The local wildlife

This was on my daughter's window last night. It's a second floor window, the upper casement, overlooking the roof of a one-story extension. There are trees, but not nearby. No clue how he got there, and since he showed absolutely no interest in leaving, we "rescued" him a bit later, since my child didn't really want to sleep looking up at a frog belly.

He seems to be a Gray Treefrog, the only true treefrog in Connecticut. Yippee.

(edited to correct a spelling mistake in the title)

Not much.

The job hunt has started, I'm finally getting moving on applications and financial aid for continuing my coursework, and I spent yesterday getting my kid signed up for classes at the community college and respraining my wrist.

The last is my own stupid fault, and also a perfect example of my screwy pain response in that I injured it around 5pm, and didn't notice until after 10. We got her signed up for three classes, a Math class which she needs for the degree program she wants and which is also a prereq for the Chemistry class she wants to take (which will also count towards the degree), and two practical Art classes. The 2D Design class had been cancelled, presumably because too few folks had signed up for it, but 3D Design was still there, as well as Ceramics I, both degree requirements, and both in the evening. I'd have liked her to do a fourth class so she'd be full time, but she's leary of doing that, so I figure this course load should get her into more of a routine, and by next semester she will be able to take four classes, and more of them regular classroom type classes. She has to have two english classes, two art history classes, and a social studies class, as well as the dread First Year Experience, which we've put off until her second semester. She has already taken a single class for two semesters, so it's not like she has no clue, though I should ask around and see if one of the FYE instructors has a special emphasis on "how to study", something my kid was never taught and would actually like to learn, with more info than just sit down at a desk with your books for at least X hours a day.  She needs to know what to do when she's at the desk.

But after a few hours of dealing with the financial end of things, we got her registered, and hit the book store to get her stuff. There is nothing right now for 3D, since they have a new instructor and don't know yet whether that teacher wants to use the kit that the previous one did. I'm checking Amazon to see if I can get the math book cheaper, since usually you can. And then there was the stuff for Ceramics... A set of clay working tools (a whopping $11!!) and 25 pounds of clay. And trying to carry that was what did me in. Instead of carrying it to the car, we should have driven the car to the clay. Oh well, I'll pick up a new wrist brace today and in a week or two I'll be as good (or bad) as usual. There's a reason I haven't been applying for jobs with a significant physical component.

Further adventures in injury

Based on the interesting puffiness around my upper knee cap on the right, which almost feels like a large blister, I'm guessing that I'm developing prepatellar bursitis.

Yay.

Of course it has to start developing at about bed time, and now (a bit after 1am) it's starting to get rather painful.  I guess I'll have to ask the spousal unit to drop me at the local freestanding ER on his way to work in the morning, unless I'm in too much pain/discomfort to wait that long.  I'll try.

Grass tufts are brutal!

What I'm doing with my summer....

Diagnosis:
R Foot Sprain
R Ankle Sprain
R Wrist Sprain
R Knee Contusion
Cuts and Abrasions
Pulled Muscles

What happens when you trip over a tuft of grass which is trying to invade your driveway.

Of course it is my right foot, so it's going to be a while before I can drive again, so its going to be a while before I can get a job. I've already had to turn down a temp gig because of it. (Grrrr)

Lottery gods, you need to get your act in order. It doesn't have to be a big one, just enough to keep things going until I heal up and can find something with reasonable pay. Enough to install some A/C would be nice too.

Killing time...

Graduation occured and I managed a straight A semester, including in Business Law, which is almost unheard of. I really wish I could have looked at that final exam to see what I got right/wrong, since I didn't feel that confident when I walked out. Maybe he had to curve things again. Apparently my section did so badly on the second exam that he added 14 points to everyone's grade to bring them back up to the norm. It was a 250 point exam and I had 236 before he added the points. (I wonder if that's why he gave people 14, so I didn't end up with better than 100%?)

Whatever the reason, I'm not complaining, and it's kind of nice to know that my Diploma, even if it is for my fifth college degree, and only an Associate's, will be Summa Cum Laude. I should have gone into student services after the grades came out (which was after the graduation ceremony) and asked if I could get a gold tassel to replace the silver one I was given for the ceremony since they had to base the ceremony notes on what you had as of the end of the previous semester when I was off Summa by .01 on my GPA.

And now I need to get my FAFSA in order, apply to Post for their MS in Accounting and their Certificate in Forensic Accounting, and find a job.

Not necessarily in that order.

At least I'm starting to get some real house cleaning done since my right shoulder is starting to feel better (yay, new PT practice), and the left one is almost back to where it should have been if I hadn't had half the cartilage wear out. I'm also trying to finish at least a few of the (far too many) cross stitch and embroidery kits I've picked up over the years, so I'm also doing a ton of Netflixing (OK, a  lot of it was actually on Hulu or Xfinity), catching up on shows I haven't watched all year and stuff I'd never watched. I made it through 10 seasons of Supernatural in about 2 weeks, I've caught up on Grimm and Castle (the last minute of the finale was very poorly done), watched the first series of Happy Valley, and I'm now watching Sleepy Hollow. I am very sad that we only have 5 more episodes of Hell on Wheels, but at least, for once, I'm watching something essentially real time. Now can they just get Season 2 of the Librarians up somewhere?

Eight days....

to Graduation.

I've got five exams left, three tomorrow (and algebra is the only one I'm worrying about), and two accounting exams Monday night. Then two days to work on resumes and cover letters and start job hunting. Joy.

Cats. Sigh

Our fat cat found the new bag of (diet) cat food and chewed a hole in the bottom. About a serving's worth of food has fallen on the floor. The cat who will hoover anything up comes over, looks at it, and squeeks at us while ignoring all the kibble. So I picked up most of the food, put it in her dish, and now she is chowing down like she's never seen food before.

Cats.

Furry weirdos.

Busy!

We're heading into a very busy week, the last week before Spring Break. I've got a take home exam (1/3 of course points) due to be handed/emailed in on Friday. Thankfully it's Federal Income Tax, so that's pretty easy, especially since it's open book. On Tuesday I take a make-up quiz for the one I missed on Thursday because of my bursitis. On Thursday I have two more exams (1/7th and 1/4 of their respective course grades).

I do have a doctor's appointment on Monday for my shoulder, and hopefully they'll decide it is indeed bursitis and a cortisone shot will take care of it, at least for the next few months. I'd like to not have every joint in my arm from the shoulder down, but especially the elbow complaining 24/7.

And next weekend I'll be taking daughter up to Ithace to stay with my sister for a week. (The daughter, not me.)

A quick update

Which is all I have time or energy for right now.

The semester is in full swing. Thankfully two of the classes cover similar topics and are pretty easy, but they help me fill the business/finance/economics credits necessary to eventually sit the CPA exam, and they'll get me a Certificate in Customer Service which might help me land some sort of job paying better than minimum if I can't find something in accounting or book-keeping right away. I swear that no one reads the actual bullet points on a resume anymore if they see a job title they think they know. (Which reminds me, I need to completely revamp my resume, removing as many dates as possible and trying out the functional format instead of the chronological one.)

Math is easier than I'd hoped for, which is good, which leaves Intermediate Accounting II (so far not too bad, ask me again after the exam in two weeks), Federal Taxation (so far a refresher from working for HRB all those years ago, and take home exams, God bless the prof), and Business Law II, which will be a bear for the exams and grades, but is an incredibly entertaining class.

My idiot, insane harasser in WI dropped me from his latest suit, with prejudice, because one of the other defendents hired a lawyer. I'm sure there's some logic there, but I don't know what. I can only imagine that his pea-brain realized that if one of the "dim girls" hired a real pit-bull legal type, the other might too?  Who knows, and I don't really care, it's one less bit of stress and time suck for right now. Though I did have some nice options for a counterclaim if he'd continued. Maybe if I get a decent job this summer I'll consider going after him anyway.  (A girl can dream, no?)

So it's off to finish this week's Accounting homework and get caught up on my law reading while doing some spring cleaning. I have found I do more housework while studying since it's a good way to procrastinate. :)

Snow

It is actually snowing outside. Of course it's also melting and dripping from the eaves, the cars, the trees, etc., at the same time. It's going to be a right mess when the temps dip below freezing tonight. School and college were both cancelled for the day so at least I don't have two 35 mile round trips through the slush.

The joys of allegedly being sued for butthurt

I went to the doctor yesterday to see what we can do about all my stress related symptoms which have cropped up in the last month since my favorite internet based troll announced that he was going to sue everyone whose IRL particulars he knew for his butthurt. He has since announced that I am on the list although I have not yet been served.

Since this announcement my sleep has been terrible (see the last post); most nights I'm lucky if I can get four or five hours, usually broken. I'm also finding that I'm short tempered, totally uninterested in all my usual hobbies, and easily started on hour long crying jags; all classic signs of depression. I'm also either eating a lot or not at all, neither of which is good for losing weight.

The PA I saw at my primary care practice recommended that I try melatonin (which I forgot to pick up yesterday, memory issues also related to depression), as well as starting me on Prozac. I haven't had to take that in years, and the last time I went to a therapist (except for some support group sessions for parents of children with depression/anxiety issues) was at least six or seven years ago. But I've got an appointment with one next week and we'll see how it goes. I go back to my PCP in three weeks and we'll make plans from there. There is a local psychiatrist who is also trained in functional medicine so I may see if he takes my insurance.

Spring semester starts next Thursday, so that should help distract me. I will never understand why most colleges and universities, if they only offer the class on federal taxes once a year insist on doing it in the spring. Fall semester would make far more sense, so that the students who work for CPAs and tax preparation firms already have the new stuff under their belt before they start work.

Sleep

is good, and I want a lot more of it.

I would also love a day or two when I'm not putting over 50 miles on my car. Please Lord let the husband's car repairs be finished soon!

Today, unless the weather turns nasty sooner than anticipated, I'm driving four teenagers 60 miles to the zoo for younger daughter's birthday. Then I drive them home, and do a 20+ mile round trip to get them dinner. At least the sleepover is at my parents' home. My father was trying to convince my mother yesterday that she had to hide all the liquour. My daughter just shook her head, since she and one of the other girls will take small sips occasionally and the other kids can't stand the stuff. As my mother says, they're not exactly party animals. Their idea of a wild night is pizza and videos.

But at least I can sleep in tomorrow, and then my husband and I are going to have a slightly belated anniversary dinner out. 22 years, and we haven't tried to kill each other once. We haven't considered divorce even once. Is it a perfect fairy tale marriage? No, but then I don't think those exist. It's a good one, and I'm glad for it.

The semester is over!

The semester is over, and grades should be out in the next day or two. I know I've got As in three of the classes, likely As or A-s in two of the others, and really not much clue on the sixth, though hopefully at least a B+.

Now I just have to start madly reviewing for next semester since my last accounting class ended 8 months ago. If I had realized that I wouldn't be able to take Intermediate II until spring, I probably wouldn't have taken Intermediate I last spring. I also have work to deal with, perhaps even a full time gig through April.  Funny how going back to school is so much busier than just working, even if you aren't working while taking classes. Working and taking classes? Don't expect to see much in the way of updates, except perhaps during spring break, and maybe not then either.

My how time flies.

It's been a very busy two months.  I've survived school thus far, but now that we're in the second half of the semester, the work for a lot of the classes is picking up.

I also was on the ballot for the local Representative Town Meeting, and without doing a single bit of campaigning, came in 4th of 9, and the top 7 get seats.  The Republicans swept pretty much everything, even in areas of town which never, ever go Republican.  I guess the average voter is getting really pissed at how the Dems are running the state right now.

So, I'll probably be really quiet until closer to Christmas and the end of the semester, unless something really interesting comes up that just demands that I blog about it.  My guess is that that is very unlikely.

9/11 - Never forget

http://attacked911.tripod.com/

If that won't play, it's on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkuVKm4oNZw

One week down...

and fourteen more to go (more or less).

I have survived my first week of a 19 credit semester. So far it looks like my MWF classes will be easy, and not horribly time consuming.  I do indeed seem to have most of the background for Human Biology, so at least I already have the basic framework to hang everything on.  Macroeconomics is being taught the same way as Micro was, and I already know what the project is, so I'll probably try to get that mostly done in the next week or so.  And Business Computer Applications doesn't look like it should take much time outside of class either.

And then there is TTH....

Principles of Marketing will be a fair bit of reading, but at least as a "mature student", much of what they are talking about isn't totally new. Principles of Management will have more reading than that, and I don't know as much about it.  And Business Law? We've been warned to expect lots of reading, and flash cards, study groups, and alcohol are all recommended.

I don't think I'm going to get that much recreational reading done between now and December 21st.

Email equivalency.

I spent some time yesterday discussing the Hilary email situation with my younger sister. It started because she posted a bit on FaceBook about how you couldn't complain about her emails if you hadn't gotten all upset over Bush and Cheney (actually the RNC) deleting millions of emails back in 2007.

Here's the thing. I didn't hear about that. Which seems weird since that was when I read a lot of political blogs and news since work was really slow and there wasn't anything else for me to do.  And I find it even harder to believe that the MSM didn't find that and run with it, given that by that point both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats.

But in a lot of respects that's neither here nor there. Say those allegations are completely true, and then stipulate that there was classified info in the stuff that was on the RNC server.  Whether people got outraged about it then shouldn't dictate whether they can get upset about now. If you don't like something when it's done by the other side, if you think them doing it is criminal, you can't just say well they got away with it, so we should too, because then so should any one who ever does that in the future, and you are saying that you will have no right to be upset whenever it happens in the future. Likewise, you can't say it's OK for your political team to have some sort of power, or be allowed to act some way if you know you'd hate it if any other team was in the majority in the future and did the same things.

Baby Names - some un-PC thoughts

Over the years, I've semi-regularly stopped over to read a blog called "Baby's named a bad bad thing".  If you find some of the names we as a society are burdening some of our children with ridiculous, here is the place to go to read comments and snark from other like-minded souls.

We all want our children to be unique and special, but there are limits.  Naming the poor thing something that no one can spell or pronounce is not "unique" and definitely not "special". It more likely borders on child abuse.

We have the proliferation of "y"s inplace of every other vowel when said vowel has a generic ə sound. Madison becomes Madysyn, Katherine Kathyryn, etc., etc., etc.  You have the strange syllabic emphasis as in the (hopefully apocraphyl) tale of the woman who named her daughter "Female", pronounced to rhyme with tamale.  You have the "African" names, which probably have never been seen by any African tribe or nation.  You have children saddled with names like "Moon Unit" and "Pilot Inspektor".

You get the idea.

Today's OMG WTF were they thinking moment comes from I don't know where, because the new's outlet doesn't specify a state.  The tale itself is horrific - an illegal immigrant nephew kills his aunt, his cousin, and her husband in brutal fashion, so bad that the crime scene folks say it's about the worst they'd ever seen.

But the sister of the husband, who has the sensible, handsome name of Michael is called this: Derquiasha. The mind boggles.  I don't know her. She is probably a lovely woman. But I have absolutely no idea what her mother was thinking when she put that name down on the birth certificate.  I won't say I have no idea how to pronounce it, I do, but it's probably wrong.

Years ago when I worked for H&R Block, one of the other preparers had a regular customer who, every year, had his electronic filing rejected because his daughter's name wasn't spelled the way Social Security thought it was spelled. This happened even when they got a new card for her from SS and copied the name exactly.  It took at least two tries to file his return every. single. year.

One year the preparer asked him about the name. He said that his wife, who had walked out on them years ago never to be heard from again, had been "going through her African history phase" when the daughter was born.  The tax preparer asked if the daughter liked the name and he admitted that she didn't. The final decision was that he would take her to the court house after the return came in and let her choose a new, legal name.  I don't know but I bet it didn't have a "q" or an apostrophe in it.

It's amazing what you can learn from an X-ray

I had a visit to ortho last weekend because my knees still hurt from the five point landing I had when I tripped back two months ago.  They took x-rays to make sure that I hadn't chipped anything (I hadn't) and while looking at the pictures, the PA commented that they showed that I'd had Osgood-Schlatter disease.

Since no one has ever mentioned that to me, I asked what it was.  Apparently if your bones don't grow in sync with the soft tissue, the pull on the bones causes some very minor remodelling which shows on the films even much later in life.

As soon as he started describing it, I said, yes, indeed, I had had something like that. Starting when I was about 11 or 12, I had awful knee pain, especially after activity. Not that I was very good at it anyway, but I'd had to give up ballet lessons, because after one one hour class I wouldn't be able to straighten my leg for about three weeks.  I saw the ortho at St. Joe's (who also looked at the UofM football team's knees) and he poked and prodded, maybe there was an X-ray, and told us not to worry, it was just growing pains, and he described it exactly that way, as the bones growing first and the connective tissue having to catch up.  From then on, I always knew when I was having a growth spurt, even in my 20s, and during my last 1/4 inch just before my 31st birthday.

My knees have enough problems now, thankfully that's no longer one I have to worry about.

The political silly season

is starting earlier and earlier each election cycle. I guess the hope is that we'll all be so sick of it by the time the actual election rolls around that no one will turn out except for those bought and/or dead votes.

Since we don't have the cable hooked up to the TV and I didn't remember anyway, I missed the GOP debate on Thursday, but I've read a lot about it since.  It would seem that The Donald did what he does best, which is be supremely politically incorrect as well as extremely boorish.  I'll have to find it and watch the debate to be sure, but from what I've read and seen about him so far, this is by no means hard to believe.

So boorish? It won't get my vote.  But the un-PC is a good thing. Hopefully the rest of the candidates will realize that that's what fires up Trump's base (heck, I'd say most of the conservative base at this point) and start refusing to bow to the leftist media and the noisemakers on Twitter and other social media platforms. The noisemakers are just that, noise; their actual numbers are small and the more they attack dearly held positions on the right, the more folks get fired up to do something, anything about it. And that would include getting out and voting, if they are only given a candidate they can believe won't turn around the day after the election and throw his/her hat in with the business-as-usual crowd in DC.