A letter to Jamie

Dearest Jamie Cullum,

Please send Amazon UK more of your CDs so they can send mine out. I want it. Now.

Kind regards,

Erin

Thank you hunter wellies for making my day in the rain much more pleasant.

A change in career?

today i was a teacher. don't worry-i'm def not planning any career changes anytime soon. work has been pretty slow so caroline and i decided to volunteer to teach a junior achievement course at a public high school here in the city. today was our first class.

we're teaching at an "inner city" school (at least i think it's inner city...definitely more inner city than Skyline...) and i had visions of the type of inner city schools you see on tv-complete with gangs, drugs, and unruly scary teenagers. when we first got there we ended up trying to go through the student only entrance. it was complete with id card scanners, metal detectors, those people scanning rod things (have no idea what they're called) and x-ray machines to put your belongings through. it looked a lot like going through airport security. when we finally got to the correct entrance we had to go through the same process and check in. it was definitely different from my high school...

i have never taught anything. ever. not in church. not at school. so i was worried. luckily it turned out i was worrying about nothing (as is usually the case). today's lesson was on budgeting. junior achievement has a great lesson manual and actually has pretty much everything you need to talk about written out word for word. after going through the beginning part of the lesson, we decided it would be more fun to just go to the game part of the lesson. surprisingly the kids actually got into the game and really played it! i think the kids enjoyed a break from the normal school day and we had fun teaching!

can't wait to go back for round 2 in a couple of weeks!

Home for the Holidays!

i just booked my ticket home for the holidays!! dec 23-jan 4. can't wait!

sometimes i make bad decisions

like the time i decided to sign up for all 4 CPA exams at once. and the time i decided not to study so much over the summer. and the time i should've been studying when work was INCREDIBLY slow but didn't.

yep. sometimes i make bad decisions. and now i'm paying for them. i take FAR in two weeks and still have 5 lessons, all the homework, and all the simulations to do. boo and boo. oh wait. and then a mere 2.5 weeks later i take BEC.

if you don't see me for a few weeks, you'll know why. and if you do see me, please make me go study...

a sunday miracle

remember when everyone had games on their calculators? it was super high tech to have tetris or poker or that drug mafia game on your TI-83. and when you were playing in class, it just looked like you were doing a complicated math problem and not playing a game. well, remember the game frogger? you had a little frog and you had to get him through several lanes of cars and trucks, safely to the other side. it was a classic.

today i played my own game of human frogger. and it was definitely unintentional. i was late late late to church. the local trains weren't running downtown (which i discovered after i was already down in the subway) and there were no cabs to be found so i schlepped it down to 65th for church. i was so close-i just had to cross columbus and i was safe! and not super late. so the light for the traffic was red. i didn't know how long it had been red for so i figured i had enough time to cross the 5 lanes of traffic and get to church on time. i leapt over a puddle and started my trek across the street. the light changed to green as soon as i had crossed one lane (ie i still had 4 lanes of NY traffic to cross).

you would think that the nice taxi drivers would stop and let me scamper across the street safely. not a chance. they all start driving and i'm standing in a sea of cars, trying to make it across the street in one piece. luckily, a few cars had pity on me and let me stop to cross the street. and luckily, i made it across still intact and made it to church mostly on time!

moral of the story: maybe it's a good idea to watch the lights a little closer to avoid any further human frogger experiences...

today i was supposed to study for the CPA (which i am taking in approximately 3 weeks). i still have 7.5 lessons to do, several hundred homework problems, and a handful of simulations. INSTEAD i went to brunch at elephant and castle, i shopped in soho (oh my, i love shopping in NYC), i caught up on The Hills and The City, and went to a spin class which was hands down the WORST spin class i have ever been to. oh how i miss todd's class.

the big news of the day though-i got a blackberry! i am super excited and i'm sure it does wonderful things. the only problem is i have absolutely no idea how to use the thing. anyone want to volunteer to give me blackberry lessons??