November 20, 2005 10:51 AM Sunday, Jacksonville, Florida

 

{{Happy Birthday, Darling}}

It is DH’s 23rd birthday again :-)  He was 23 once--that was twenty one years ago. Now, look what I got him for his birthday?! Well, I'll take that back because DH is making an effort to dispute that line!  I supposed I'd say, look what I got him for me on his birthday?! he he he.  It's the new iPod Video, 60 GB. The newest generation of iPod from Apple Macintosh. ~Wow~ this tiny thingy aside from its main features of playing MP3 music, pod casts, photos, music videos, home videos and TV shows, it also works exactly like a portable external USB hard drive. How neat! And it's plug and play which means you can just drag and drop files and folders to the iPod or back to the PC again without installing any software. I have downloaded the whole contents of our homepage straight from our host-server for back-up purposes and all other files from both Mac and PC to this tiny-little thingy and it still has more room for more songs, photos and videos. Now, I’ll have to figure out how to rip my personal audio books on CD’s so that I can listen to it continuously anytime, anywhere.
 

On Christmas Wish List

Now here comes my Christmas wish list. I won't go overboard with my wish list this time as we are seriously trying to save up for the future. Who knows I get preggo one of these days ;-)

Griffin iTrip LCD FM Transmitter for iPod
Play your music through any FM radio in your car,
at a party, wherever the mood strikes you.

 

 

Apple iPod Universal Dock
Charge and sync iPod with your computer or for connecting
your iPod to your home audio system or TV.

 

 

 

 

Apple Remote
Control your iPod from afar. Play, pause, control volume
and skip forward and back between songs from across
the room with the Apple Remote.
 

 

Apple iPod Camera Connector
Transfer images from your digital camera
to your iPod.

 

 

On IRS Tax Training and Certification!

Four months ago, I responded to the call from AARP through the City Government about their Real Sense Prosperity Campaign to become one of IRS volunteer tax preparers: Make a difference in someone’s life by helping our community’s most vulnerable citizen's lift themselves out of poverty.

Yesterday, I received the material from IRS through the mail for me to use as a reference of study and instruction on how to become a certified IRS tax preparer.

I will have to take a 40-hour class, pass the test and work on problems on TaxWise to get certified on both tax laws and TaxWise. Then I am still required to attend a 4-hour 2005 tax law update class in January next year. This will make me real busy for the coming months then.  I am glad I took US Taxation class here a little over three years ago and I tell you, US Taxation laws are way too complicated compared to the Philippine Taxation laws. Honestly, I nearly failed the midterm exam of my US Taxation class and barely got a passing score in the finals whereas in the Philippines, I aced the midterm and final exams in my Philippines Taxation class garnering the highest score of 98 and 99 respectively. I supposed I can crunch numbers easier and a lot better than words ;-)

Anyhow, the easiest way to do the tax returns here in the States is to buy one of these income tax returns software like TurboTax or TaxCut or better yet, go to H&R Block and pay unreasonably ridiculous fee.  Imagine, we used to pay $100+ to H&R Block for them to do our tax returns every year until I learned to do it on my own.  I teased DH one time that I should start charging him the same amount for doing our own tax returns.  His reply? He says, if that is the case, I should in turn start charging you for the honey do list you give me every so often. Maldito!

 
Anyway, since the training is going to be in a fast paced session, I armed myself by getting this Olympus Digital Voice Recorder so I can record the class discussion. This piece of technology is equipped with 64MB of internal memory for up to 27 hours of recording time so I should be ok. This would allow me to replay the class discussions over and over again if I need to.  This thing does work very well.  I recorded my phone conversations with Marie and Ger on a separate occasions and I get a kick out of it listening to my tagalog and cebuano spills.  I really thought I had a real good tagalog accent but it turned out that my tagalog intonation sounded like Ilonggo drawl with a little spill of bisaya tone. Funny!

Nonetheless, you may ask why am I volunteering to do this for free where I can actually make money out of it? 

First and foremost, I am doing this voluntarily to fulfill one of my new year's resolution beginning of this year:  Get more involved in the community service to make a difference in someone's life other than my own family.

Secondly, I must admit this probably would be a good head start or stepping stone for me to get a real job in IRS someday. I dream to work for Federal Government--United States Department of Treasury-Internal Revenue Service in the near future if given the opportunity.  I crossed my fingers for this!

Chicago, here I come!

My flight to Chicago on December 29, 2005 returning January 3, 2006 has been confirmed! I now have a roundtrip ticket in my hand! Yaay! I couldn’t wait! I am excited to meet Geri whom I regard as one very artistically and intellectually gifted individual of the bunch and the rest of her squad. Yet I am dreading the sub-zero weather come winter much more the snowstorm. On the other hand, I am thinking it should be fun getting a first hand experience on how it feels like to catch a snowfall and hopefully build a snowman—that is if I ever endure a minute of outdoor icy weather. You see, Florida doesn’t normally get a snow. The last time there have been reports of snow flurries across east central Florida was in 1989. The coldest temperature ever recorded since I arrived here in Jacksonville was 30F/-1C usually towards the end of December to February. But more recently as early as November, we dipped down to 38 degrees F or 3 degrees Celsius and that was already downright freezing to me. How much more if it is below 0? Do you think I can live with it? Well, let’s see if I would be able to stay up north for 6 days otherwise I will have to make changes to my flight back to Jacksonville earlier than New Year’s Day ;-) I am too chicken to stay in an arctic place :-P

 

 

November 11, 2005 9:51 AM Friday, Jacksonville, Florida

 

TGIF!

Whew! I am so glad I am off today! You know I have been working overtime ‘till 8:45pm every night in the last two weeks due to heavy work load in the office. After 5 o’clock is the only time we don’t get any interruption as our phones during the day are off the hook! It never stop ringing with calls from city employees questioning about their leave account not in balance with what they had in the computer versus what was reported in their pay stub. Consequently, we had no other option but to work late.  While everybody gets off at 5, the four of us in Accounting/Payroll are cramming our heads trying to reconcile hundredths of accounts which are not in balance with the City Central Payroll/HR Department plus we have to beat the deadline for the Sellback/Rollback Leave Reports before the pay day on December 2.  I am surprised some of the accounts I handled have had some unaccounted leave few years back thus this matter requires a lot of digging up, computation and making an adjustment entries to be reported to the Central Payroll/ HR Department.  As you can tell with the length of time I work, 12 hours a day, I usually get home past 9 o’clock, exhausted! Sigh. Thank God it’s Friday and today is Federal Holiday so I am off the hook for the next three days :-)

This morning, as I sit in front of my PC, Dusty came up from nowhere, started rubbing his head against my leg, continuously purring then he hopped into the computer table with a soft purring sound, sits in front of the monitor looking at me like “Rhebs pay attention to me please…” While I pet and talk to Dusty, Midget came running, hopped onto my lap and started to tease Dusty.  Few minutes later, Tessie peeked at the glass door with an inquiring look as if, “what’s going on there guys?” She never came close enough to me though except when I was eating breakfast in front of the computer.  Here I am sitting in the swivel chair, holding my camera up trying to get a photograph of three of them in one setting. This is the scene this morning while I ate breakfast.  Tessie and Dusty are patiently waiting for me to share with them whatever I eat for breakfast. Midget is in the left side doing the same thing. Poor thing.

Tessie is an aloft cat, and wants to isolate herself in a very safe and secluded place where nobody bothers her. She hid herself in my closet all week long when she first came over to stay with us while MIL is in California visiting her sister. Although after a week, once in a while, she would come out in an open, come close to us wanting to be pet as well for just few minutes. Once she thinks she had enough, she hisses or growls and slaps us if we continuously pet her. Midget always gets a smack whenever she comes close to pick on Tessie.  Take a look at Tessie when she hisses and growl at Midget.

Dusty, however, is an exact opposite of Tessie. Dusty is a gregarious cat even when he is in a new place or household. He also puts up with Midget. We never heard him hiss nor growl at anybody not even when Midget chase or try to pick on him. My kind of pet!

I think cats miss their “Mama” whenever she is gone because they often spend endless time meowing middle of the night. I know they are so spoiled sleeping with my MIL in her own warm bed every night. But for some reason, they never come up to sleep with us in our bed. Maybe they know I don’t welcome that idea anyway.

Midget is such an adorable hyper-active playful doggie. She loves DH to death because she can essentially licks on DH’s nose, ears, kisses his mouth, climbs all over him, sleeps with him and DH won’t do a thing to stop her. DH loves and treats this dog like a baby. Well, most, if not all Americans here treat their dogs and cats like a kid anyway. In fact, as part of their family. Dogs and cats here get special care and medical check-ups regularly as well just like any other individual.  I, on the other hand, don’t allow Midget to do the same thing with me. I am not used to being kissed nor licked by the dog. I mean I like dogs and cats and would gladly play with them but please don't let them sleep with me in my bed nor let them kiss/lick me all over. I can't stand with that.  I don't know.  I can’t seem to get at peace in my surrounding knowing that I have pets in my household making some kind of a mess. For one thing, I like to wear something or anything in dark color like red or black. In fact, my slacks and work suits are mostly black and so seeing dog and cat's hair all over it puts me in a gloomy day!

Hey, do you know that sometimes dog behave like a kid? I’ll tell you a short story. For the past two weeks, DH has been taking Midget to the Pet’s Day Care in the morning before work then come to pick her up in the evening after work. Last Wednesday, DH had to go in early for work so I was tasked to drive Midget down to the Pet's Day Care before I go to work. I had to be late that day co'z the Pet's Day Care doesn't open until 7:30 in the morning.  You know when it was time for DH to leave for work that morning, Midget came around waggling her tail; both ears perked as if she was waiting for DH to walk her out to the car. However, as soon as DH shuts the door, Midget went circling, yipping, running back and forth to the door, peering on the window, woof for about few minutes before she settled down. I was amused by her reactions. Then this morning she did it again so I grab my camera and took a snap shoot of her peering in the window continuously woofing.  DH says she doesn't do this when I had to leave for work in the morning. Does dog really have some sort of emotional attachment and thoughts?

Thrills and Thunder

Last weekend, we were one of the thousands of spectators of the Jacksonville Sea & Sky Spectacular Air shows at the beach. This super event features a dynamic over-the-ocean sky show highlighted by the US Navay Blue Angels along with some of the best of our nation’s military and civilian pilots.

It was my first time to actually witness the US Navy Blue Angels and other civilian aerial pilots performed on the air showing off their precision flying skills and acrobatics. I was awestruck to see the extraordinary competence of these people when it comes to maneuvering the planes. Imagine looking keenly at two planes coming from the opposite directions and all of the sudden they seemed to convene very closely in one spot as if they are going to collide!  Look at these six planes  flying out there very closely--wing to wing as if they are just few feet away from each other. Ooh it was fun looking at them but at the same time I was nervous thinking that in a split second, one pilot makes a false move that will eventually crash all of them. You can see the slide show of all the photos we took that day. I love my SLR digital camera! It captures the sports scene beautifully without blurring it. Btw, you need to have high speed/fast access internet to view the slide show otherwise it would take you about 3 minutes to see each slide.

That's all for now. Time to walk Midget out and play with her in the backyard.  Our weather here for the last few days are pleasantly cool so I can't complain.  Have a nice weekend everybody :-)

 

 

November 1, 2005 8:32 PM Tuesday, Jacksonville, Florida

Boo!!! Trick or Treat?!?

I got off work at 5:15, missed out my workout as I was hoping to get home in time for kids' trick or treat after six o'clock. Unfortunately, I got stuck in a horrible traffic as if it was the last minute of Christmas shopping route. What the heck! It was about 7:20 when I finally got home. 

DH and I can’t seem to believe there are in fact hundreds of kids in our neighborhood. Where are they hiding during the day? Kids here aren't much of an outdoor player unlike kids in the Philippines huh?  They're probably playing video games, glued on TV or just coop inside the house. No wonder these kids turned out to be a couch potato when they grow up. We saw possibly quite a few of them running around the neighborhood on the weekend but not as many last nights. No kidding! I am talking about horde of kids popping in our doorstep every few minutes for trick or treat. DH & I initially bought 10 bags of assorted chocolates at Publix supermarket last Sunday after Church and I thought that was more than enough. There were no kids doing trick or treat when we lived in the condo before.  Had we known there were these many kids in our neighborhood we could have bought boxes of chocolates at Costco for a lot cheaper price than Publix.

Five minutes after I got home, around 7:25pm, DH asked me to go to the nearest Publix supermarket about 2 miles away from home to buy some more candies. I bought 7 more bags of assorted chocolates and Gawd the candies had completely vanished before 8:20pm and to think DH dole out only two or three pieces of chocolates at the most to every kid that comes around.    We finally turn-out all the lights after we ran out of candies so kids would think we're already asleep! he he he

I did get a chance to take snapshoot of few kids doing tricker-treating but DH wants me to post only those without the real face. You know how some people are paranoid about seeing their kids' pictures on the internet.

 

Here they are! Aren't they cute?

DH carved this pumpkin without a guide. 
Not bad for a first timer huh?

  

  
Our next door neighbors!