Coming Back to Haunt

Growing up my Mom always told me I would make a great teacher because I am so patient with little kids. (WHAT?!) I think this is because I coached volleyball, gave the neighborhood(loose interpretation) kids rides on my pony, and tutored a bit in my spare time. Unfortunately, those of you who REALLY know me (Sorry, Mom, wishful thinking) know that I can't stand children - especially those of people who clearly can't handle them - and only partook in the above activities because I like money and having people in the neighborhood like me. In fact, when a random minivan-load of kids would stop in the driveway with hopes of a ride on Sugar Babe (my pony, may she rest in peace), I often considered whether I would rather lead those precious little idiots around in the hot sun for an hour while they kicked and yelled at poor Shugie or gnaw off my own arm. It was really a toss-up.

This seems like a horrible confession, I realize, but it is needed to fully understand my mindset in the following tale.

It all began this summer when the Dwyer clan met for our yearly reunion in the Samford, CT/New York City area. I spent most of the time at my uncle's house, drink in hand, by the pool, looking out over the ocean as anyone would expect from me. One day, however, I ventured into the City with my uncle, aunt, other uncle, mom, dad, brother, and little cousin to go to the Natural History Museum. Even though the excursion was obviously more geared towards the interests of my ten-year-old cousin, David, it is common knowledge that I love all woodland creatures, so a trip to a gallery of long-dead safari furriness was well worth the 50 min drive into the city.

What I failed to consider, however, was that even I could not stare at wonders such as of a stuffed baby baboon or a delicately placed weasel among the savannah animals for more than 20 minutes or so. This left the whole rest of the day to wander around with the posse and little David.

Let me say before I continue, that I love my cousin. He is absolutely a boy genius and is one of the coolest little kids I know, but as I spend 0% of my life with people his age, I was absolutely ill-equipped for the excitement and question-bombardment that ensued that day.

I am ashamed to say that after a short time of seriously fielding all of his inquiries regarding the various forms of life present in each an every room of the African Animals exhibit, then the Lizards and Snakes displays, then the Dinosaurs, and so on an so on, I could no longer invest any more effort in the field trip. By the time we reached the Under the Sea exhibits, I was answering each "What is that?" or "But why?" with whatever bullshit my little heart desired. It was really quite fun. He was giggling and I was spewing off nonsense for the rest of our visit to the museum.

I had completely forgotten about this experience until two weeks ago.

I was again up in Stamford, CT visiting my uncle, and the smaller version of the Dwyer clan present that weekend was walking into the Kona Grill for a nice dinner. I thought my cousin was leading the way to the table when I realized that he had completely lost the waitress he was following and was almost stopped, wonderstruck, in front of a large aquarium. With some prodding from my aunt, he made it to the table but was still staring at the swimming wildlife when we began to seat ourselves. Finally, he looks at me and the rest of the family, points at the aquarium and says, "Hey look! Its a Giant Sea Squirrel!!"

Busted.

I realized by the look of excitement coming from David's face and the look of confusion coming from my uncle's face that my shenanigans in the museum were coming back to haunt me. Either I am the only marine biologist in the world that knows the true identity of a nurse shark, or I'm a horrible big cousin. Either way, I really wonder how many people David has since educated about Giant Sea Squirrels or the Air Beaver in the months since.

My bad.





Giant Sea Squirrel

Worthless.

Guinness has spent almost every minute of freedom today sitting in the corner of my room facing the wall. I say almost every minutes, because he did devote a few moments to knocking over my Diet Dr. Pepper and gnawing on my sandwich while I went to the kitchen to get a towel to clean up the spilled Diet Dr. Pepper, but that is pretty much par for the course. Anyway, the point is, he has finally dedicated himself to a normal cat activity. He is guarding my apartment from mice. Unfortunately for him, the mouse he is currently hunting is stuck in the wall. It has been there since at least 4 a.m. this morning when I unhappily awoke to the all-too-familiar desperate scratching sound coming from the corner of my bedroom closest too my face when I sleep. This is the second time this happy event has occurred in the last month.

Here are two things I have learned from the first Mouse-in-the-Wall experience. First, the mouse will never escape. No matter how much the little guy squirms, gnaws, and scratches at the insides of the exterior wall, it will not materialize in my room. Guinness is wasting his time. Not that he has ever partaken in an activity that I wouldn't characterize as a waste-of-time, but I am really concerned about his sanity here. Second, the mouse will die in two or three days. Usually i would be sad for the little whippersnapper, but it is SO ANNOYING. I can no longer sleep in my bedroom and have to spend all my time on the futon in the living room until the sucker dies.

Anyway, personal complaints aside, I must explain why this post is entitled "Worthless". This is the third mouse visit to my apartment. Even Mouse-in-the-Wall, Part I wasn't the first appearance. About five months ago, I returned from my internship in Charlotte to a small household of three mice living under my stove. Because I didn't have much food in the house immediately upon my return, I didn't even notice their presence until a few days into my stay at my apartment. The more disturbing part is that Guinness didn't notice either. His nose is six inches above the level of their happy little home and he didn't notice a thing. He spends at least an hour laying in the kitchen every day and STILL nothing. So of course, when I did realize that bread didn't eat itself I took care of the problem myself.

A few days after identifying the problem, exterminators arrived and placed trays of sticky material under the stove to catch any mouse stragglers, and pushed said trays all the way back towards the kitchen wall in the least accessible areas. And THIS is when my useless ball of black puff decided to involve himself. I entered my kitchen one afternoon after hearing a weird clunking noise to find Guinn hobbling around the stove area stuck to the sticky mouse-trapping device, apparently pleased with his capture...of himself.

What a waste of cat life! He doesn't do a thing when actual mice are loose in my kitchen but he traps himself by aggressively hunting plastic trays. Now, he has devoted his entire day to taking Mouse-in-the-Wall, Part II into his own hands. Worthless.

The World According to...Who Knows

So today in Advanced Auditing we discussed inventory management and the audit procedures undertaken to test the assertions and accounts pertaining to inventory. Of course, most of the examples referred to observing and testing the inventory of "widgets." Samples of purple widgets, a selection of blue widgets, various obsolete yellow widgets. It was all pretty mundane.

After a little while though, maybe because I happened to be staring at that part of projector screen for too long or just because accounting classes take me to such a special place of insanity, I started contemplating the widget and its completely undeserved significance in my life.

Since the dawn of time, or day one of Econ 101(pretty much the same), all I have heard about is this magical little thing called a "widget." They are omnipotent. A widget is a commodity, a luxury item, an inferior good; They are traded in perfectly competitive markets, controlled by monopolies and oligopolies, are price elastic and inelastic. They are produced utilizing economies of scale, traded in every currency, hedged using all types of derivative instruments. Every nation, tribe, village, merchant, and vendor has at one time had a comparative advantage in producing, growing, manufacturing, and selling widgets. Apparently widgets are also stored in warehouses, arranged in their various colors and sizes, and must be audited by CPAs. To someone who didn't understand the strictly anecdotal nature of the classic widget example, it would seem that the little guy was the leading export and import of every country in the world.

I understand story problems and examples must exist for teaching purposes but WHY THE WIDGET?!? Is it too much to ask for textbook authors to replace "widget" with "car" or "apple"? For all we have learned about them, it would seem that a shock in widget prices would decimate the global economy. Unfortunately no one really knows WHAT a widget even IS.

There really is only one way to solve the great mystery of the widget: Google Image Search.

A Widget:



Or maybe this?



How about...




This?




OR...





So...as usual, Google Image searches provide an incredible amount of clarity. Apparently a Widget is either a one-inch white ball, a stop watch, a strange purple man, AFRICA?, or THE SUN?!?!?! Gee thanks, internet world. Good to know that we can all time our widget-throwing skills with a widget while hunting safari widgets on the continent of widget by the ultraviolet light of the great widget. Stellar.

SHARK WEEK

It's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

SHARKS.

Ramblings

It is has bee a while since I have touched this blog, mainly because my CPA exam studying is over and I have actually regained some measure of fun in my life. Thus, procrastination in the form of venting has subsided. However, I wouldn't want both of my readers to think I forgot about them, so here are a few insights into the ridiculous life of Alison Dwyer to share with the internet world.

Let the countdown begin!


FIVE Random Thoughts:

- Why does the word "LISP" have an "S" in it? That is just cruel. By the time anyone with a lisp is done saying the word, we already know you have a lisp. Whoever came up with this term needs to go back to the drawing board, or Gary, Indiana.

- I always wonder what people are thinking when I see a purple or pink house. It should be a universal rule that you never paint your house your favorite color. Houses should be earthy tones like tan, sandstone, or brown. And if your favorite color is brown, then you need to reevaluate your tastes and preferences, and possibly your life.

- The saying that situations are only as awkward as you make them to be is crap. Some things are just awkward.

- For some reason salad bars always include some sort of pudding. Pudding is not salad, nor is anywhere near acceptable as the only dessert option.

- I've never understood someone waiting for six rings and then leaving messages just to say they called. 2010. Caller id. Mom.



FOUR Random Talents I Possess that Will NEVER Actually Help Me Achieve Success in the Real World:

- I can find a four leaf clover at will pretty much whenever I want. I have even found multiple five, six, seven, and eight leaf clovers in my day. I used to ride my pony around as a child, look down, hop off, pick the shamrock I found and continue on my way. I even found two four-leaf clovers today. This isn't normal, right?

- I can write a rhyming poem about anything in less than a minute. I once performed my "Ode to a Gopher" at a slam poetry performance in High School. I had written it earlier that day as joke for my friend. Please see Accounting Poems below...written in about five. This talent is so not useful. Well, unless I want to be a rapper. So...so not useful.

- I can solve Wheel of Fortune puzzles ridiculously quickly. I even solved one once without any letters on the board. There were witnesses.

- I can do the splits. But only to the left. Then again, anyone who attended a college party with me already knows this. I apologize to those people.


Three Phrases I LOVE:

- "Just Saying.": This serves as a qualifier for anything and justifies your inclusion of anything into a conversation. I wish Obama wasn't president, just saying.

- "Let's think about what’s really important here…": This is always followed by some really egocentrical concept that has neither anything to do with what your conversation counterpart was talking about nor any significance in their life whatsoever. It is usually either my birthday or Guinness's happiness. And let's be honest...that is really what is important here.

- "I get that a lot.": After any compliment. I'm sure this never gets old.


TWO Phrases I Would Rather Not Hear Again:

- "I'm Not Gonna Lie.": Oh, Goody! I thought you were going to lie. Thank god you are not.

- "But, If you think about it...": A preceding qualifier that's as pointless as it is condescending. Dude, I have a brain. I DID think about it. I just don't agree with you.


ONE Important Tool Everyone Should be Aware of:

- THE REJECTION HOTLINE: Find your state’s given number. Memorize it - Nothing hints that the number you are giving a creeper is not yours like looking it up on your own phone. Oh, and pray they don’t call you on the spot hoping to trade digits.

The website is as a follows: http://www.humorhotlines.com/hh-numbers.asp

And, here is a sample of the epic letdown: "The person who gave you this number did not want you to have their real number. Maybe you suffer from bad breath, body odor or even both. Maybe you just give off that creepy, overbearing, psycho-stalker vibe. Maybe the idea of going out with you just seems as appealing as playing leapfrog with unicorns."

Keep in mind, readers, this is meant for those creepers who either have a stellar sense of humor or just really deserve it. You know who you are.

Why Meow Mix Exists and Cats are Inferior to Humans

Disclaimer: I realize by posting this blog entry I am adding to the concerns many of my friends and acquaintances already hold regarding my ridiculous love for my cat and the pathetic little household we share here in Winston-Salem, but this story is worth sharing.

As a background, I grew up in a house where my pets were treated exactly as they should have been: as animals - and far below humans in the caste system. My dog never got table scraps; in fact, with one look from my mom, she never even had the nerve to get close enough to the table to figure out what human food even smelled like. Feeding my horse a hot dog bun was pretty much like teetering on the brink of my getting a tramp stamp in my mom's eyes.

So, because of my clearly over-structured childhood, it never occurred to me that pets could be regarded any differently until one day I was pulling slices of wheat bread from a bag to make a sandwich when I looked down to see those all-too-familiar yellow eyes staring up at me. I'm not sure whether I cracked under the pressure of his insane baby panther cuteness or because I thought one taste of the cardboard-like 45 calorie whole wheat would solve the begging problem forever, but I shared. Whatever my reasoning, that one small crumb of bread changed my and Guinness's lives forever:

I now no longer make any food alone. In fact, I can't even enter my kitchen alone anymore. If I open my dishwasher, he climbs in. Another fun fact: Guinness fits on the bottom shelf of my fridge. He climbs pantry shelves, scales the refrigerator; all while purring madly in the shear bliss created by the possibility that a crumb may materialize.

After a few weeks of this, I realized that by being Guinness's sole source of human food, I was infinitely powerful. So I decided to use my leverage to make make Guinness do tricks. Obviously, striving for awesomeness runs in our family, so why wouldn't my cat want to be better than all of his feline counterparts and cross over into the realm of trick-performing usually inhabited by dogs only. Thus, I set out to use breadcrumbs to teach Guinn to sit. Five minutes and a few Pavlov conditioning techniques later, Guinness knew the word "sit" and to do so even in silence if I pointed at his butt. What a genius.

This new useful application of his psychotic love of little morsels of my meals must have blinded me from my previous annoyance at his constant hyperactive presence in my kitchen and the always-present risk of death by tripping over his black furry body with its impeccable ability to blend into my black kitchen rug, because today his little yellow eyes struck again. While cutting up a chicken breast on the coffee table in front of my TV, I looked down to see a little black paw on the glass surface of the table and his cute wishful expression moving rapidly from my face to the chicken and back again. I caved. What harm could a one centimeter by 3 millimeter piece of chicken really cause, anyway?

OH, WOW.

He loved it. Understatement. He was absolutely cracked out by the chicken. He began purring madly and literally hopping around the coffee table. I spent most of my meal holding him back with one arm as he meowed and pawed and purred and frolicked. Then I remembered I hadn't tested his sitting skills recently. A few chicken pieces and successful sits later, he was going nuts. I had to move to the corner of the kitchen and eat the rest of my meal cowering in the corner while he continued his happy hopping and purring.

I thought the craziness would never end until, upon realizing I could no longer hear his scampering or the sound of his motor-like purr, I looked over and saw the thanksgiving turkey effect had set in. Guinn was completely passed out; sound asleep with his face covered by a DVD case he had knocked down onto himself.

WHAT??? This cat is SO not normal. Anyone want to put money on him learning to roll-over for a potato chip?



Oh yea, he has a Biker Jacket. Straight Baller.

blah blah blah...taxes....general ledger...blah...tort feasor...blah...wait, TORT FEASOR?!?!

I am currently studying to become an accountant. By the end of 2010 I will have a Master's in Science in Accountancy. I start a job at an accounting firm in Charlotte in January where I hope to keep my post for at least a few years. Unfortunately, I hate accounting.

As you can imagine, such hatred makes accounting school slightly unexciting. Luckily, every so often a cool new term pops up in the curriculum that sends me into imaginative spirals of short-lived amusement. It's too bad that none of the words actually mean what they sound like. Below I have provided two such examples, their disappointing definitions, and, more importantly, what I think they should mean.

TORT FEASOR

Actually Means: Someone who commits a civil wrong (Thanks, Business Law).

What It Sounds Like It Should Mean: Someone who uses complicated geometric logistics to fit a very large fruit-filled pastry through a very small doorway.

When Google Image Searched:







Hmm...so, in case we needed more clarity on what a tort feasor really is, our friends at the Google image search have narrowed it down to: someone's grandparents at a war re-enactment site, a pregnancy test, or a doggy behind a fence. That really clears it up! Thanks, Google!


TIPPY PASSER:

Actually Means: A stupid mnemonic* device used by the Becker CPA Exam prep lecturers to help remember the general, fieldwork, and reporting standards for attestation services (the details of which would put anyone to sleep, except hopefully me during the CPA exam section I am taking two days from now).

What It Sounds Like It Should Mean: 1. A quarterback sitting Indian-style on one of those flying-saucer sleds; 2. One whom communicates from one party to the next really small and insignificant pieces of advice; 3. A teenager walking stealthily on their toes past their sleeping father in a recliner circa 2 a.m. on a school night.

When Google Image Searched:








WHAT?!?!?!

And here we all thought nothing about accounting was funny...



*Fun fact: I Googled "mnemonic device" because I couldn't REMEMBER how to spell it. A mnemonic device is designed to make memory of large lists or ordered items simpler, yet the word itself is both overly complex and impossible to recreate from memory. WHY!?!?