Thursday, April 15, 2010

make a circle in the sand, make a halo with your hands

I'm going to go to bed early again tonight; instead of overdosing on wine, I overdosed on chicken pot pie at Marie Callendar's. Yes, I'm geriatric.

I got up early today and made it down to the office in time to cram like mad for my exam. Other than my meeting from 8:30-9, and a quick lunch from 12:40 to 1, I studied the entire rest of the morning, watching a ton of webinars, taking eight pages of notes, rereading the notes I'd already taken yesterday, etc., etc., etc. The topic was Analytics + Website Optimizer + Conversion Optimizer -- all of which I find quite interesting, and I actually use Analytics for the romance novel blog, but unfortunately those products all launched after I stopped having any interaction with clients, and so I never really bothered to learn much about the stuff.

The exam itself is rather intense (it's proctored, and we have to take it via a special browser that locks out access to the rest of your computer during the exam). However, I managed to score an 85 (passing was 75), which was totally fine with me. Ironically, I tied with Gyre, who was sitting next to me; it would have been better if one of us beat the other one, but I'm claiming it as a partial victory because he still meets with clients all the time, and so theoretically should know more than someone who just sits around and writes emails and blogs all day.

After finishing the exam, I was pretty wiped out (and strangely euphoric), so Joy and I snuck out of the office to see a movie. We ended up watching "How to Train Your Dragon" -- my verdict is that I liked the animation, Craig Ferguson's voice was nice (as was Gerard Butler's), and while the storyline was mostly predictable (in fact, it exactly follows the story structure we analyzed in the class I took last weekend), it was still enjoyable enough. It wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, but it was a good way to get out of the office for a couple of hours.

I dropped Joy off at the office when the movie was over, and went back to my desk for awhile before meeting up with Heather (aka dear respected madam) for supper. We decided to go to Marie Callendar's, where we spent an hour and a half catching up over chicken pot pies. I took her home, then drove back to the city of sin, where I should have written for an hour; instead, I'm going to go to bed now and attempt to get up early so that I can write before work.

However, the commute will not continue for much longer -- I got the place that I was so excited about, and I'm meeting the rental agent tomorrow afternoon to sign the lease and give him my deposit. The place is totally adorable (see below for what it looks like with the current occupant's furniture), and I'm v. excited about the shorter commute. However, I'm not excited by the fact that I'm suddenly moving in about three weeks (targeting May 10), which means I'm going to have to pack at some point after I get back from Cancun and before I go to Adit's wedding + Europe. My only saving grace is that while I have a lot of stuff here, most of my stuff is already packed and sitting in storage, and so the amount that I have to do to move is a fraction of what I had to do at Vidya's. Granted, it's still going to be a lot of work, but it could be a lot worse.

Now, though, it's time for bed -- enjoy the pics of my new place below. Goodnight!

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