I did my taxes today. It literally took me 15 minutes. My hefty little tax return should be directly deposited into my checking account in a matter of days.
Being young, single, and broke sure does have it’s advantages sometimes.
Archive for January, 2008
Oddly enough, the same day that I found out that work was going to pay for my school, I was sharing this wonderful news with this guy who works with me and in mid conversation he casually says, “EHhhh, I’m having chest pains”.
Just to A little background on this guy, he’s an older gentleman, a couple years from retirement, overweight, diabetic, and has had a heart attack within the last five years. So when he says he’s having chest pains, it’s kind of a big deal. So immediately my boss and I persuaded him to go see doctor right away.
Sure enough, an hour or two later we get a call from him saying his doctor checked him into the hospital for a couple of days because they need to run some tests*.
Then later that day my step-mom calls me and tells me my little brother, Gates, broke his hip playing baseball. Without going into all the detail; but because he had such a huge growth spurt this year he essentially grew so much that his bones hadn’t caught up.
Poor kid, he’s such a giant.
*UPDATE: The guy at work didn’t have another heart attack and should be returning to work soon.
About a week ago I found out that I wasn’t eligible to receive a government subsidized student loan for my first semester of graduate school. Apparently the rule is you have to be enrolled at least part-time, two classes a semester, to qualify. Since I decided to ease myself into going back to school and only take one class, I was pretty much left with $1,200 on my credit card that I didn’t plan on. So much for that zero balance.
However much to my surprise, the company I work for suddenly showed up out of no where and saved the day. According to the lady in HR, Ingram has just started their “continuing education” program for graduate degrees in November. They hadn’t even gotten the forms printed yet. So I filled out the old form, which she made the necessary corrections on with a pen, attached my receipts, had my grandboss sign, and gave it back to her. As soon as it gets signed by the HR manager, I should have a check reimbursing me for my tuition and $125 of the $154 I paid for my book.
While this is a super sweet deal, the only catch is that I’ve got to maintain at least a C in all my classes, which shouldn’t be a big deal. Also, the program only covers $2,750 annually. Which this basically breaks down to them covering two of my classes each year and all my books.
My friend Devin, a lean 6′ 4″ guy who sells mortgages to farmers, sent me a link to this website with the subject, “I Could Take 30 Five Year Olds In A Fight”.
Naturally I had to know what this was all about.
After I finished filling out the questionnaire, and laughing myself silly, I was disappointed to learn that I could only take 20, Five Year Olds in a fight.
Later my friend, a 5′ 4″ skinny blond girl, told me she could take 32 Five Year Olds in a fight. I joked with her that the high amount was probably based on her ability to kick high and low morals.
If you missed this story, let me take a second to recap. Apparently people have a hard time with the name, “Blake”. Sometimes when I introduce myself people hear my name, misconstrue it, and then regurgitate some other random other name in place of mine. Here’s a short list of names I’ve gotten over the years:
- Jeff
- Lee
- Butch
- Greg
- Clay
- Blaine
- Brian
By now you would think that I would be used to this, and up until today I would have said that I was. However when a lady responded to an email greeting me as ”Robert”, I have to admit I was seriously thrown for a loop. One, my name was very clearly visible all throughout the original email that she responded to and two, I’ve emailed her several times in the past couple of weeks to get information.
I guess I should start caring that people butcher my name.
Yesterday I ran a report at work for something that has to be sent to the State of Indiana. After I ran the report I checked it against the report that was ran last year to make sure that passed the “sniff test”, or in other words, does it make sense that roughly $17,000 were paid out to claimants in the State of Indiana last year (in case you’re wondering, yes that does make sense). The other thing that I happened to notice on my comparison was the dates of when these reports were ran. The date on the report from yesterday was January 10, 2008 at 1:34 PM and last year’s report was January 9, 2007 at 1:02 PM.
While I’m not saying that it’s kind of weird that I almost ran these reports exactly one year apart, but I kind of am.
Right now I have one pair of clean underwear to wear tomorrow.
It’s irrelevant that I may have somehow subconsciously worked that out, or that perhaps it’s just some odd coincidence, but the fact still remains that I don’t have to do laundry tonight during the national championship game.
Go me!
Since I’ve decided to run the Country Music Half-Marathon again this year, I’ve slowly been trying to get back into my running routine. What I’ve discovered is that mentally I still believe that I can go out there and just run four miles with no problem. However physically this is simply not the case. To be honest I’ve been kind of struggling.
Oh well, no worries. I know the secret to running is just to do it everyday. While it sucks for the first week or two, after that you literally get addicted to it and it just sucks not to do it.
I can’t wait until I’m addicted again!
In the one month and one day since my last post, the following has happened (in paragraph separated points):
I took the GMAT, which is the test that’s required to get into business grad school. I only needed to score 320 on it, but I actually scored a 502. I was then accepted into the graduate program at MTSU. However, instead of the open arms and much praise that I was expecting from them, I received a letter from MTSU that went something to the extent of, “Hey remember that one class you made a D in. Yeah, you’re going to have to retake that”*.
Next, since the lease at my current apartment was about to expire and I decided not to renew it, I was given the opportunity to move in with this beautiful girl I work with. She wasn’t going to charge much for rent and we were going to split the utilities. Aside from the blatantly obvious pluses of this living situation, the potential to carpool to work everyday pretty much sealed the deal for me. However, the only stipulation to this was no pets. Since Heather is eventually going to have custody of Mallory anyway, I figured we could work something out. Sadly, Heather wasn’t in a position to take Mallory and I was not able to move in with the beautiful girl I work with. What can I say, I love my cat too, and I’m not about to let something bad happen to her.
Obviously, since I was about to be homeless the hunt for a new apartment was on. A week or so of looking and I decided on this place. Then of course it was followed by the hassle of lots packing, actually moving, and eventually unpacking. Now I’m fairly settled and am getting pretty used to the place. So far the pluses of living here are that I’m 10 miles closer to work, my friend Brandon and his wife literally live across the street, Starbucks is still only a mile away, the public library is half a mile away, and rent is much cheaper. The negatives are that I don’t have a washer and dryer, my heater is loud, and the previous tenants were apparently smokers and I haven’t gotten rid of the smell yet.
Then since I actually found a place to live that wasn’t going to be so expensive I decided that perhaps it was time to get a new car. I’ve been driving the purple sunfire now for over a year and FYI; it would be an understatement to say that I wished I had a manlier ride every moment of every day. Finally after much looking I decided to get a black 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Sport 4×4. Oddly enough, I’ve found that now that I have a much cooler ride, I don’t mind driving the purple car too and from work. Its gets awesome gas mileage, so why get rid of it?
I celebrated Christmas.
I’ve hung out with my friends a lot. Much drinking, a little bit of dancing, and a whole lot of good times have ensued. Surprisingly only one terrible headache and one bloody finger have been the direct result of these shenanigans.
I rung in the year and had a much better time than I probably should have. Now I’m obviously optimistic of what the new year will bring. Updating my website more than once a month is resolution number one.
I’ve decided to run the Country Music Half-Marathon again this year, even though I said I’d never run it again. However, I’m practically already at the weight I was at when I ran it two years ago (205) and when I get back up to running six miles a day, I figure it won’t take long for me to get pretty lean. So ultimately I think I’m rock it this year.
The idea of growing a beard for “No Shave November” has stretched over through ”Don’t Shave December” and on to “JanuHarry” and definitely will go on past “FebruHarry” up until Easter. I just don’t have a funny name for March yet. Please let me know if you come up with something.
That’s it! That’s the big highlights of what’s been going on.
*Note: This will be the third time that I’ve actually taken this class. The first time I was failing so I dropped it. The second time, I actually prayed hard for that D.
