That's Miss CPA to you!

Monday, March 15

Yes, the day has FINALLY come! I am officially a Certified Public Accountant in the state of California! Woo hoo!!! Since the California Board of Accountancy (CBA) deposited my check for the initial license fee, I'd been checking the CBA's licensee page to see if they had posted my name. Because even though I passed all the tests and my application had been approved, I was expressly warned that I may NOT call myself a CPA until I had my certificate number. Well I got that number on Thursday morning. I was so excited I just wanted to squeal at my desk at work. I am so, so, SO relieved to be done with this!!!

In other news, yesterday, March 14, was my birthday. I'm a whopping 28 years old now. Ack! I'm almost 30!! For my birthday I finally got a new car stereo receiver. About 9 months ago the radio part of the receiver I had stopped working; and it was only a year and a half old at that time... for those of you who have been with me for a while, recall that my stereo was stolen out of my car right before Christmas 2007 when I was living in LA. Of course I didn't get the extended warranty at Best Buy, so I decided to just live with the CD player and AUX port that allowed me to play my iPod. But I have SO missed the radio. I have no clue what the popular tunes are right now. My brother said that's totally fine because there is nothing good on anyway. However, I do love a certain morning show, so now I can listen to that during my 12 minute commute! Oh, and the point I was getting at is that when I went to Best Buy to have the guy look at my busted stereo, I watched him remove it from the dash. Cut to me installing the new stereo just moments ago! I just LOVE being self sufficient!


Tuesday, March 16

So in the middle of writing this post at 7:30 yesterday evening I received a text from my friend that said, "Um, are you on your way over?" and I sent a text back, "Oh shit I totally forgot!!" I was supposed to have been at my friend's house for dinner at 7! So hastily I left the apartment and hopped in the car. I was pretty excited to be getting to listen to my new stereo while cruising down the freeway on a beautiful Spring evening. I was at a stop light about a half mile from my apartment listening to a rowdy song by Rihanna (lyrics NSFW) - hey, the beat is awesome, ok?! - and I see out of the corner of my eye that the guy in the car next to me is waving. I roll down my window and turned down my borderline obscenely loud music, and say "Hi..." He says, "Hey. How you doin tonight? Here take down my number before the light turns green." So I humor him and type his number into my phone. I say, "What is your name?" and think to myself it's a total deal-breaker when a guy doesn't ask my name before asking for my number/giving me his number.

However, I think about how I haven't been on a date since I went to a baseball game with that loser in September, and how I have no dates lined up in the foreseeable future. The light turns green, and my new "friend" Lavell says "Call me" before we both drive off. I'm not about to be the one to call him when he hit on me, so at the next stoplight I send him a text saying, "Here's my number". He texts back with, "How u doin"... um, I thought we already covered that back at the stoplight. I say, "Enjoying my new car stereo... obviously. You?" and he replies a bit later, "just got home"... and that was it. While at dinner at my friend's house I saw that I had a missed call from him at 9pm, but no voicemail... so I send a text saying, "I'm at a friend's house for dinner". He says, "Ok." and I haven't heard from him since. And now I totally regret sending him a text message in the first place, but whatever, it doesn't look like he's going to use my number. But thinking back... He hits on me at a stop light (ghetto) while I'm listening to some highly inappropriate lyrics (he probably thinks I'm a whore) and then he has nothing more to say than "how u doin" (degenerate). I would just like to say, as I'm sure you've all noticed here, I'm a HUGE spelling and grammar snob. I detest "text spelling" with the r and the u and the b4 and the lack of punctuation. It just breeds improper spelling and grammar in other aspects of life. Yes, I know, I admit it, I'm a snob. My coworkers today told me that I need to get over it and embrace the texting shortcuts because you have a limited number of characters and have to squeeze it all in whichever way possible. No. I protest. Honest to God, I could never marry a man who can't spell common words. And if a man can spell really well, instant brownie points in my book. Yes, I'm a nerd.

Quick tangent... in high school I had a major crush on a guy. My parents were getting divorced at the time and, of course, it was taking a toll on me. He wrote me an email one day saying something like, "I know how you feel. My parents got a devorse too." The crush instantly evaporated.

Anyway... Since my last post my Landy love has celebrated his first birthday. Somewhere around the beginning of January this little boy exploded with personality. He is the funniest thing ever right now!




Peace and love.
J

Free Music from JJ Heller

I've recently fallen in love with the music of JJ Heller. For a limited time, she's offering her Christmas album for free!

Please help spread the word by posting the widget on your blog or social networking page. Click "Embed This Widget" for the code.

I hope you enjoy JJ's music as much as I do!

Peace and love.

J

Another Meme - 7 Things

I'm a horrible blogger... Oh, I don't know... a month and a half ago Britt tagged me to do this meme. And... um... I'm a slacker, so I haven't done it yet. But better late than never, right? And as we all say, "yay for blog fodder!"

The rules are as follows:
List 7 random facts about yourself
Tag 7 other bloggers

I'm not going to tag anyone... if you need blog fodder, please feel free to do the meme!

Fact 1: I weighed in at Weight Watchers last week and I've now had a loss for 3 consecutive weeks. Would have been 7, but I had one week where I gained. Anyway, my net loss is now 6.8 lbs! And I love the feeling I get when I see the numbers going lower on the scale! I usually wear a t-shirt and yoga pants to weigh-in, but I was running late last night and had to go directly from work, so I wore my work clothes, naturally. The leader told me I looked beautiful! Weight loss PLUS a compliment! Gotta love it!

Fact 2: As much as I want my CPA license and all I have left is one little ethics exam, the book has been sitting on my kitchen table for a couple months now. I wanted to take a break after having studied for 4 years to pass the 4 subject matter exams, but the little break seems to be going on and on... I need to get on it! Tomorrow is a company holiday, so I'll do my best to study and take a stab at the exam tomorrow and Saturday.

Fact 3: I am a total freak about spelling and grammar... And up until yesterday I fully thought, until JP informed me otherwise, that dammit was spelled "damnit". Oh, and he took quite a bit of pleasure in proving me wrong, which drives me crazy because I'm so anal about spelling! I can't be wrong! LOL.

Fact 4: If you haven't heard of comedian Chelsea Handler, you need to! She has a late night show on E! called Chelsea Lately, which is on every weeknight. At my location it's on at 11pm, and she makes me laugh EVERY NIGHT, so I try to stay up for it as often as possible. I also saw Chelsea live back in June. She's just hilarious! She has an assistant named Chuy who is a little person and has a very heavy accent as his first language is Spanish. He gets his jokes on a teleprompter, and then they always have to provide captions so you know what he's saying. I don't know if Chelsea knows ahead of time what Chuy is going to say, but she cracks up laughing every time he replies to her, and more often than not his replies are completely random but totally hilarious. Last night they were talking about Sharon Stone posing nude on the cover of a French magazine and Chelsea asks, "Chuy, you're friends with Sharon Stone aren't you?" and he says, "God no. She tried to feed me to a dragon." I just laugh my ass off at that show.

Fact 5: I love music. A LOT. I'm currently loving Colbie Caillat's new album "Breakthrough". I also re-discovered, on my iPod, a band called Mikeschair. They're a Christian music group and they have a new album out, but the one I have is a few years old. I wanted to recommend it to a friend, but I searched the web and found that it's no longer for sale! Oh well for them, at least I have it! I better go back it up. And my timeless favorite will always be John Mayer. His music is simply AMAZING. His new album "Battle Studies" is coming out November 17. I cannot wait.

*****I'm having a little bit of trouble coming up with 7 things because I'm pretty sure I already did a "weird things about me" post...*****

Fact 6: My hair is naturally curly, but I didn't know until I was a freshman in college. Kids in middle school would call me cocker spaniel because my hair was so poofy. Little did I know it was because my hair was curly and all I was doing was blow drying it. I blame my mom for not helping be slightly more stylish. I was pretty unattractive in those tween years. I only found out because my curly-haired friend said, "Girl, your hair is frizzy. Put some mousse in it and wear it curly." and I was like, what? my hair is curly?

Fact 7: This one is kind of lame, but I can't think of anything else and I want to finish this post today... I cry really easily. I don't consider myself to be sappy or uber sensitive because I'm pretty raw and can be crass at times, but some things just make me cry a river. Like just now my favorite former boss from the accounting firm (in the So Cal office) I worked at called me because I had emailed him asking a question earlier. His name is Peter and he is also my #1 reference for when potential employers need to verify my awesomeness. I've been keeping him updated on my struggles to obtain employment, so he said, "I'm really, truly sorry about your situation. I know it's tough. I think about you a lot and I have my fingers crossed for you." and he added that while he understands and completely respects my reasons for moving up to Northern California (family), but he would have been able to protect me from layoff and/or helped me more had I stayed in LA. I'm certain that had I stayed in LA, I would not have even been at risk of being laid off. And he's said before that if I move back down, he'd hire me in a heartbeat. And that... that made me cry a little bit. I am truly blessed to have a friend and colleague like Peter.

Peace and love.
J

Music makes life better

The Grammy's are on, and Carrie Underwood is performing, so I've been inspired to write a bit about my new favorites. In addition to getting a new iPod for Christmas, I got some iTunes giftcards, so I've been spending a lot of time on the iTunes store.

The albums I've purchased in the last few months are:

• Alicia Keys "As I Am" My favorite song is "Lesson Learned" featuring John Mayer. You should see me singing in the car when that one comes on the iPod.
  
• Colbie Caillat "Coco"
• Sara Bareilles "Little Voice" - I can't get enough of "Love Song"
  
• A Fine Frenzy "One Cell in the Sea"
• Kip Fox "Astronaut" - Kip is an old friend from college, and he has an amazing voice.
• Carrie Underwood "Some Hearts" - I know this is her first album, which was released a couple years ago, but I just decided to purchase it last week.
  
• Yael Naim - I didn't buy her album, but I may at some point in the future. She is the unique talent behind the song "New Soul," which is currently featured on Apple's MacBook Air commercial. Her other hit sing, "Far Far" was the iTunes free song of the week this week.

Unfortunately I'm going into the third week of my car being in the body shop. The rental car I'm driving doesn't have an AUX port where I can plug my iPod in, so I have only been listening to it on my speakers at work. I haven't been to the gym either since the car accident. I wanted to go this week, but I had to stay late at work every day. Then yesterday I slept in late and today I was too lazy to go. Hopefully I can fit a work out or two in this week.

I usually listen to R&B, hip-hop and rap, but as you can see lately I've been more into the folk, indie, pop, and country. I attribute my liking of pop-country music to my friends Taryn and Shannon who got me addicted to Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney back in college. And I think my love for John Mayer is what got me hooked on pop-rock-folk stuff like Colbie Callait, Sara Bareilles, and A Fine Frenzy. I couldn't get through a music post without mentioning John Mayer. The man is a musical genius. I can't wait for him to release his next album.

Peace & love.
J

We are the body of Christ

After listening to bad music on KIIS FM at work all day I hopped into my car for a commute with Casting Crowns. I have their self titled album from 2003 and I LOVE it. When the second track came on I felt convicted by the lyrics. I haven't been acting as the body of Christ in my daily life. I'm not doing horrible things, but I am not honoring Him and loving others to the fullest extent. I think we should all take these words to heart and encourage each other to live like the Body of Christ that we are.

If We Are the Body
It's crowded in worship today
As she slips in trying to fade into the faces
The girls teasing laughter is carrying farther than they know
Farther than they know

Chorus:
But if we are the body
Why aren't His arms reaching?
Why aren't His hands healing?
Why aren't His words teaching?
And if we are the body
Why aren't His feet going?
Why is His love not showing them there is a way?
There is a way

A traveler is far away from home
He sheds his coat and quietly sinks into the back row
The weight of their judgmental glances
Tells him that his chances are better out on the road

Jesus paid much too high a price
For us to pick and choose who should come
And we are the body of Christ

Jesus is the way


Praise Him!
Julie

Good things...

First, SNL was absolutely hysterical last night. Jake Gyllenhaal hosted and the Shins were the musical guests. I was so glad it was funny because the recent episodes I've seen were almost dull. I'd say the whole show last night was great. I laughed the whole time, which I really needed. One of my favorite skits was the opening satire of Bush giving his address on sending more troops. I am not a vocal Bush basher, but when something is funny, you have to admit it and enjoy it. See my next entry for the transcript of the skit.

Yesterday I got a check from my insurance company for my "loss" back in December when my car was broken into and the stereo stolen. I'm pretty sure I made a profit there. They gave me $678!! Sweet. So, today I went over to Best Buy and bought a new stereo. Oh, it's so wonderful to have music in my car again. now I just need to decide whether or not I'll fork out $300 for an alarm...

This morning while hanging out in the youth room before church, I heard a familiar voice coming from the stereo speakers. It sounded like John Mayer, but some of the songs I'd never heard before... So, I opened the CD drawer to find that David left his John Mayer Trio album in there. Well, I didn't have that album, but now I do thanks to iTunes. Falling in love with John all over again. This man is amazing. =) heehee.

Peace and love.
J