My Weekend Has Not Been Relaxing, or, I <\3 Financial Statements...

It's been a busy weekend.  My paternal grandmother's birthday was Thursday, so Ozzmodious and I and my younger brother drove down to my uncle's house, where he hosted the full force of the local clan - my grandparents, himself and his live-in girlfriend, my father and his girlfriend, my brother, and Ozz and I - for an evening.  I get kitchen envy every time I go over there.  I don't cook for shit, but I might be motivated to learn if I had a place like that!  A 6-burner gas stove with built-in grill and griddle areas, ginormo oven, huge center island with a built-in wine rack, big damn fridge, so much cupboard space I could cry.  All brushed nickel with black marble countertops and rich wood cabinets.  Beautiful. 

It's been strange, seeing the house getting slowly redecorated with himself and his girlfriend living there now.  His wife, my aunt-by-marriage, died almost two years ago.  And I know that's plenty of time, and I'm certainly glad his girlfriend makes him happy, and I don't begrudge them that.  It's just...after her death, I was living in Tennessee still, and in fact I had never been to the house between when it was them there, and now, when it's him and his girlfriend.  So to me, it's gone straight from one to the other, and it's still taking some getting used to.

But aside from that, the evening was great.  Ozz gets along really well with my family; there was lots of excellent food, and conversations that got so loud and vibrant that by the time we left, I had nearly lost my voice from laughing and shouting and all that.  In my family, s/he who talks loudest gets heard, and that's the only rule, so the volume can get pretty overwhelming if you're not used to it. 

Then this morning, I went over to my mom's early to have breakfast and help her clean up, since her sister is coming into town this week.  As usual, I ended up spending like five hours over there, when the cleaning itself only took one at most, and the same for breakfast.  I genuinely don't know where the time goes...after that, it was home and terrible fast-food for lunch with Ozz, and...homework.  Two mini-papers to write for Soc, in response to some videos we watched in-class on Wednesday last, and then two problem sets for Accounting.  Given an adjusted trial balance, we had to create the set of financial statements: income statement, statement of owner's equity, and balance sheet, in that order.  Then from that, we had to calculate various ratios, like return on assets and profit ratio and debt ratio and shit.  Argleblargh.  I'm doing *really* well in that class - over 100%, thanks to some judicious extra credit work - but it doesn't mean I find it easy or fun.  I am at least coming to regard it as a challenge, and to feel a sense of grim satisfaction when I get things right, but I doubt it will ever be a subject that is dear to me. Oh well.  That wasn't what I took it for; I took it to prove to myself that accounting was not some horrible foreign realm of terror, and that I *am* actually capable of learning and doing it, and I that much I am able to say now.  So far, anyway.

I think I've gone from "weekend summary" to "pointless off-the-path ramblings" now, so I'll close it down and go take a shower.  Hopefully not such a long one that the landlord upstairs turns off the hot water again...heh.

Fucking Blogger...

And when I say "blogger" here, I mean Blogger, the service.  Because it's being a royal pain in the ass while I'm trying to install my Analytics tracker code.  For the love of fuck, Blogger, you and Analytics are both children of the almighty Google.  Why can't you play nice?  Or failing that, why do you have to take your sibling rivalries out on MY goddamn blog?

Short version: while I directly inserted the tracker code into the "edit HTML" bit of the layout editor on Witch.Words and it works fine, when I tried to do so for Jade Haven, the text editor kept inexplicably replacing all "'s with &quot;'s, which of course fucked up the tracker code and stopped it functioning.  I tried a couple different placements, couldn't get it to work, finally said fine, fuck you too, and added a widget with it at the bottom of the page.  Whatever.  Analytics now sees this blog, and can start aggregating data, and that's all I really wanted, just...urgh. 

Yes, I'm totally the kind of narcissist who tracks hits to her personal blog.  Shut up.

So. Blogging.

I've written 4 posts over on Witch.Words tonight.  Two published immediately - well, one by accident, I was going to schedule it for tomorrow night but forgot and just hit "publish" instead - and two scheduled for tomorrow morning.  I feel so productive!  I'm all caught up from the week of midterms, and it feels fantastic.

Why is it blogging does this for me?  I'm not sure.  I learn so much with every post, because I try to be really conscientious about including citations and links and stuff, which means I often do a lot more research than I originally thought a topic would require.  For instance, tonight I learned that CPAC stands for Conservative Political Action Conference, because I needed to know if I should write about "CPAC" or "the CPAC conference".  I know my writing has gotten better over time, too. 

I think, though, that concrete benefits like better writing and more knowledge aside - as valuable as they are - what I love so much is that I feel useful.  This may sound presumptuous, but I truly believe my life's purpose is somewhere to be found in activism.  I am supposed to be working to make the world a better place in this particular way.  I don't know if blogging is where I will stay or where my greatest impact will be made, but for right now, it's a step in the right direction.  And who doesn't feel good when they're exercising what they feel to be their soul's purpose for this incarnation?

Insert Wittiness Here

So. I am supposed to give the world an introductory post wherein I display my witticisms and skill with prose, to hook readers into coming back again and again.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

This is my atopical home space. My haven. I have my other blog, Witch.Words, wherein I do my social-justice blogging; here is just for me. I don't really feel like reviving my old LJ, but I'm feeling the desire for another similar space to be just a personal blog, a dumping ground, because you know? There's more to my life than the politics.

If Witch.Words is my living room, for gatherings and political talk, then Jade Haven is my bedroom, where I can flop on my bed and just natter on about whatever. If that sounds interesting to you, come on in. Let's have a sleepover. ;-)