Summer update

I've had a bunch of vacation these past few weeks, so it has been really nice to get out and see the world a bit. We went home for my sister's graduation, then drove to Portland for our third wedding anniversary. About a week and a half later, we went back to the west side for our friends' housewarming celebration and my 10-year high school reunion, which was fascinating because only 25 people showed up out of about 300. During the Fourth of July weekend, we traveled up to Brewster to see J's grandpa and parents, then returned to town so we could hang out with some friends on the Columbia River and watch the fireworks. This was my first work-free Fourth of July since college graduation, so it was great to be out of the newsroom for the holiday.

I have a three-day work week, then two more days off. After that, we don't have vacation for a while, but it's OK. It will be good to get back into the office and return to my routine. I have some summer features to write, and work is beginning on the high school fall sports season, which means football, football, football.

We do have a couple more west-side weekend trips planned. We're going to see Sade in Seattle — I impulsively bought tickets and don't think we'll be disappointed. I kind of love the band, and J knows all the words to "Smooth Operator." Then the next month, we'll help my sister move into her dorm at Seattle U.

October will be an enjoyable month. We'll go to Boulder to see WSU's first Pac-12 football game against Colorado. We have a Chromeo concert in Seattle, then I'm heading back to our old town to visit my best bud, who graciously got us Foo Fighters tickets. I've seen them once before, as the opening act for the Police at Dodger Stadium. After their set, I turned to J and said, "How are the Police going to top that?"

This fall, I plan to be more busy outside work. I'll be taking a tax class through H&R Block, and hopefully I'll be a WSU student again. It depends on whether I can get resident tuition. There are two specific accounting classes I want to take, and I hope to complete them by May. I've been out of school for more than a year, and the thought of taking these classes has been nagging at me for a while. I'd like to get something going on the side so I'm not so worried about the future of our industry. I wish I were supercreative like a lot of my friends who do graphic design or web work. The only skill I could possibly sell right now is editing, and I'm not very confident that would generate any money.

Maybe someday in the not-so-distant future, I'll be a bookkeeper/tax extraordinaire.

Summer plans

I started my accounting courses in June, so I have been in school for about a year. The community college doesn't offer the accounting classes I need during the summer, so I must wait until fall semester. Balancing class with a full-time job, a husband and chores has been difficult, so I'm eager for some time to decompress, though the idea of knocking out two economics classes in six weeks this summer is kind of appealing. Unfortunately, they meet Monday-Thursday for a total of four hours a day. My weekends are Monday-Tuesday, so eight hours of my weekend would be taken up by class, not to mention the studying I would have to do. And I would have to cram, just because the classes move so fast. I was constantly scrambling to finish my daily accounting homework last summer, and it nearly killed me. This summer won't be like last at work, either. We've lost more people since then, so we'll be running with a skeleton staff most of the summer, methinks. I'll need to relax, somehow, someway.

I'd like to go to concerts, maybe take in a baseball game. Summer in Northern California (the inland part, anyway) is sweltering and disgusting at times, but there's really nothing better than a warm night spent outdoors. You get a nice breeze, and ah - heaven! We're taking tennis lessons at night, so we won't die of heatstroke while practicing groundstrokes.

Luckily, tennis lessons fall under my plan to keep learning during the summer. I want to do some self-directed work with Photoshop and HTML, so I might pick up some training books or DVDs. And I've gotten Quickbooks for the Mac, so I'll brush up on my accounting over the summer and not feel too rusty when class starts again in August. My fall class will be at 7:20 a.m. twice a week - I'm hoping that doesn't kill me, either.