Where is my book?

My whole week has been an exercise in obsessively checking my front porch for my accounting textbook. I normally order from the school bookstore, but as this textbook was remarkably expensive, I looked on half.com and found one for half the price. I did not, however, check the shipping method as I ordered it a week and a half before the class began. Apparently Media Mail means, really really slow mail...and now I understand why the shipping was so cheap. So today I sat in my driveway today waiting for the mailman, met him at his truck, and lo and behold, I now have a textbook! If it had not come today I would have had to buy one from the local college to complete my assignments, leaving me with two really really expensive textbooks. On the plus side, I think my best bet to become rich would be to write textbooks. I can't think of a single reason that a one year old book should go for two hundred dollars.

I am so excited about having tomorrow off from work, I have a laundry pile that is three weeks deep that I am really looking forward to folding and even though I hate vacuuming, I really want to vacuum for some reason. I picked up the house yesterday and it was such a peaceful day in my neat house that I want to compound my pleasure by having a neat and clean house! After that, I think Rob and I have a date. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, or at least it is for someone who works in the restaurant industry.

25 Random Things...

Since I did this for facebook, I figure it should get posted here too although I modified some of it and fixed some errors in reason (thanks sissy!)

1. I have a small library in my office which is meticulously organized and cataloged...the only part of my house that is.
2. I cannot throw away my old floppy disks, even though we don't have a computer that will read them anymore.
3. I am slightly obsessive about list making.
4. The tape dispenser from my parents house is on my desk. It might be older than I am.
5. Current reading selection: Paradise Lost
6: Current music selection: Mozart's Mass in C Minor. If you haven't heard it...hear it...awesome.
7. Am either a very liberal republican or a very conservative democrat. Or something else entirely.
8. The four most populous authors in my book collection are Orson Scott Card, Raymond Feist, Dean Koontz and L.E. Modesitt Jr. So far haven't read much by those guys that I didn't like.
9. Am a member of the laziest book club ever. Originally formed to give moral support while we tackled books we were too scared to read on our own. Unfortunately, we have been giving each other reassurance and excuses not to read the selection.
10. Love snow, love cold, love Indiana, hate vacuuming
11. Love bandannas, wear them every chance I get
12. I am really not as grouchy as everyone seems to think I am
13. Correction on number 1, my pantry is a lesson in classic OCD behavior as well, closet too. Pretty much anywhere that you cant see when you walk in the door is meticulous. The main areas are a disaster.
14. I find paperwork very overwhelming. My mailman is lucky if I empty the mailbox twice a month. I'm really not trying to drive him crazy, I just forget until I realize I haven't paid bills in a while.
15. I wish Indy had a better recycling program
16. I have never gotten my Christmas cards out on time
17. I love Indianapolis. It is the perfect size city. Very little crime comparatively. Traffic is awesome for a big city. It has cultural activities and eccentric ones as well. It also has a sledding hill with a concrete strip at the bottom of it. Kinda sick if you ask me.
18. I wanted to be a trucker for a year in college.
19. I bite off more than I can chew regularly. I wouldn't know how to function any other way.
20. Last year after spending a winter in Alabama, when it snowed for the first time, I wrapped up in a comforter and took some tea out on the balcony and watched it snow for two hours.
21. I feel with the amount of mood swings and intense feelings I have, I should have been a poet or an artist or something angsty.
22. I am supposed to be writing a paper on economic forecasting for a Fortune 500 company of my choice. Sigh...
23. I love my parents and siblings and miss them like crazy. Sometimes I get angry with the nature of adulthood, how it separates us from loved ones.
24. I am terrified of dogs, but want a really really huge one someday, Malmut probably.
25. I think it is funny how disturbed my parents are by my sleep schedule, especially considering that I probably sleep far more hours than they do.

Chaos Studies Pt. 2

The house fell apart over the holidays. I had almost gotten it put back together when we left for Chicago. Now there are four loads of laundry on my guest bed that I have been getting dressed out of and I just did dishes for the first time in a week. I don't understand why it is so hard to keep it picked up. For the most part we put things away when we use them so why can't we ever permanently defeat entropy? I have a theory.

Chaos is a natural byproduct of the imperfect human condition. When we have had a rough day, we 'owe' it to ourselves to come home from work and 'relax,' i.e. veg on the couch, read a book, play online, basically anything but clean house. Unfortunately, we find it difficult to relax in chaos and our days get more and more stressful until we have had enough and take care of the root problem. I am going to have to start doing housework before work again which means...I am going to have to get up earlier than I like...

I remember the good old days when the house seemed to clean itself. Of course, I also remember the conspicuous lack of homework too...I think I am going to blame it on being in school in order to divest myself of personal responsibility and control of the situation. Yeah, that'll work...

Dante and Krugman

My pleasure book selection for the week or day or month depending on other factors is one called The Dante Club. It is about the four poets who translated Dante for the new world. I have no idea if this is based in fact or completely fiction but it is definitely a topic I will be looking into. The unfortunate side effect is that I wish I were reading the beautiful copy of the Divine Comedy that I picked up over Christmas instead of Paradise Lost. Smells like book, gilded pages, beautiful navy and gold leather etched cover.

Instead of curling up with a book tonight, I wrote five pages on one of the Nobel Prize winners in the Economics category. I picked Paul Krugman, last year's winner. Turns out economics is incredibly fascinating when written about by a person with a sense of humor that lacks the cryptic gene most economists take pride in cultivating. If you have time check this guy out. He writes twice a week for the NY Times and is responsible for modern trade theory. He also coined the New New Deal phrase that Obama's economists are throwing around. I haven't yet figured out if he is helping Obama develop his economic policy or not, but if he is, I would feel a little better about the immediate economic future. I guess this class hasn't been the total wash I was expecting. On the fun side of things, I apparently picked the perfect company to do my SWOT analysis on. I seem to have sparked a lively debate by choosing Microsoft. Seems everyone has an opinion on that particular company.

Diapers

Well I have pounded through about half of my to do list and I think I have had enough. The paper wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and actually prompted me to do something I should have done a while ago...

I accidentally started a business sewing cloth diapers. As sometimes happens when you do not realize you have a third job, I quickly ended up over my head and a year and a half ago, decided that I never want to work for anyone else ever again. So I enrolled in an MBA program, discouraged new business and started waiting tables again for the flexibility and the money. The goal is to develop enough business know-how to be able to run a business, deal with suppliers, do my own taxes, license the business, etc. The other problem that I was having was that I knew nothing about how to market myself nor how to handle having employees if this thing ends up being as successful as it seems like it could be. Unfortunately, my old clients are still telling people about my product and a girl I work with asked for a run down on the cost analysis of cloth diapers and environmental statistics. Needless to say, I haven't been able to get to it. I logged into my class this week and lo and behold the assignment was to evaluate the political, social and economic trends affecting your industry, i.e. the diaper industry. What a perfect excuse to research and create marketing paraphernalia! So it now reads like a research paper, but should be relatively easy at this point to convert into a pamphlet...

While I still have my doubts over the need for me to take another econ class, at least I have gotten something out of this one.