Whew!

I just finished some compliance work for a mid size company on Friday at 12:00. This company is a September 30 year end company, so with a six month extension, their taxes are due tomorrow, June 16. Additionally, we had to prepare their previous year's return before completing their current year return, all before the 13th! It was sure a mad dash to get the tax returns completed on time. Who knows if we completed the return on budget?! I guess that is why I was elected to work on this project--billing only half of the rate of an associate. Last year, I was called a bargain--hopefully I can maintain this status! I spent the last 3 weeks working nonstop on this project.

I came across multiple hurdles with the tax preparation software--I became a regular on their customer support hotline. I had supposed that everything would be completed on Thursday night so that we could kick the return out the door to the client on Friday. Boy, I misread the writing on the walls! I should have know that the software was going to lock me out! I figured out that I could log in from home, so I left the office at 8:00 pm to go home. I tried about every hour to log onto the software, but I was still locked out. My coworker, Imelda, also tried to log in before she left work (she was working on some Q2 work).

I decided that I aught to get up before Sean had to make copies of the completed return, which happened to be a 6:30 am on Friday. I woke up at 5:30 am to see if I could get into the software to get the return printed. The 13th happened to be pretty luckily for me that morning--I logged into the software, caught a minor error in the return, printed the document to pdf and emailed it Sean by 6:45 am. I went back to bed for a half hour then went to the office. The day turned out to be just fine with both returns being sent to the client by 12:00. I decided it was a great day to clock off early...

Work and Boston

On Monday, I started working full time in Palo Alto. I am glad to be back at work, but it is tiresome to be working again! We have been in training sessions for the past two and half days so the week has crawled by. I am glad that there is a three day weekend coming up!

Last week, I was in Boston with my brother and his wife. I started off in NYC at JFK airport and took a bus, train, and a car to get to my brother's apartment. We were in Connecticut for a day and a half before we headed out to Boston. We made the trek up to Boston and stayed at the Courtyard on Tremont St. Pretty nice hotel in the theater district. We saw Sheer Madness, took a DUKW tour of Boston, walked down Newbury Street, walked parts of the freedom trail, walked across Government Center more times than necessary,

walked through the North End,

(water fountain in the Paul Revere Mall)

(cool street with cobble stone and nice little plaza)
walked around Beacon Hill,

(Why bother with going to England if you can find it in Boston?)

saw Paul Revere's house,

and walked around various parks.
(a nice apartment building that over looks the park. Future home?)

(at the Public Garden standing on the world's smallest suspension bridge)

($17 billion federally funded tunnel)

(this picture was taken through an iron fence. Go Celtics!).

OKC

Last weekend I spent some time with Bart and Shantyl in Oklahoma City. Not the first place normal people would go on vacation, but I thought the city wasn't half bad.

Last Thursday, May 1, my flight from SLC to Denver was delayed because of the snow storm. Snow storm?! We finally landed in Denver, but no one could really tell that we landed. The ground in Denver was completely covered with snow. I thought that winter had ended back in April. I missed my connection to OKC, which was no surprise to me. I had a couple of books and a newspaper to read, food to eat, and no bothersome school emails. I got on a flight that made my layover only fours hours instead of six hours. That night, there was a hail storm that dropped hail the size of baseballs.

Friday and Saturday I went with Bart to spray houses and search for termites. I don't think that there is any way I could do that for a career. Besides walking through some really nice homes in Edmond, there wasn't a whole lot to be excited about. I am glad that I am going to school...

We had the chance to go to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, which is a great reason to go to OKC. The field adjacent to the reflection pond had chairs for each person that was killed in the blast. I didn't have my camera to capture the memorial at night time but I found a picture of the memorial during the day. Quite an unique memorial to see during the day or the night. Each chair is lit by a light at night and the chairs are assembled in rows, representing each floor where the victims were found.