of news. Here we go!
Sunrise, Dec 12, 2008.
Here's that sunrise. I've done nothing to this photo but resize and sharpen. I think it's kind of dull myself. Somehow the sunsets around here are consistently much better than the sunrises.
Sunset at Miko's Corner, Dec 12, 2008.
See? Don't you agree that it's much more dramatic? It's got a few lens flares, but it's much more interesting than that sunrise shot.
Same place and time, more or less.
Country Club Road, exiting the dog park the same evening.
Miko's Corner, December 15th
Those last two shots are the only ones I did more to than resize and sharpen. And I didn;t do much. They didn't need much tweaking.
I sort of wanted to rant tonight about the obvious unfairness of Barack Obama being derided for his supposedly close relationship with a crooked governor who never campaigned with him, who didn't endorse him in the primaries (or vice versa), who angrily complained in a taped conversation about Obama being unwilling to offer anything but appreciation if Blagojevich made the Senate choice Obama wanted, and who repeatedly called Obama the most offensive of George Carlin's Seven Words. Today Obama had the gall to accede to the request of a highly respected U.S. Attorney for the sake of an ongoing investigation, despite the political inconvenience this causes Obama himself. How dare he do the right thing?
There. Consider that rant ranted. On to the personal stuff.
Last week, I mislaid a debit card. I had put it in a reusable cloth grocery bag along with the groceries so that I wouldn't lose it, but could not find it when I unloaded the groceries. I spend much of the next day searching the house, the car and the driveway, checking with the grocery store, and making sure it had not been used. Eventually I reported it lost and ordered a replacement.
Tonight John was finishing up a sixpack of beer I bought him last week. When he took the carton out of the fridge, my debit card landed on the floor. It was in the beer carton!
Let that be a lesson to me. Or something.
It was a credit card I turned to tonight to finally order that CPA review course, with textbooks, guided seminars and online and offline components. John and I had agreed on a version of the course that was more expensive than bare bones, less expensive than the works, and much less expensive than almost any other reputable company's courses. When I ordered it, there was a minor nasty surprise - the address was an Arizona one, so my credit card took a hit for over $111 more in sales tax. Ah, well. It will be worth it in the end. So now I have to gear up for the actual studying! But not tonight.
Karen
Sunrise, Dec 12, 2008.
Here's that sunrise. I've done nothing to this photo but resize and sharpen. I think it's kind of dull myself. Somehow the sunsets around here are consistently much better than the sunrises.
Sunset at Miko's Corner, Dec 12, 2008.
See? Don't you agree that it's much more dramatic? It's got a few lens flares, but it's much more interesting than that sunrise shot.
Same place and time, more or less.
Country Club Road, exiting the dog park the same evening.
Miko's Corner, December 15th
 December 12th again. |
| From the Picasa album Tucson Sunsets |
Those last two shots are the only ones I did more to than resize and sharpen. And I didn;t do much. They didn't need much tweaking.
I sort of wanted to rant tonight about the obvious unfairness of Barack Obama being derided for his supposedly close relationship with a crooked governor who never campaigned with him, who didn't endorse him in the primaries (or vice versa), who angrily complained in a taped conversation about Obama being unwilling to offer anything but appreciation if Blagojevich made the Senate choice Obama wanted, and who repeatedly called Obama the most offensive of George Carlin's Seven Words. Today Obama had the gall to accede to the request of a highly respected U.S. Attorney for the sake of an ongoing investigation, despite the political inconvenience this causes Obama himself. How dare he do the right thing?
There. Consider that rant ranted. On to the personal stuff.
Last week, I mislaid a debit card. I had put it in a reusable cloth grocery bag along with the groceries so that I wouldn't lose it, but could not find it when I unloaded the groceries. I spend much of the next day searching the house, the car and the driveway, checking with the grocery store, and making sure it had not been used. Eventually I reported it lost and ordered a replacement.
Tonight John was finishing up a sixpack of beer I bought him last week. When he took the carton out of the fridge, my debit card landed on the floor. It was in the beer carton!
Let that be a lesson to me. Or something.
It was a credit card I turned to tonight to finally order that CPA review course, with textbooks, guided seminars and online and offline components. John and I had agreed on a version of the course that was more expensive than bare bones, less expensive than the works, and much less expensive than almost any other reputable company's courses. When I ordered it, there was a minor nasty surprise - the address was an Arizona one, so my credit card took a hit for over $111 more in sales tax. Ah, well. It will be worth it in the end. So now I have to gear up for the actual studying! But not tonight.
Karen
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