It's CPA test taking time again... Monday @ 12:30pm... so guess what I've been doing for the last half hour...

GOOGLE Maps - I've been typing in random places and looking at the satellite image for it... Nice, France; Monaco; Moscow, Russia; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Naperville, Illinois (one of the 10 best places to live on CNN's list, a place I would consider moving to if I ever want to get out of LA cause housing is so darn expensive here!); Grand Canyon, etc. You get the point. The site is freakin' addicting!

At least my TV is off. I seriously can't study at my apartment! Too many distractions. I'm taking a break (official break, not one of these distraction breaks) tonight to go to some steakhouse in Beverly Hills for one of my boss' hockey team party. Tomorrow I'm going to a wake - my ex-co-worker Eileen's husband died last week!! I'm still shocked by that because he is pretty young - in his 40s - and he died at their house in Mammoth (he lives up here, she works down here and goes up to Mammoth on the weekends) of a heart murmur. Eileen has always been there for me, through the whole Dante situation, through me being too broke to eat because of Dante, my emotional issues, etc) so I have to be there for her now.

I've been watching too much TV instead of studying these last couple weeks - to summarize -
1. I LOVE DREW LACHEY!! Go Drew & Cheryl... I catch the show as much of the show as I can but Survivor is my top priority this time around.
2. I love Terry on Survivor - even though he's in his 40s, I think he's hot!!
3. 24 is Awesome, as usual... more awesome than last season. Wish Tony would wake up!
4. Ace is my favorite on American Idol this season - he sang the perfect song last week... I love George Michael songs! I can't help it, I listen to 80s songs all day at work (STAR is the only station we get clearly besides spanish mariachi music).

AMAZING RACE 9 cast announced!

27 days until the show starts and my weeks can feel normal again...

I was just watching tonight's episode of American Idol and at the end, in the previews for Hollywood, I swear that was my old roommate Marcie!! She has a great voice and she's been trying to get on American Idol forever. Realistically speaking, she doesn't have the looks or the personality to win the competition but I'll root for her, if that is her. If you still have the show on Tivo, she is the one in the end credits/previews wearing the brown velvet zip-up shirt who wipes her head and sighs.

One of my friends at work was fired yesterday :(. She is the friend who is getting married in April in Hawaii. It came as a huge shock to me that there was even talk of her being let go because I thought she was doing fine. I first heard ramblings about it 2 days ago and it pissed me off because there are other people at work who aren't getting the job done and they're still with the company. I have been quiet and gloomy since I heard. I go to lunch most days with the girl (Danielle) my friend (Eva) works with and it is hard for me to be my peppy self when I think Danielle is the reason Eva was let go... don't get me wrong, Danielle is a good friend of mine but I think she does complain to the bosses more than most people do and I've seen it happen so many times when an account manager doesn't fully know how to handle the desk so they blame their assistants for not being on the ball. I've seen so many assistants fired because of this. The 'desk' (clients) Danielle works on has always been too reliant on the help of Charles and I thought I heard recently that the bosses told Charles not to help them so much, they need to handle it on their own.

Oh my... the subject of today's Oprah is debt, spending, etc. and they're talking about this family that is out of control because the 2 kids rack up a total of over $600 in credit card charges every month. While I realize that this might be a big amount for regular families, this doesn't even reach the absurd-ness of our clients' kid's spending... The average clients' kid's credit card limit is $5000 and we usually put anywhere from $600-$1500 in their bank accounts as their allowances each month. Some of the kids are in their 20s now and the parents are trying to get them to learn to be on their own - you don't know how hard that is on the kids! We even had to show a guy how to write checks and he's 22!!

I'm catching up on an episode of Lost I missed from earlier this year and I seriously cannot stand Michelle Rodriguez!! I know she's playing a 'tough girl', but you don't need to snarl in every scene of every movie you're in.

I recently started watching Days of our Lives again because Carrie is back on the show... I look at Austin and I wonder why I ever loved him. I gave up 'DOOL' after getting hooked on All My Children - the acting/writing is sooooo much better on All My Children and the storylines actually move along. Compared to the actors on All My Children, Austin can't act to save his life!! Has he gotten worse since I stopped watching a year ago or did I just not notice? I remember how crazy we all were about the NBC soaps back when we were in college... I used to play that song, "How Do I Live" by Leann Rimes all the time because that was Austin and Carrie's 'song'. Gosh, I played "My Heart Will Go On" a lot too so I really was clueless back then!

OK, Holiday Gifts from clients tally: so far I've gotten a cute makeup bag with my initial from a client, and a facial at Thibiant Beverly Hills from another client. I've also gotten a box of pears from Harry & David. I really didn't expect to get gifts because most clients get things for the account manager and not the assistant - they interact with the account managers more. This doesn't include all the Mrs. Beasleys baskets, Godiva, flavored popcorn, chocolate, chocolate and chocolate (!) we get in the office for everyone. We also got 3 dozen of those Sprinkles cupcakes from a client. I'm wearing my 'big' pants today and they feel so tight!!

Dude, this game sucks!

I know I definitely can't date a Trojan... we'd break up every year around this time.

This is one of my bosses on Halloween... Willy Wonka... he went to his son's school later that day and had like 15 kids following him at one point :) The funniest thing every Halloween is to go into his office and see him in his outfit sitting at his desk talking to clients on the phone and the clients have no idea they're talking to Willy Wonka (this year) or a pimp (2004).

IT'S RIVALRY WEEK!!! 5 more days until the big game - UCLA vs. U$C... I don't know if we'll beat those Trojans, but I have the utmost faith in my boys.

Last weekend I was thinking back on the good ol' college days, the best 4 years of my life, where I met my closest friends... I was also thinking back on my crushes in college too. I should have dated someone from my college years - I was surrounded by so many awesome guys and I choose a freakin uneducated lying scum bag to date after college. No, I'm not bitter. Not at all.

Just thinking about those college boys brings a smile to my face. I had such a huge crush on this guy I worked with at the student store. He had such an amazing personality I was willing to overlook his obsession with Renee Zellweger. He would come into the locker room and out of the blue, just say, "STOP! Just stop. You had me at hello." I worked with him on a lot of shifts so I got to know him pretty well. 2 years after he graduated, I ran into him at Ralphs, we exchanged email addresses, etc and I email him probably once a year (which reminds me that it's time for another catch-up email). I think, subconsciously, he was part of the reason I got into accounting. He was 2 years older than me and he had gotten a job with Andersen Consulting so he was telling me all about the job, the benefits, et.al and I thought it was so cool.

I had another crush on a guy in my advanced accounting class. I wasn't into Asians too much in college and this guy was Asian (the student store guy was half Asian, half white) so it shocked my friends. He was so smart and he was one of those 'cool' Asians. I thought everything was cool about him, down to his low-cut white socks with his sneakers... I don't know why but that was the first time I noticed socks cut that low and I loved it and from that point on, I only got low-cut white socks cause it was so much more practical and better looking. Maria and I would go study at Powell Library every night for the social scene - he was the one I was always looking to run into because he was there as much as we were. Last I heard, he got a job at Smith Barney in New York. Debbie and I did run into him once on Veteran Ave. on our way back from Westside Pavilion - his car pulled up next to ours and he honked to get my attention. Such a little thing, but it put me in a good mood for a little while.

I think I spent the bulk of my college years chasing after the athletes. I loved loved loved Ray Young... don't ask me why :). Denise, Asha, Stan and I stayed after the game a couple times and I had my picture taken with Ray - that picture is still up here on my collage on my wall. Monica went with us to a game and managed to snap a pic of Ray on the court - I won't describe the pic but she put a post-it "Scratch & Sniff" on it, so you can imagine...

Another guy I was obsessed with in college was Cade McNown... he hasn't made UCLA proud in the years after he graduated but when he was at UCLA, he was our god. He was an unbelieveably intelligent quarterback in college. Gosh, I remember freaking out to my friends because "I walked by Cade at the tennis courts and he smiled at me but I didn't realize it was him so I didn't smile back!!" Cade - I still love you and I did mean to smile at you but it was 7:30am and I was barely awake!

Alright, enough reminiscing...

Jon Stewart just showed a clip of Black Friday on The Daily Show - it was the usual trampede stuff and some girl fell, along with a couple other people but the girl hurried to reach for something and put her wig back on. It takes so little to amuse me.

Bedtime... got so much catching up to do because last week was a short week at work and short weeks don't mean the clients stop spending, they spend more.

Since Mr. Talan is in the news a lot lately, I had to crack up when I was watching my Laguna Beach Season 1 DVDs today and there was a scene where Lo called Talan to see if he wanted to hang out. Lo, on the phone - "What are you doing right now?? YOU'RE GETTING A FACIAL??"

I was just watching my Tivo of Great Hotels with Samantha Brown - the Kahala Mandarin Oriental: Hawaii episode and Samantha tries on this 4 carat diamond ring in one of the hotel stores... the ring is big but not huge and it's just plain gorgeous... That's exactly what the $199k ring a client bought for his fiancee (also a client) looks like!! The fiancee's ring is a 5 carat emerald cut ring with 2 .78 carat diamonds on the side, from Harry Winstons'... she came into the office and the people who work on her account and know about the ring all gathered around to look at it. We had heard about the ring when we cut the check in the first place and we were dying to see what it looked like.

They are freakin high schoolers who I don't even know, why am I crying???

Gosh, I can't believe I am so invested into this show... next season doesn't look that great but I said that about season 2 after season 1 ended. I loved Season 1 because the cast was more mature but this season was really fun with the dumb people :).

I'm going to miss Kristen :( I'm probably the only person in my circle of friends to like her but say what you want about her, she makes the seasons more interesting.

Can't sleep... stupid me takes hour naps at night, then I wake up and can't get back to sleep...

I've been working OT like crazy this last week - worked 4 hours OT Saturday, and 2 hours each day all this week... the final deadlines for some tax returns (corporations whose fiscal years end 1/31) are coming up 10/15 so the partners/accountants need help doing those returns. They don't expect me to complete the whole return by myself and have everything balance out (I hope) but it's nice when I actually do get everything right with no problems... when I don't though, sometimes I think it might take them more time to figure out my mistakes than to actually do the return themselves but they still keep asking me to do these returns so I guess I'm doing something right.

In other news, CONGRATS to Jennifer and Brian, who were engaged a couple weeks ago! I am soooooo excited to be a bridesmaid! (I gotta start up my diet again!)

forgot to post this on Tuesday -

My weeks are complete again, Amazing Race is back!

It's the Family Edition and that is kinda weird but I love the show so much I'll watch whatever they put on. And I love Phil so much I would watch anything he's on just to see him and listen to his awesome accent.

So far, I love the Linz family cause the brothers are cute and funny... hope they do better than next to last place next episode!! And I feel bad for the Black family... no I'm not being racist but the one black family's last name is actually Black... this is like an episode of the Chappelle Show!

OK, I've figured out how to do this email blogging thing so I can post more entries now... and not have the month gap between posts! I've realized I do need to post more often because when I don't, I lose my grammar skills. I love my job, but cutting checks and doing all this business management stuff all day isn't going to help me with my grammar.

I have a bunch of little projects to finish up right now but I just have to say how awesome the Space Bag is!! I bought a couple from Linens 'N Things and put all my extra bedding in them. I just had to post cause I just saw a Space Bag commercial on TV.

I just went to Best Buy tonight and bought both the DVDs for Lost and Desperate Housewives (you save $10 if you buy both together) and I've been spending money like crazy for all this scrapbook stuff I've bought recently, so no more spending for me for a month! Now that the unemployed loser Dante is completely out of my life (and have been for at least the last 6 months - WHOOHOO!), I am no longer struggling and I can enjoy spending my money on myself... such a nice feeling. I know I have to curb my spending though because I do need to save and the $75 I put away every paycheck isn't going to buy me a house.

So much more to say but it's 1:16am so I better go to bed soon - I have NO excuses to be late to work! I live 5 mins away!

We had a company summer party last night and some of us are still recovering from it... 2 Mai Tais! Thats better than my usual 1 cosmopolitan. Does it still count even if I asked the guy to make the first Mai Tai really light? :) I'm a freakin lightweight.

I took my friend Maria to the party and she had a great time with all my co-workers... the partners loved her because her personality meshes well with all of us. The main partner was even asking her if she needed a job! She is a CPA and very qualified to do what we do so if she ever wants to leave her current job, I'm going to try to convince her to join us.

A couple co-workers spent the night last night and we went to breakfast around noon today so I'm running late to Rhona's bridal shower - SORRY Rhona! After that, there's a fashion show tonight featuring our receptionist's designs so I have to go support her...

I'll tell you guys later about how I thought I tipped the Audi shuttle driver $40 for a 5 minute ride to work this week... Yeah, I'm that stupid I might have done it!

I am so addicted to the show Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel... I'm watching the Vienna, Austria episode right now and the place is GORGEOUS!! Samantha Brown also does the show Great Hotels - she's a great host... kinda corny but fun to watch. What an awesome job to have! Her job might be better than my dream job - a producer on The Amazing Race. (Yes, I know I've said my dream job was working for the Lakers front office, but those days have passed!) I need to stop watching these shows because that adds more places to my "Must Visit" List.

Samantha is taking dance lessons with some Austrian dude. "Waltzing is turning..." Was I waltzing during the wedding party dance at Monica's wedding?? :) I really didn't know what I was doing!

I've been looking through my college photos for scrapbooks and stuff lately and I don't have that many! Why didn't they have digital cameras when we were in college? I've been thinking back on my college years a lot and there is so much I wish I did back then. We had a great time in college and I wish I took more pictures. I already have a lot of pictures of us just goofing around but can you imagine how much more I would have if digital cameras were around during that time? I also wish I had done some kind of road trip back in college - these days it's impossible to just get away and do nothing for a couple weeks. I remember some story a couple years ago about 2 college students who spent their summer break driving across the US and visiting every baseball stadium. How cool would that be? It's something you will always remember, even 20 years down the line and it's something you can tell your grandkids about.

Back to meaningless stuff... The only new show I've picked up this summer is Big Brother and I've chosen a favorite guy - Howie. The guy is hilarious and he reminds me of a co-worker who seems a little uptight but when you get to know him, he's the funniest and funnest guy ever.

I went to the premiere of Showtime's Weeds and Barbershop this week... Barbershop is hilarious but Weeds doesn't look that great (it's been getting great reviews supposedly though). At premieres, the celeb seats are marked with a piece of paper with the celeb's name on it and the normal people just sit in any other seat... The highlight of the night was when they introduced Kevin Nealon and Kevin stands up and waves at everyone with that piece of paper taped to his back. It sounds lame right now as I'm reading back what I just wrote but it was hilarious to me at the time. Yeah, it doesn't take much to amuse me.

2 more days until the day I planned to start studying for my next CPA exam... lets see if I actually start. Why am I such a procrastinator?!!?

I've been watching all the Amazing Race repeats on GSN and I am amazed at how much the show has changed... first of all, Phil Keoghan looks soooo much better now than he did back then (the picture is young Phil). I have such a huge crush on him and everyone thinks I'm crazy. He has the sexiest Australian accent too!

I love being able to watch this show every single night. I'm behind right now but I love the TiVo! I catch up a couple episodes at a time. Summer TV sucks so this is the perfect time for them to start showing these repeats.

I've started watching Big Brother again and I love that it's on 3 times a week... I haven't caught on to the other shows that everyone watched - Beauty and the Geek, I Want to be a Hilton, Dancing with the Stars, etc... If I don't set my TiVo on it early on, I have no desire to watch the show. It's hard to get invested in shows like those though - they are not 'quality TV' like the Amazing Race is.

So far, from watching 5 episodes of the first season of Amazing Race, I love the lawyers Rob and Brennan and I hate Team Guido. I'm usually a fan of good racing even if the teams are 'mean' (I liked Colin and Christie (season 5) and I LOVED Rob and Amber (season 7)) but Team Guido just rubs the wrong way... JERKS!

I just took a break from all this studying (test is Saturday) to go to HOOTERS!! I'm taking today and tomorrow off work to study but today is Gary's birthday and Marilu called me about plans for Gary's birthday lunch. You know I love work when I take a day off and all I keep thinking about is what I'm missing at work.

My roommate/co-worker Marilu is engaged to a military guy who works up north. We'll find out in December if she's moving up there but if she is, Charles wants to move into our apartment. We have an agreement that I will stay "Chrissy", Tony will stay "Jack" and Charles will become "Janet". I don't know what we would do if Marilu did move away because she is such a huge part of the company. She's been at the company for over 12 years and our main partner sees her as a daughter. I don't even want to think about it but Marilu says everytime she walks into Charles' office (he has candy in there), he asks her if she can leave her furniture, if she can move out by September because the back to school traffic will be really bad, if she can set up her Tivo before she leaves, etc. I told her to leave me her clients (I want to be promoted)... We love each other so much :).

I met a guy at Monica's wedding! One of the groomsmen (PJ)... The maid of honor (Nicole) and the best man (Glenn) also like each other so it's gonna be hilarious if any of these works out. Monica's wedding will be known as the hookup wedding of the decade. Glenn sent Nicole flowers at work on Tuesday - but Glenn lives in San Diego and Nicole lives in Scottsdale so they have some obstacles to jump over. PJ finally called me yesterday and we're hanging out on Saturday after my test... This means I won't be able to go to the little party we're having for Gary at his house. :( Hopefully they'll forgive me, but I'm sure they understand.

Gosh, I have so much more to say but I gotta get back to studying.

Today is Monica's wedding and I'm so nervous I'm up already at 4am... can't sleep! If I'm this nervous and I'm just a bridesmaid, just imagine how nervous/excited she is. I just don't want to do anything to ruin it for her :) As one of the other bridesmaids said, "I would be ok falling at my own wedding, but I wouldn't want to ruin someone else's". We ordered our bridesmaids dresses back in November when I was skinnier than I am now so I was having issues with my dress being too tight. I just tried it on and it fit perfectly!! Maybe those Claudia Schiffer exercise videos I did yesterday helped! I bought those videos more than 10 years ago and I still think it's the best workout you can do at home, I just haven't done them in years! I don't want to take the dress off because I'm afraid I'm going to expand during the day.

I'm sitting here drinking my water because that's what we're trying to do at work to lose weight. Half the office did Weight Watchers earlier this year (before I decided I wanted to lose weight) and one of the things was to drink 'half your body weight in ounces' of water everyday... you know how much water that is?? :) Our Arrowhead guy always knows when we're trying to lose weight because he'll pick up 12 empty water containers in one week... our regular consumption is 5 containers per week I guess.

I've been good at working out lately too because I've had exercise partners... Liz and I do the stairs every Tuesday after work (I'm up to 3 sets now, trying for 4 next week) and Eva and I jog at the beach every Thursday after work. If it weren't for them, I would flake all the time but we keep each other in check. I have no excuse to flake either - even if I forget my stuff, I only live 5 mins away from work (7 to be exact with all the damn red lights... when I start up my car, it always shows how long I was driving the last time my car was started).

I'm off to do some crunches on that exercise ball I bought a month ago that we've just been using to sit on to watch TV in the living room....