This dude in the elevator is looking at me. Who does that?

Last night, I was having dinner with some people at the greatest margarita in Tulsa…wait, no. I was having dinner at El Tequila which serves the greatest margaritas in Tulsa. Yes, that’s right. But one of the people there having dinner with us was Christopher Tyler(?) Cleveland! How crazy is that? It’s weird when you see these people in music videos on yahoo! Entertainment or you hear their songs playing on sweet shows like MTV’s the Real World, and then you find yourself one night just kickin it with them. Haha little bit of sarcasm there but also a little bit of not sarcasm. Either way, Chris Cleveland is a tight dude and we were sitting there eatin our burritos straight from bomb.com when the conversation turns towards Chris’ new living situation. He’s living with a dude whose name, I believe, is Bong. Now I may have heard that wrong, but every time people say his name, that is what I hear. Thus, that is what I assume his name is. But the main part of this convo that I want to focus on was what he said next.

Here's Chris Cleveland by the way...HOTT haha:

Apparently, Bong is a cat guy. He has two cats that live with Chris and him. I’m not gonna lie, that kinda weirds me out a little bit. I’m trying to stay open-minded but you just don’t meet guys between the ages of 20 and 30 who are into cats. So anyways, it’s beside the point but I definitely have a weird mental image of this Bong guy. At the same time though, I like him. And this brings us to what I hope you will agree is the climax of this story. I don’t remember one of his cats’ names because I didn’t care about it. I just know that the other one had the greatest cat name I’ve ever heard. What was it? “Gray Kitty” !!HAHA!! I love it! Seriously I started dying laughing. You can ask Chris if you want. I really did. Or if you don’t have the ballsticles to go up to the lead singer of Pop-rock band Stars Go Dim and ask him whether I thought that cat’s name was funny, you can also ask Rachel Read. She was sitting right there as well and witnessed the whole thing. Or you can just trust me..

So this flippin awesome kitty name has got me thinkin. It’s hard for me right here because the name “Gray Kitty” sends my mind simultaneously down two different tracks. I know that eventually, I will take you down both of them with me but right now I’m trying to decide which to go with first…

So what exactly is the deal with grEy and grAy. Like what is the difference? I’m sure it’s one of those things that I could find out if I would just take two seconds and google it but I think that I’ll throw out some of my own hypotheses first before I do that. Ok, here are the facts that I know. I know that there is a singer-songwriter named David GRAY. I know that Dave Matthews wrote a song and called it GREY Street. I know that there is a TV show called GREY’s anatomy. I know that, to my eyes, the word GRAY looks more natural than the word GREY. I know that Crayola has chosen to label it’s Crayon GRAY. And the last fact that I know is that there is a major bus line called Greyhound buses. That is pretty much the extent of facts that I know.

Let’s evaluate. OK, the biggest puzzle for me here is that I’ve always thought the Dave Matthews song was referring to the color of the street. As in he was making a poetic reference to the street being dull and GREY. However, then Crayola (a pretty reliable source when it comes to colors I would think) goes with GRAY (I know because I’ve looked before and wondered). That’s confusing for me. However, I guess that Dave could have been referring to the actual name of the street. Like someone might live on GREY street or something. Definite possibility. But then there’s also the question of whether one of them is typically a name? Because we have both a Meredith (sp?) GREY and a David GRAY. So clearly both can be used there as well.

So the only thing that I can think of is that maybe there really is no correct or incorrect use of either one. I find no evidence that says that one is used over the other. So possibly nobody knows why there are multiple spellings of a the same word. Now I shall go to google and see if I’m wrong. Un momento…

Well, apparently, it’s a regional thing. I guess that GREY is the standard British spelling of the word but then there are a lot of places in America that spell the word GRAY. So I’m going to say that my hypothesis was almost fully true. There is a little bit of reason to the different spellings but I think that, in general, you can pretty much spell it however you’d like and the words are interchangeable.

I spoke of another road I might travel earlier but I think I’ll skip that road.

….hmmm. This morning I was supposed to take a shower. That didn’t happen. The night before, a shower in the morning sounds just amazing. Then my alarm goes off (clip from Skinny Love by Bon Iver) at 7 something and I’m like HELL NO I’m not getting up just to take a shower. So I lie in bed absolutely as long as possible and usually end up waiting too long to get up and I barely have time to even get dressed before I go to work.

So I’ve pretty much got my morning routine down to an art. Everything is a race. I deodorize with one hand while givin myself a little bit of the ol’ cologne with the other hand at the same time. I fly through brushing my teeth. Like I think part of the reason that my brushing is so effective is that the friction buildup between my toothbrush and teeth literally incinerates the evil that tries to destroy my teeth. (Don’t worry though, I am still thorough) anyways, etc. etc. I am quick with my morning routine. Then I hit this one point at the very end of my routine. I like to use this stuff:

I used to use the minty kind because just the thought of citrus mouthwash sounded wrong and disgusting. Having finally tried it though, I can tell you that if you ever felt the same way I did, flippin try the citrus. It’s awesome.

Anyways though, there is a big decision that I have to make the instant that I put that stuff into my mouth. Once it’s in there you really only have about a minute of having it in your mouth before it begins to burn more than you can take. The first option is to stand there with it in my mouth while I’m at the sink, wait out the minute, and then spit. This is the safer option but it does force me to basically waste an entire minute…and minutes are valuable when you play the last minute game that I play in the mornings. The second option though is to put it in my mouth, and then fly through the house trying to grab all the things I need for the day in time that I can be out the door and can spit into the yard on my way to the car. This is more dangerous because if there is even one little hic up in the move from the bathroom to the yard, you can end up with an extra 20 seconds of mouthwash time which is excruciating. The other issue is that sometimes my mother is sitting out in the living room and wants to say bye or something. Then I have to make some awkward noise that sounds like a goodbye and run out quickly. (part of the game is to not let her know that I have mouthwash in my mouth) Anyways, today I didn’t have the guts to go for it and I ended up just standing in front of the mirror wasting an entire minute of day.

This brings us to your last question for the moment. Does liking this man make you old?

That, my friends, is Louis Armstrong in case you didn’t know. This man’s music puts off one of the classiest vibes I’ve ever heard from music. Like I flipped on a little bit of the Louis yesterday and was like “dang, I feel underdressed for this.” This music sounds so legit that it almost seems wrong to have an electric copy of it. It should only be able to be played either through an old busted radio or from a vinyl record. Either way though, that doesn’t answer our question. The question was whether liking this guy makes you old.

I was talking about this with a young lady that I work with yesterday and I think, in the end, it depends on what else you listen to. Take for instance, if you’re 22 and you go from listening to Loius to listening to Sinatra to listening to Pink Floyd to listening to Pete Townshend to listening to James Brown, then yes. You are old and you need to join the rest of us 22 year olds in generation Y. However, if you go from listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to Louis Armstrong to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here), then I think the addition of Louis to your repertoire just bumps you up a notch on the scale of class and of the eclectic. So if you’re 22, by all means get in there and let Louis do his thing for your ears. But just mix it up a bit so that you don’t end up turning into an old fogey too quickly. That’s all. Louis Armstrong IS legit though. Right now I’m listening to the song Blueberry Hill by him and it’s changing my day into something beautiful.

I’ve gotta stop at this point. However, I do have a couple final requests. A of all, you should start a blog because I want to read about the random stuff you think about too. It’s only fair. B of all, I was going to request that everyone leave a comment so that I know who reads this but forget it. You just do your thing. C of all, get some Louis Armstrong and let him show you what’s up.

Peace out.

Spanish Leather? No, my boots are made of steel.

I am not enjoying the music that I’m listening to right now. “Why are you listening to it then Christian?” Well, let me explain. I am listening to the new CD by Rogue Wave. It just came out yesterday and when I saw that the band that had given me the songs Bird on a Wire, Lake Michigan, and Publish My Love had put out a new CD, I was mildly excited. See, those were songs that I had definitely listened to a lot of times back in the day, but they were also songs that I hadn’t had the desire to listen to in a really long time. When that happens, it usually means that my flavor has changed a little bit and that the band might not still fall into my realm of tastiness (if you will). But regardless, I was still mildly excited to hear what they had come up with.


I originally discovered Rogue Wave, not because I was looking for music but because I was sitting around bored and so I went on a Wikiadventure. If you’ve never been on a Wikiadventure, it’s where you go to Wikipedia and just click on random links on each page. You pick a number and then, every page you go to, you click the link that is corresponding (i.e. if you picked 7, you would click the 7th link that appeared on each page and you would do it 7 times). Then you read whatever page you are on at the end. I ended up on a page about Tsunamis I believe. They are also sometimes referred to as “Rogue Waves”. I thought it was a cool phrase so I clicked on it and then I saw the little note up at the top of the page that says something to the effect of “If you’re looking for Rogue Wave (band) click here.” So I clicked there and the rest is history.

Anyways, I am sitting here listening to this CD. I don’t like it. However, whenever I decide to evaluate a CD, especially if I’m going to share my opinion on the CD, I like to really listen all the way through it with an open mind. When I typed the first line of this post, I was about 45 seconds from the end of the CD and have since moved on to better music. However, I do feel that I gave the album an honest shot and have still come to the conclusion that it is not my flavor.

Here’s my pork (or “here’s my beef” if you’re more comfortable with that phrase) with this CD and really this band in general. They are entirely too repetitive. During a song, you hear not just the same LINE over and over again, but you hear it sung to the exact same melody and with the exact same music behind it. It jumps right over being boring and jumps to almost being annoying. And the thing is, repetition of lyrics is ok as long as you change up the melody…and repetition of melody is ok as long as you change up the words and the melody is awesome (Snow Patrol proves that in my opinion). However, Rogue Wave fails to create anything interesting to me and thus, I shall probably never listen to this CD again and will definitely delete it from my iPhone if not also from my computer. No thank you Rogue Wave.

I have moved on instead to a CD called Illuminare by a band called Umbrellas that I’m pretty sure is from Tulsa…I KNOW they’re from Oklahoma, but I could be wrong about the Tulsa part. Either way though, they’re from “round these parts” and that basically makes us family. I’m really diggin this CD though. The sweet thing about them is that, if I remember right, they recorded this CD in an old abandoned comedy club building and I think they recorded another CD in a “haunted” house place. I think it’s this band that I’m thinking of…I don’t know. Google it and call me out if I’m wrong. I don’t have the time to check my facts. But the sweet thing is that their music fits that so much. Their music is kind of dark and haunting a lot of the time. I especially remember having that feeling a couple of years ago when I saw them live in Tulsa. It felt like the kind of music that you should find as the soundtrack to either an epic battle between two vampires (you know what I’m talking about) or in a scene from some artsy fartsy movie when the main character is walking around slowly but everything around him or her is moving really fast. Like it’s all just flying by. And the sky is overcast at the beginning of the scene as it slowly turns to night by the end and he ends up sitting on a bench somewhere, all alone with his thoughts in the silence left after the song has ended. You know what kind of scene I’m talking about? You’ve definitely seen this type of scene in movies before. Anyways, that’s the vibe I get from these songs. So I think it’s kinda cool that they were recorded in such empty, haunting places because it’s almost like that vibe has been infused into their music. I dig it. It’s WAY better than that Rogue Wave CD. I don’t think it’s really one of those albums where you fall in love with any specific songs though. I think it’s more the kind of CD where, if you have to work 8 hours a day and you can listen to music, you turn it on and let it play through for an hour and appreciate the fresh vibe that it puts off. However, if you’re going to sample it and see whether you dig it, their best song is probably either Boston White or Ships. Check out Boston White.

Ok so here’s an issue that I have. I was reminded of how much this confuses me today as I was going into the Walmart at 81st and Lewis today during my lunch. I was going in there to buy some steel-toed boots. I got these ones:

The brand of these boots is Brahma which, if I’m not mistaken, is the name of one of the three major gods in Hinduism. I’m about 65% sure that he’s the god of creation? I might be wrong there but I think that’s right. Either way, if that really is the name of a hindu god and it really is the god of creation, than I feel pretty good knowing that these boots come straight from the master creator himself. Sarcasm is what that was…just for the record. But I had to buy these boots so that I can go do a physical inventory count of some sheet metal out at the client I’m working on right now. So to answer the question that everyone always asks me, NO, I do not just sit at a desk all day. The good news is that, even though these are probably one of the most disgusting things that I have ever paid money for, I get to charge it to Grant Thornton. Thus, I basically got a free pair of shit. Thrilling.

Ok I just got way off track. My point was that today I was walking into Walmart and this lady walking in front of me was smoking a cigarette. As we neared the front door, she took the half-smoked cig out of her mouth and flicked it on the ground. Here’s my issue here. Why in the world are people so OK with throwing cigs on the ground? Like I have no doubt that this lady would just as quickly drop a crumpled up receipt on the ground or throw a cup out of her window if she was out on an interstate highway. The thing is though that when people litter things other than cigarettes, they are generally really sneaky about it. Like if someone is going to drop a crumpled up receipt on the ground, he/she will do something like stick his/her hand in his/her pocket and nonchalantly let the receipt slip out onto the ground so that if someone was watching, the person might believe that the receipt had been dropped on accident.

Or if someone is going to toss a McDonalds cup out of the window at 75 miles per hour on the drive to Stillwater from Tulsa, he or she will usually wait until there aren’t many cars in sight to do it so that no one really sees it. You rarely see someone roll down their window when they’re driving right next to you and chuck some trash out onto the street. People are more secretive about their littering than that.

The difference with cigarettes though is huge! Not only do people not care if other people see them drop their cigs right on the ground, but they FLICK them!! A flick is by no means a nonchalant act. It’s not like you just don’t care if someone sees you DROP your cigarette on the ground. Instead, you use a fairly noticeable motion that essentially screams “yeah, I’m gonna toss this cig butt right here and I don’t even care.” It’s weird that cigs are the one thing that people brag about littering. ‘Cause that’s what that flick is. It’s like a brag that your trash is good enough that you can put it wherever you want.

I understand why things are that way though. It’s all this guy’s fault:

Him and his other Hollywood buddies made it cool to flick away wherever you want. I’m not saying that it gets me all worked up or that it even pisses me off or anything. I’m just pointing out the inconsistencies in the way that people treat their trash.

Well…this has once again gone on for entirely too long. I’ll leave you with just this:

That, my friends, is my running tally for how many peanut m&m’s I have eaten today. It is 2:45 pm and, as you can see, I have eaten 98 peanut m&m’s. That’s more than you think it is.

Peace out.

Christian Roderick: Quest for Reasonable Assurance

So let me explain what you're about to read should you choose to take the time.  I am getting graduate credit for this internship that I'm doing at GT in Tulsa.  3 hours to be exact (and I do mean exact).  Part of the requirement for my getting credit is that I have to write a paper at the end of the internship about "8 things I wish I had in my 'toolbox' at the start of this internship"...are you kidding me?  Lame.  So anyways, I've decided to have some fun with it because the dude probably doesn't read these papers anyways and I felt like it.  So this is the paper that I wrote.  I must tell you these three things about this paper though:  A of all, I did not read back through it and probably never will. There WILL be grammar mistakes and typos.  B of all, none of it is true.  Like literally there is almost zero truth to any of the stories I allude to.  I didn't necessarily learn any of these things.  They're just things I came up with to fill a stupid assignment and get my credit.  C of all, this is Christian Roderick's BS at it's finest.

Christian Roderick: Quest for Reasonable Assurance


My name is Christian Roderick. Many weeks ago, I began a quest. Then, I had only a very rudimentary idea of where this quest would take me in the end, and I had almost no idea at all about the road I would have to travel to get to where I am today. To say that it has been treacherous would be an understatement. I have encountered many monsters and obstacles along the way but can now proclaim that I have made it through unscathed.

As is the case with most quests, mine began with a challenge. There I was, just going through college like every other student who has dreams of becoming a CPA, when all of a sudden, Sir Masters Program grabbed me by the scruff on the back of my neck and said “Christian! I challenge you to complete an internship in the field of public accounting!” So of course, being the hero that I am, I accepted his challenge and shortly thereafter, I signed up with Grant Thornton in Tulsa to do an 8-week internship in their audit department.

The internship started on January 13. As I walked into this office on that first day, I was hit by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. I had seen this place before; I knew it. As I continued through the building and looked into all the faces of auditors as they worked away at their desks, the feeling of déjà vu continued to grow. Then, as I rounded the final corner before arriving at my assigned desk, I made eye-contact with a very pretty, petite middle-eastern girl and like a tidal wave, it all came back to me. I had interned here before!! I had spent 4 months here just last spring, I had worked with these people before, and I had already signed to start full-time with them once my Master’s degree was completed!

It was very relieving to realize that I was coming into an environment that I already knew and understood. All of the office culture that I had learned last spring started coming back to me as I began getting reacquainted with my surroundings. It is here that I will insert the first of 8 things that I wish I had known before this internship began. I wish I had known that just because I had been accepted into the office culture last spring did not mean that I was immediately brought back into the culture when I walked in the door this spring. I think that, no matter how long you work somewhere, it is never good to come into the office every day feeling like you own the place. It is always good to maintain a respect for office culture and remain humble as you go throughout the day. Definitely don’t freak out about trying to be “accepted” by everyone, but also don’t ever get cocky and assume that you’re on everybody’s good side.

I met this obstacle in battle by the end of my first week and am proud to say that I was victorious! I have added a plume to my helmet, a feather to my headdress, a bead to my necklace, a notch to my belt, or whatever other metaphor I could use to communicate that I had added a victory to my resume.

As I laid in my bedchamber trying to fall asleep the Friday night after that first week, I couldn’t help but think about whether this was going to be a job that I could do for the rest of my life. Could I be ok with being an auditor and slaying the evil that pours out of the lands of fraud and incompetence? I waged an inner battle trying to make the decision right then and there. It was a powerful time of inner turmoil for me. As I was laying there trying to put these thoughts out of my head, a beast seemed to rise up out of the darkness around me! It was wreathed in fire and kept screaming something at me over and over again. Only after about the 5th time it spoke did I realize what it was saying. It was repeating the statement, “Christian, you have to figure out whether you like this job RIGHT NOW!!”

Well, the instant that I had fully identified the enemy, I flew up out of my bed and instinctively grabbed the only weapon that I could find nearby which was my trusty old saber! I swung at the monster but the blow glanced off the thick hide on his forearm as he blocked my attack. I ducked as he countered with a swipe right at my soul, spun, and I came up with my saber, stabbing directly through his heart. I had defeated the enemy. I looked down at my old saber. I hadn’t used this thing in years. I knew there was a reason that I had named this sword “Chill Out and Stop Worrying” all those years ago. I wish I had remembered this sword before I started my internship. There’s really no need to worry about what’s coming 2 years down the road. I’ll get there when I get there and all I need to focus on is making sure that I’m working hard and doing a good job today.

As I walked into work that next Monday, I walked in as a new person. I was now as easy-going as they come and nothing was going to faze me. I came in and sat down at my desk, set up my computer, flipped it on, immediately checked my email and my IM to see who was online, and then sat back. I had gone through my beginning of the day routine and I was ready to get going on some auditing. As I looked around my cubicle, something weird started happening…as I looked at my desk, I slowly saw that it changed into a table, my cubicle slowly turned into an audit room with three other people sitting around my table, and our office turned into the office of a client that I was on last spring! I was out at a client today! Hooray! This is what I’d been waiting for.

So I was pretty excited to finally be out of the office and back out on the job. I was excited to get back into auditing where I knew I would learn and grow daily. I looked around me and realized that I already had all the materials I needed to get started on the first few sections of the audit that I was responsible for. Thus, I immediately began my work. As I started flying through the material, an uneasy feeling began to grow in me. I didn’t really take notice of it though and pretty much dismissed it as indigestion. That was my first mistake.

As the day went on, the uneasy feeling grew. Every once in a while, I could have sworn I heard voices telling me to “work faster! Just get through the sections faster!” But every time I thought I’d heard one, I’d look around and, seeing no one, I would dismiss them as my imagination. After I finished the first two sections, I sent them to my senior for review. That pretty much ended the first day out at the client and so I went home with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and uneasiness at the end of that day.

The next morning, I came into the audit room feelin good. I sat down at my table and went through my morning routine again. Soon after I’d finished my routine, my senior handed me the memory stick with my sections on it. She had finished her review and it was time for me to clear her review points. I wasn’t real worried about this though considering it usually only takes a few minutes to clear review points on these sections. I plugged in the memory stick and opened the file on it. Immediately, I knew something was very wrong.

As I sat there looking at my screen, my laptop began smoking and sparking. The smoke grew thicker and thicker and began to lift the computer off the table! It formed into a body with arms and legs made of smoke and my computer screen had become the head! I backed away slowly, poised and ready for anything. The monster became very still for about 5 seconds…then all of a sudden it began firing at me! I wasn’t sure what it was firing at me but I knew that I didn’t want to get hit for sure. I ducked and dodged shot after shot. Finally, I overturned a table and crouched down behind it for cover. There beside me on the ground, I saw what exactly the monster was firing at me. It was a review note that my senior had written me explaining a revision that I needed to make in my section! All of them were review notes. There must have been thirty of them around the room. At this point, the beast had stopped firing. I snuck a peek over the table and was alarmed to see that the monster was moving towards me! In that moment, I realized that the only way that I was going to defeat this monster was to gather up all these review notes and clear them! Over the next hour or so, I flew around the room, grabbing and clearing as many review notes as I could. Every time I’d review one, it would fly back to my computer screen and I could see the monster get a little bit smaller. Finally, after almost two hours, I cleared the last one and as it flew back to my screen, all the remaining smoke dissipated leaving my computer resting firmly on the table again. I slumped into my chair and rested. That had worn me out! But at least the monster of “Speed over Quality” had been vanquished! I wish I’d remembered to be sure I do a good job the first time instead of listening to the monster and trying to fly through my sections as fast as possible. If I’d have slowed down a bit, I probably would have had far fewer review notes to clear and who knows, the monster might not have even showed up.

The next couple weeks went by fairly quickly and with little incident. I wasn’t worrying about the future, I was taking my time doing a good job, and I was happy. So happy in fact that I failed to recognize an enemy force of darkness growing right underneath my nose! Everyday, this monster would come into our audit room with a sweet little smile and a cute little auditor quip. I thought nothing of her. However, I now know that she was trying to lure me into a false sense of security! She wanted me to feel like she was easy to talk to and like she would listen to what I had to say and answer the questions I brought up. I couldn’t have been more wrong though. One day, I came across an issue in my section that I needed to get some clarification on. I asked my senior who I should ask about it and she informed me that it was “this monster”’s area. I wasn’t worried at all. I had seen her so many times in our audit room being so sweet that I didn’t even sweat it. So I walked down the hall with my computer and into her office. There she was, sitting there looking sweet. She even had a dish of heart-shaped chocolates on her desk! (now I realize that they were probably poisoned) I sat down across from her and proceeded to show her a place that I thought she had maybe calculated a number incorrectly. Instantly she morphed into her monster form! She was gnarly and had 4 heads! All of them swiveled to look me in the eyes. She flashed her sharp teeth and all four heads screamed at me “you’re wrong Christian! I know I’m right! I can’t be wrong! I’m never wrong!” I was incredibly taken aback! What had happened to the sweet lady who had been sitting in front of me only moments before? Where had she gone? I looked around and realized that I had no weapon with me. I had been caught unawares and had not thought to grab anything on my way to her office. I started trying to frantically think of something I could use to defend myself. As I sat there with the FARMM (Financial Accounting and Reporting Manager Monster) bearing down on me, looking to rip out my jugular, I finally remembered something that a great hero had once told me. The great Matt the Man (Manager at GT) had once told me that if you can’t tell them they’re wrong, you have to pretend you’re stupid and let them figure it out themselves.

I immediately began to take Matt’s advice. I started using phrases like “I don’t really understand”, “could you help me figure out”, and “maybe I’m looking at this wrong”. As I did so, her heads slowly started to shrink back into one. Her face turned back into that sweet little smile and her voice changed from the screech of a monster to the docile voice of a kind, middle-aged woman. She began answering my question and showing me how she had arrived at the numbers she had given me. Through the process, she realized that she actually had made an error! We fixed it and I left her office like the monster thing had never even happened. Once again, Christian had triumphed over the enemy and defeated the forces of evil!

As I walked away from her office, I wished that I had known before going into that situation how useful it is to play dumb. People don’t respond well when you walk into their offices and tell them that they have been doing their jobs wrong. However, if you are humble and just walk into their office acting like you just can’t understand it fully, you end up raising questions that lead to them finding their own errors. Either way, you end up with the correct numbers in the end. It’s just that if you do it the right way, you can avoid confronting a bloodthirsty monster in the process.

The internship continued on until today. I met many more monsters and time after time, found that I had the tools I needed to defeat them. Yet there were other creatures such as the dragon I encountered in the cave of “Menial Intern Tasks” where I found that my tools were lacking. The moment that the dragon came into my line of sight, I knew which weapon to use on her. As she came at me with flames dripping from her mouth as she screamed “data entry! data entry!” I whipped out my battle 10-key and swung it with all of my might at her tree-trunk neck. I connected with my full force but my blade merely bounced off of her! I examined the blade of my 10-Key and realized that it was dull as could be! I had forgotten to sharpen my 10-Key skills before entering the cave. If I had sharpened my skills before entering the cave, I could have ended the battle with the dragon right then and there with one fell swipe of my weapon. Instead, I was forced to labor in that cave with a blunt weapon and beat the dragon back to the depths. I was victorious in the end but I wasted precious time.

As a result of all my battles, victories, struggles, and experiences here at GT throughout this internship, I have learned much. The experience that you gain in this industry is invaluable and I can already see that after just a few months. I enjoy my job here and I see my quest, not as one complete, but as one just beginning. As of now, I am but a lowly intern of the realm. Later, I shall begin training to become a CPA-KOTR (Certified Public Accounting Knight of the Realm)!! I’m very excited about getting to that chapter of this story. For now though, I must return from my quest to gain more training at home in OSU (Orodemis Staven Underwood…my hometown) before I can return to the wild world and continue slaying the enemies pouring out of the lands of fraud and incompetence.

So there it is.  That is my paper.  If you read all the way through it then I am thoroughly impressed.  I hope that my teacher doesn't, by some crazy chance, find this post and see the things that I said at the start of this post.  That would be bad to say the least.
 
Peace out.

Mine's a High Horse goes illmatic.

Oh my. I have such sweet sounds in my ears right now. James Mercer (singer and guitarist for The Shins) and Danger Mouse (really Brian Burton, a sick, grammy-award winning producer who always comes up with sweet projects such as mashing together Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles’ The White Album to form his own The Grey Album…which is tight) have teamed up to create a siiiiick CD. They have called themselves Broken Bells and their new album is self-titled. For cereals, you need to check it out. At least go to this website: http://www.myspace.com/brokenbells and listen to the song “The High Road” and “The Ghost Inside” if they’re on there. You’ll get hooked.

So lately, I’ve had this really intense craving to do something creative. I’ve been playing my guitar a lot, sketching a lot, and trying to design some stuff on my computer that I could turn into some stencils. I think that it’s because I feel such a lack of creativity at work. It’s not about being creative when you’re in public accounting. It’s about being thorough and gaining a working understanding of the new things you encounter as quickly as possible so that you can decide whether or not the client is accounting for something correctly. The client may literally spend a month and a half figuring out how to correctly account for some major event and yet I am expected to come in, look at all the material, and have a good working understanding of what all they did after just a few short hours. Then I have to conclude on whether it was done correctly. It’s all about getting your mind-juices flowing as quickly as possible.

Regardless though (I got off track), I’ve been wanting to get my creative on. It has been driving me crazy because what I really want to do is some stenciling and some spray-paint art. My main problem is that all my equipment and spray paint is currently in Stillwater! I almost went and bought all new stuff last night but that would be ridiculous because I probably have $100 worth of spray paint and supplies in Stillwater and I’ll be back there this coming weekend. But I’ve just got all these crazy ideas for things I want to stencil. The one I’m most excited about is that I want to do a close-to-life-size stencil of a little boy underwater. It could look really sweet with some bubbles coming off and him just suspended there in the water. If you’re skeptical right now, just wait. I think it’s gonna be sweet.

Here’s my other question though: is it creepy if I make a stencil using someone I know as essentially the “model” for my stencil? Like picture it being you. Would you be weirded out if I make a stencil of you, put it on a canvas, and then, I don’t know, what if I give it away? Would that be weird? Sometimes I feel weird about it but here’s my issue. If I don’t use someone I know, then I use someone I don’t know! How much creepier is that if some random dude found a picture of you on the internet, looked at it and used you as the base for his “art” and put your face on a canvas that was then going to be hung up in his room. How flippin weird is that? It’s a tough situation. Thus, I think I’ll probably just keep doing a combo of those two methods as well as just drawing the people in my mind to use.

Man, just talking about all that is making me want to get the hell out of this office building, drive to Stillwater, grab my spray paint, and start tagging all the good walls in back alleyways around town. How am I an accountant? How can I enjoy the work that I’m doing while also enjoying that kind of stuff? Doesn’t make sense but that’s just how it is. When I talk about it at work, people are kinda like “hmmm…kiiiiiiinda weird but ok.”

Is it sad that I’m probably going to make a B in a 2000 level “Personal Finance” class that I’m taking online? I have had 5 years of accounting and I’m about to get a B in a sophomore level class that is teaching me how to balance my checkbook and create a personal financial plan. Wow. The truth is though that this class is just absolutely retarded. I refuse to waste my time on this financial plan thing. I could easily spend 15 hours on it if I was really trying to get an awesome grade but it is just completely worthless stuff for me to be doing. Outside of getting a grade on it, it is completely unproductive. Thus, I shall do a half-ass job and probably get a B. Oh well, it probably doesn’t matter what grades I get at this point.

Between then and now, the music in my ears has been changed (by me) to Nas – One Mic. Who am i?

Peace out.

It's a fine line between romantic and stalker...he walked it like a pro.

Cutting your hair isn’t quite as hard as you might think…though it’s also much harder than you’d think it would be.  I realize that was a fairly confusing statement but I think I’ll just leave it without really fully explaining what I meant by it.

I rarely plan out my haircuts.  Usually they just kind of happen all of a sudden and out of the blue.  It isn’t like I give myself a call a few days in advance to see whether I’m going to have any available time in the next few days where I could give myself a haircut.  The main reason that I don’t set up appointments with myself is so that I don’t find myself getting mad at myself whenever I show up 20 minutes late for my appointment.  It’s just awkward to go through that kind of inner turmoil.   Plus, I rarely have cash on me but I don’t have the ability to accept payment via credit card.  So I end up having to run to the ATM to get cash so that I can pay myself.  It’s just easier if we keep it more informal and I don’t have to worry about charging myself for the haircut.

Usually the haircut happens right after I take a shower.  Pretty much I just am lathering my hair up with shamp in there, probably just loving the smell engulfing my hair (cause I always make sure that I get shampoo that smells as much like heaven as possible), when my fingers tell my brain that my hair is just getting entirely too long.  Then the idea of giving myself a haircut enters my brain.  I spend the rest of the shower just trying to get through my shower routine as quickly as possible so that I can get out, dry off and give my hair a check-out to see whether I really want to cut it or not.  I play around with it for a little while.  Swoop it to different sides, spike it all up, fluff it all out, slick it all back… In the end, I either decide that I like it too much to cut it or that I hate it enough to cut it.  Today, I made the decision to cut it.

After playing with my hair for a little while, this is what I came up with as my “before” picture:

 As you can see from the picture, I got to the point where I was emotionally a little messed up with how my hair looked.  The only way that I knew of to get that look off of my face was to start going to town on my hair.

I cut my hair with the back of my electric razor.  There is a flip-up trimmer on the back and I just kinda pull my hair out and use that little thing to saw at it.  It works pretty well actually and I like it because it makes it easier for me to avoid being choppy with my haircut.  So anyways, once I’ve started up the razor and gotten it ready to go, I begin the haircut.  It’s a slow process but it goes pretty fast (another one of those confusing statements).

This is the time in my life when I realize that I’m not near as ambidextrous as I thought I was.  It’s like cutting the hair on one side of my head is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than cutting the hair on the other side.  I tried a couple of times to just use my other hand to cut my hair but that did not go very well.  I feel like you would be able to easily be able to tell which side of my head had been cut with my weak hand.  Easily.

So anyways, once I’m finished with my hair, I have to jump back into the shower because I’m completely covered with hair and NOBODY likes that itchy feeling.   The awesome thing is that I don’t even have to get any of my clothes itchy because I just cut my hair in the nude between the two showers!  No need to get dressed just to cut my hair!  I mean the only person who is going to see me in there in the nude is me and I’ve never really worried about seeing myself naked.  It just isn’t weird for me.  Go figure.  So anyways, I jump back in the shower, jump back out of the shower, dry myself all off and see how it went! The results can be seen below:

I am fairly happy with the way that this particular haircut went as you can tell by the change of expression on my face.  I know what you’re thinking though.  You’re like “hey, it doesn’t even look like you cut any hair off!”  But I believe that exhibit W6TN below should clear up whether or not any hair came off of my head:

                                              Exhibit W6TN:

So many other things that I could continue talking about.  Not the least of which being what happened last night.  I think the only word that could really describe the awesomeness of last night would be farindulous…and I made that word up so it doesn’t really even count.  I’ll write more about it sometime later.  Not now.  It’s not the time.

How did O-State just do that? Oh, it must be because we are the greatest team in the world.

Out.

I went with the Pei Wei Spicy Chicken...got fried rice with it. It was good.

I had a serious dilemma this morning. OK, let me walk you through all the thoughts that went through my head:


1. As I’m on my way to work, I’m already thinking about what kind of pop I want to drink this morning. Options are Pepsi, Coke, Mountain Dew, and possibly Dr. Pepper but it’s unlikely that the doctor will get chosen on any given day. I stopped to get gas on my way to work and there was a big Coca-Cola truck in the parking lot unloading stuff. Pretty much made my decision; I was going to go for a coke today.

2. Then I get to work, I walk in. Usually I would stop by the kitchen on the way to my desk and grab my desk candy for the day. Unfortunately, this is our first day back in the office in a while and so I was carrying Zehra (my senior)’s dell computer monitor which she likes to pack up into this box that is way too big and take with us wherever we go. (more like have ME take with us wherever we go) So I couldn’t really make any stops on the way to the desk cause the thing is decently heavy and I needed to put it down sometime sooner rather than later. So I went back to my desk, put my stuff down and gave Z her monitor. I got all settled into my desk, booted up my computer, all that jazz. Finally it was time to go back to the kitchen and grab some yummies (or tasties, whichever name you prefer). In my head, I knew exactly what I was going for. I was going to go get me a small pixie cup FULL of yellow and pink starbursts. I wanted them bad. And they were going to go great with my Coke (which was my next stop on the way back to my desk).

3. I walk into the kitchen and over to the counter with all the jars of candy. Our office stocks up on the following candies: Peanut M&M’s , original M&M’s, reese’s pieces, starburst, skittles, and then usually one other random finger candy. The starburst were behind the other candies so I really didn’t receive the horrible news until I was all the way over to the counter and was looking down. My world was immediately shattered. Instead of a jar full of delectable assorted starburst, this jar only had about 12 starburst in it. And they were ALL orange.

4. It was an intense feeling that I found inside of myself at this point. Like really? Somebody dropped the ball on keeping the candy stocked up. Cause here’s the deal, NOBODY likes those orange ones. People obviously love the pink and red ones the most as a GENERAL rule. Usually I am ok because even if people have picked out all the pink and red, my two favs are pink and yellow so there are still plenty of yellows left to keep my happy. But orange is last on everyone’s list. And even though I can’t really back this statement up, I think the only people that eat the orange ones are the people who go in and grab just an assorted handful to take with them. They then go back to their desk, eat all the pink, yellow, and red, and then they toss the orange ones in the trash. It’s just a hypothesis but I truly believe that the percentage of orange that eaten is roughly 6% and the percentage that get thrown away is about 91%. I’m not going to discuss what I think happens to the other 3%. It’s gross and you don’t want to hear about it.

5. So here I am, thoroughly disappointed about not having any starburst to grab. But I am forced to make a tough decision. See, usually I would rank these candies in the following order: 1. Starburst, 2. M&M’s original, 3. M&M’s with peanuts, 4. Skittles, and 5. Hell no I’m not eating Reese’s Pieces. So you would think that I would just go with the M&M’s because they’re a second-favorite and they’re also sitting right there…fully available. The problem is this: My mouth was fully ready for the fruitiness and loveliness of starburst and to put chocolate in there instead just didn’t sound right to my mouth at the time. So I was forced to jump down to the 4th favorite and go with skittles.

6. Skittles are fairly similar to starburst as far as flavor and such. Like they really aren’t that different except for shape and the little unnoticeable crust around skittles. But the main reason that starburst are 1st and that skittles are 4th is that skittles leave this kinda annoying sugar-coated feeling in your mouth. Starburst leave your mouth tasting like fruit and tasting awesome. Skittles make my teeth feel like they severely need to be brushed. (why don’t I just go ahead and brush them after the skittles? Well, the reasons are two-fold. A of all, I don’t carry a toothbrush with me at work, and B of all, I hate the taste of toothpaste more than I hate the feeling of sugar on my teeth)

7. So, in general, I can deal with that sugary feeling in my mouth. It’s not too big of a problem. The problem comes in when we go back to thought number 1. I have decided that I want a coke today. Now, if you know anything about coke, it’s that it is sweet and sugary and not only makes your teeth feel like they need to be brushed, but sometimes even makes them feel like you should make a trek to the dentist so he can polish them as well. So it took about 3 skittles for me to realize that combining the sugar-tooth of the skittles with the sugar-tooth of the coke was NOT going to work.

8. So I ended up getting water instead of pop for the day.

9. I feel like my day has suffered because of it.

Ooooo! the word "Cult" scares me! waaaaah!

When I sit down with my sole intent being to enjoy some tunage, I find that different things about the music appeal to me at different times. Right now, I’m kinda in a phase where all I really care about is the lyrics. So anyways, there’s this band that I’m pretty into called Cloud Cult. They pretty much dominated my music time last night and on the drive to work today. This dude is a lyricist straight from Bomb.com. I’m serious, it’s sick. The CD I was imbibing was called The Meaning of 8. He released this CD on what would have been the 8th birthday of his son who passed away at a much younger age. So there are a ton of references to his son throughout the CD although none of the songs are explicitly about his son. That in and of itself is pretty cool. But I feel like I just need to share some of the lyrics from his songs so you can get an idea of what I’m so impressed by with this dude (also note though that a lot of what makes simple lyrics amazing is the emotion put behind them by the singer. if you’re into music that’s a little less mainstream, check this crap out.):

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Chemicals Collide - “I was sleeping in the lilies, or was I up all night? These days it’s hard to tell what’s half asleep from fully alive. We were loving like a landslide, or were we in a fight? These days it’s hard to tell what’s right from wrong and wrong from right.”
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Pretty Voice - “Strike up the band. Here comes the storyline about the usual struggle between fear and love. This is the lifelong song that we’re all singing.” (I love this one. Tight way to start out a song.)
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Brain Gateway - “Meet me in the place where life comes to get away…” (I’m not even a hundred percent sure what it means until I am listening to it and then it somehow connects.)
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Take Your Medicine - “You can take it in stride, or you can take it right between the eyes. Suck up, suck up and take your medicine. It’s a good day, it’s a good day to face the hard things.” (Always a good day to face the hard things…)
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Your 8th Birthday - “Who could change my sleepy brain into the eye of a hurricane? …Kaidin.” (This is the one song where he blatantly writes it about his son. This whole song is tight. He asks so many questions and the answer is always his son Kaidin. Then this is the last line of the song.)
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Purpose - “There must be forgiveness here, cuz most of us have our weaknesses. I don’t know myself, and I’m afraid of you. I’m happiest on chemicals. The goings come and the comings go. Forgive me I’m just an animal.” (This song shows what I really like about this guy’s music. He’s OBVIOUSLY messed up in a major way. But as crazy and wild as he is, he knows that there’s some bigger purpose to life and something more than what he is currently living. And you can just hear it in his lyrics and feel it in his voice. He wants to know.)
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Thanks - “It’s Halloween, and the smell of burning pumpkin takes me back through all the people I have dressed up as to tell myself I have a pretty soul.”
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The Deaf Girl’s Song - “Did you hear about the deaf girl, the one who sang a silent song? Although it’s totally quiet, you can’t help but hum along. Did you hear about the deaf girl, the one who wrote the silent CD? Although there’s nothing to hear, I swear that there are things to be seen…Did you hear about the deaf girl, the one whose song’s gone number one? Three minutes of silence on the radio is the best damn gift for everyone. Did you hear about the deaf girl, the one who made everything clear? If we could just shut up for a second, my darling, my dear, we might actually hear.” (OH MY FREAK this is a tight song.)
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Well, that got a little longer than I had thought it would. I guess I’ll go ahead and end this post right…