Audited

We, as in "I", got Audited today by the Iowa Work Force Development for Iowa Unemployment tax. The women doing the audit obviously knew what she was doing, she was in & out within an hour. Besides one figure being reported incorrectly, it went very smoothly.

I found out we were being audit about a month ago... originally it was planned to be done on the 17th, but I got it rescheduled for today because I was going to be on vacation on the original date. I kinda get nervous with anything that has to do with the government, cause if something is seriously wrong... my ass ends up in jail. Since I've been working in the office we've been audited for 3 of the 5 major tax's that I'm responsible for.... I've yet to have anything serious come up.

Things like this are a testament of my work, if everything is reported correctly & all the numbers add up... it means I'm doing my job. She was surprised to find that I had not attended any college for accounting, stating that she was impressed with my work. She said that she had seen many books & that mine were very "nice". Even though I tried to hide it, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for 5 min.

Pre-Travel Expenses

I took my car in today to get it tuned up & checked out for the upcoming trip to Toronto. Good news is that I don't need a tune up because my car has 100,000 mile plugs... bad news: I need new tires. The orginal price they gave me exceeded $700.00, but that was for "A" rated tires, which I don't need (100+ mph). I looked into some cheaper tires & got the price to just a little under $500.00.... but then you have to add in the oil change, balancing, mounting & allignment, which will push it well over $600.00.

That my not be the total of my bill though, they are also looking at the suspension, which was a little loose.... but they said that it should be covered under warrenty, I hope it is cause my budget only allows $700.00.

8v8 League Match

The on-line Team I play with, CrackClan42, played in a 8 v 8 Cyber Athletes League (CAL) match for the game BattleField2 last night. It was a good & very close match... I did very well the first round, having the highest score on my team, but my performance went down during the next two rounds. We lost the first round by only 4 tickets! (each team starts with a predetermined # of tickets, around 100, depending on the map). We won the second round by over 20 tickets, but the last round left us wanting from the very beginning. We had a couple of holes in our strategy & they took advantage of it right away. They were a very formidable team who had obviously practiced not just the map, but playing together as well.

Our plate is pretty full at the moment with matches... we currently participate in 3 Leagues (2-12v12, 1-8v8) & 2 Ladders (1-8v8, 1-12v12) . This makes for a very busy schedule, we have a match almost every night of the week.... Leaving us NO time to practice. We show up for most of these matches with little or no preparation... & a lot of people don't show up till just a few min before the match begins. I make a habit of showing up an hour early, hoping that we'll have the people on & we can go over the strats beforehand.

We've been talking about dropping a couple of the leagues/ladders, but its been a couple of weeks now & we haven't dropped anything... Meanwhile the matches continue to happen & we are always unprepared for them, giving us a slim chance of winning against any of the teams that actually do come prepared. It's becoming pretty frustrating. I've always wanted to be apart of a team that practices relentlessly & goes into matches confident of our strategy our ability to do it.... I feel that most of the members want the same, but it just doesn't seem like we are making any progress towards it. Hopefully something will change soon.

Worked Late

I worked late last night for the first time in a looong time... we received a Industrial Waste Information Questionaire a couple of weeks ago & I've been spending a lot of my "free" time here at work filling it out. The due date is on the 8th & until yesturday I didn't feel like I had made any substantal progress on it.... most of the time so far has just been information gathering. I'm glad I stayed late, it was really helpfull to have no interuptions.... I made a lot of progress on it last night & I'll get it done on time with no problem.

I was here for a little over two hours after "closing" & it gave me a real sense of how well I can work with no distractions.... for those of you that don't know, I have A.D.D. (not A.D.H.D.) & my normal working conditions here keep me jumping from one thing to another every few mins, which really don't help the A.D.D. It was pretty satisfing to sit down & work solidly on one thing for a long period of time, & it was good to see that I could do it.

Co-workers Time off

One of the guys in the shop (John) called my office co-worker yesturday to inform him that he wouldn't be in today. His sister, brother-in-law & two children were in a car accident in Chicago... From what I know, they were just getting back from a trip to Switzerland & not long after exiting O-hare international airport a drunken driver ran a stop light "T"ing into the car. The car burst into flames.... the sister sustaned heavy burns but managed to get out of the vehicle. The father got out ok, but he made an attempt to retrive the children, which resulted in him getting burned on both arms & his face & head. He had to be held back from any further attempts to rescue the children... which were both burned alive.

The driver had a blood alchol level of .25, which is over three times the .08 limit the state has. I've been told he hasn't yet fully understood that he has taken the lives of two young children, the girl: 5 & the boy: 1.

God, give the family peace & strength through this rough time.

Weekend of Moving

It's that time of year again, leases are up & loads of people are moving. It happens every year here... The days surrounding August 1st the roads become littered with cars & trucks packed full making their life changing move. With the rental market in Ames ever changing, there is always someone moving.

Everyone that I know, at least in my inner circle of friends, moved this last weekend... Luckily I got away with only helping one person move....I helped Kory move from the townhouse he shared to a place of his own in the lower portion of a house. I'm pretty excited about this because he is within walking distance of me now... Because of his schedule & with him living on the other side of town, I didn't get to hang with him much. He's the closest thing I have to a best friend, so hopefully I'll be able to see him more. And now I don't have to go across town to do laundry, he'll let me do it at his place.

Seeing his new apartment really has got me fired up to find a new & better place for myself. But I always come back to the fact that if I were to move, it should be into a house of my own.... I don't want to move into another rental space. Even though the amount of money I'd be paying would probably be less, assuming I found a cheaper place, I can't stand the thought of continuing to practically throw money away each month when I could be building some equity in a house... If I knew I was going to be in Ames for this long, I would of done all I could to buy a house right when I got here. Other than the thought of rejection, I don't quite know what's holding me back from looking into financing now.