And the Worst Employee Award goes to...

It's Thursday at 5:30 pm. During busy season. With lots to do.

But where do you find me? Oh...blogging, reading friends blogs, online browsing (I can't shop due to the fashion fast Jo & I are on but I can still look), and doing whatever else I can think of INSTEAD of doing taxes.

Why? I don't know...

Maybe it's because of the beautiful sunny and relatively warm weather.

Maybe it's because I killed myself on this return the past two days and my brain needs a break.

Maybe it's because I don't really like taxes and need to find something I really love.

Maybe it's because I'm just having one of those days where you can't concentrate and it has nothing to do with the weather or work.

But whatever the reason may be...I get the Worst Employee Award today. I feel so honored :)

Is it April 15 yet?

I want busy season to be over. I'm so over doing taxes. It's not like I'm working a TON (55-60 hours/week), but I'm tired of it. Does that mean I'm just tired of accounting? Or will things get better once it's slowed down and the weather is nice and I feel like I have a life again? Who knows? Only time can tell.

Luckily I have some things to look forward to which is helping me get through this horrible weather and work. BOSTON and NYC! That's right - I'm heading back east to go visit some friends after busy season is over. I can't wait! I've been missing NYC like I'd be missing my right arm if I didn't have it anymore. Plus I just feel like I need a change of scenery - even if it's just for a week.

I also have an awesome summer to look forward to. I don't have any real set plans for the summer yet, but my friends and I have already decided that it's going to be AWESOME! We've started a list of things we want to do and can't wait until the weather is nice enough to do them! Some of those things include:

- camping
- trip to CA
- trip to Vegas
- the state fair
- a rodeo
- hiking (I want to do the narrows)
- swimming ALL the time (we got season passes to Seven Peaks...yep...High School all over again haha)
- bonfires (or at least fires in Eric's fire pit in his back yard)
- back yard BBQ's (need to get a BBQ I guess)

This summer is going to be epic, right?!? If only it were here now... If only I weren't wearing a sweater with the heat jacked up to 80 (oh you read that right)... If only I didn't have to work every Saturday so I could play with my friends more... But only 3 more weeks! And as Mom always says - I can do anything for 3 weeks :)

Rewarding Myself

When you reach a milestone in your life (big or small) you should reward yourself. So I'm rewarding myself today with these:

And this

It's going to be a great day!!

80's Party

For Melissa's birthday, we celebrated in 80's style. We all (well most) dressed up in 80's clothes and sang & danced the night away. It was a lot of fun! We jammed out to 80's music and even had karaoke!! Hope you had a great birthday Mel!! Love you girl!

False Alarm

I came into work today ready to work (which is a new thing for me lately). I knew there were a lot of returns in the "To Do" drawer so I was determined to finish what I had on my desk and start on the others. I was SO productive all morning and after lunch. I finished all the things on my desk!! I was so proud of myself!

Then...I opened up the drawer to get started on the other returns. I was correct in thinking there were a lot of them to do. What I didn't know - they were all very small returns that take only 15 minutes to prepare. So...I obviously was able to quickly go through those returns.

But now...I don't know what I'm going to work on tomorrow. Or Thursday. Or Friday. Hmmm...maybe being productive wasn't in my best interest after all. Oh well. I better take advantage of this slow time while I still can, huh?

Books, Books, Books

I love to read. I'm not the fastest reader, but I enjoy it. I love getting engrossed in the characters' lives and escaping my own. I love when I get so into a book that I lose complete track of time and the next thing I know it's 4 am and I am forcing myself to put the book down.

I don't get wrapped up in a lot of books, and I don't read many of the "must reads." I usually stick to the chick-lits or ones written for teenagers. I know...I'm 27, I should not be reading books written for girls in Jr. High. That's why I'm starting this new goal.

BBC has published a list of the top 100 books which I am (slowly) work my way through. It's going to take me years probably to get through them, but I figure it'll be something worthwhile to work on. I've put an "X" next to the books I've already read - not including ones I read in school because I never actually "read" them - I passed my AP Lit class thanks to sparknotes.com. Hahaha! So...here is the list of 100 books I am going to start working on. Man, I sure have my work cut out for me! Now the question is where to start...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  - X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (in entirety)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen - X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown –X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

7 Things to Do Before I'm 30

I'm guilty of watching a Lifetime Movie at work...RIGHT NOW! And, unlike most Lifetime Movies, it's NOT about a murderous husband, a cheating husband, an abusive parent, or a teenager who gets knocked up by her high school crush only to be left to raise the kid on her own. It's about a girl, living in NYC, 29, who quits her job & is forced to move back home to Colorado to live with her mom.

Sound familiar?

Well...besides living in Colorado, turning down a great guy's proposal, and having a gorgeous high school crush who is still in love with me. Oh - and being 29. But other than those things, I felt like I was watching my life. Sad, I know.

Well...what the movie is about and why I am posting: the girl finds a list of 7 things she wanted to do before turning 30. She wrote the list when she was quite young, so some things (e.g.: become a rock star) are more funny than achievable. But there are some good things on the list (e.g.: get a tattoo, go sky diving, tell the truth to her brother, forgive her mother, marry her high school crush, Danny & dance under the moon).

Well...in short, it got me thinking. What do I want to do before I'm 30? I mean, it's less than 3 years away. I should really think about it. Most people say you should have a 5-year plan, but I'd be 32 and that's just too far away. So I'm going with 30. But what do I want to do before I'm 30? I mean...I've done quite a lot already (see this post). But obviously I haven't done EVERYTHING I want to do. So here you have it. 7 things I want to do before I'm 30:

1- Get married (sadly, unlike the movie I don't have someone specific in mind)
2- Go to Africa
3- Start dancing again
4- Figure out what I really want to do for a job (it might be what I'm doing now...I just need to decide)
5- It's a secret ;)
6- Kiss in the rain
7- Pay off my car

There you have it. My list of 7 things I want to do before I turn 30...I better get to work! (both my actual work and on the list. haha!)