Three Years

A couple of days ago, on the 25th, my wife and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary! We didn't do a whole lot for it. I took half a day at work and helped her walk her dogs (and ours) and then we went to the farmer's market, hung out at home, and went to a nice dinner at Outback. Good times.

It seems like three years have gone by quickly, though I suppose this last one was a little less stressful than the previous two, mostly due to her being out of school and not stressing about papers and tests. I still remember all night writing sessions where I would try to stay up and support her, and usually ended up falling asleep on the hardwood floor. I don't really miss that.

I still think we're crazy for moving to Boston right after getting married, but I don't know what other way we would have done it. She had the opportunity to study at Harvard. Who's going to pass that up? Not me. And in the end, I do think I enjoy living near a big city. There's always things to do, even if we can't motivate ourselves to do them all, we do some.

Church softball starts up this Saturday. It will be my third year pitching for the High Rock Angels. It's slow pitch softball, so while the pitches are designed for the batter to hit them, I'm working on a couple things to keep the pitches varied and on the ground. Our church had enough people to field two teams this year, the other is called the Apostles, and we play each other in a few weeks, which should be fun.

I'll be celebrating my 3rd year at my company this Summer, which seems like a big deal. I haven't really moved around a lot in my industry, so three years in one position feel liks a lot for someone who's only been an accountant for four years. It also makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to do any accounting besides my real estate accounting niche that I'm in. I would't mind breaking out into accounting systems and information, but that might require more school. Speaking of which, I would love to some day get a masters in information systems and accounting or some other combination. I am consistently seeing that I enjoy working with computers and software more than I do spreadsheets and numbers.

Maybe I can become a Mac genius.

Fanfare and hoop-la

Today is the first day of summer. It's a mild 75 degrees out, but that's fine by me. Looking out the window from my cubicle (yes, my cubicle is by a window, one of the most distinguishing features about it) I can see both the new John Hancock tower, the tallest one made of all mirror glass, and the old Hancock tower, which is shorter, and not nearly as pretty. But at the top of the old tower is a flag. It's white, bordered in green, and says Boston Celtics, 2008 World Champions.

For those that don't follow basketball, the Celtics took the NBA finals title earlier this week when they beat the L.A. Lakers in game 6. I personally don't enjoy basketball as much as other sports, but it's hard not to get caught up in some of the fanfare when the city you live in is quite ecstatic about all of its sports teams. The Celtics are a particularly noted for winning more titles than any other basketball franchise, this being their 17th and the first one in 22 years. I like come from behind stories, and I like to hear when a team has overcome a lot of odds. From worst to first is a phrase used liberally for the Celtics in the local papers.

As I said, I'm not really a huge fan of basketball, but the reason I write about the Celtics is because I had the unique experience to go down to Boylston street yesterday, Thursday, and watch their victory parade. Thousands of screaming Bostonians wearing Celtics jerseys and other assorted green items yelled and screamed as the players, owners, managers and extended family, all drove by on the Duck boats. I went down on my lunch break with a few co-workers and we stood on the side and cheered and enjoyed the event as much as anyone. I wasn't wearing green, but no one seemed to care.

I didn't get a chance to go down during the Red Sox parade, which I would have really loved to do, but even so, it gave me a good feeling being a part of it. I tend to be a home-body in that when I am at work, I am at my desk, and when I am home, I don't feel like going out. So to actually get out of the office and be at a parade with thousands of people was a lot of fun, and a change from my day to day monotony that is accounting.

Back in Boston

After a long trip and a horrible plane ride home, I made it back to the loving arms of my wife, and the slobbering mouth of my dog, both of whom were overjoyed to have me back again. I'm glad to be back too.

Of course, when I decide to come home is when my Powerbook decides to conk out me. Due to what I believe is a malfunctioning fan on the graphics card, the computer will easily over heat when running graphics intensive programs...like World of Warcraft, which I tend to play a lot. I took my Mac to the store at the Mall and they informed me it could be fixed andI had it shipped off. The good news is that it's under the Apple care plan, so it's free for the fix. The bad news is that I've been without a computer of my own for five days now. I'm still waiting for the call that I can come pick it up.

It's not really all that bad. I recently started playing my Nintendo Wii again which was cool since I had forgotten how much fun it could be. I rented Mario Kart and I finally progressed past the forest Temple in Zelda. My wife and I have also been catching up on Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes that we stopped watching once we started playing WoW together...which I think was the first week of April. We even watched a movie! So it's good to do something else besides the game in the evenings. I'm hoping we don't immediately go back into it when I get my computer back. Some variety is nice.

A week in West Virginia

As stated earlier, I have gone to West Virginia for my company. We basically came along with the auditors to put together a work paper package so that we can close the books on a couple of our properties here in Wheeling for 2007. If that doesn't make much sense to you, don't sweat it, I don't understand it all either.

The good news is that we are almost done here, and we should actually be heading home earlier than expected, hoping to get a standby flight Friday morning as opposed to catching our scheduled evening flight. That will be nice. On our off time we find fun places to eat and we even went to a casino where they lost money, and I did not because I didn't play any slots. The table games, blackjack, poker and roulette and such looked like fun. But not at a $10 minimum bet. I just don't have that kind of money.

One of the highlights of the trip has been a guy named Harry. He's a consultant for the property management that they brought in to help with the auditing process. Somehow in conversation it came up that I had attended Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Harry seemed very interested in that and I told him a bit about the school. Then it came out that his grandson, an infant, was named Lee. So the next thing I find out is that Harry had gone to the Lee University web site and bought a baby sweatshirt that said Lee University on it for his grandson. I guess he thought it very cool that his name would be on it.

I basically made my old college bookstore about $40.

It's been an interesting trip, and sources point to it not having to happen again very soon, and if it has to happen again next year, it shouldn't take a whole week. Maybe just a couple days. I'm crossing my fingers.