Life Lately

Y'all, I'm alive! Busy season kicked my butt more than I could've possibly imagined this year, but I managed to squeeze in some fun in the past 2 months!

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since February (not pictured: the 234930 hours I sat at my computer working):

It snowed! Lauren and I were snowed in for almost 3 days, which just meant we worked from home and almost went stir crazy. Snow days as an adult are not near as fun! We finally ventured out on day 3 to meet friends for pizza and beer - much needed socialization!

I went to the mountains with my parents for a quick weekend getaway.

Katie came home to be maid of honor in her friend's wedding, and it was one of the most fun weddings! Such a pretty location (on the lake in Clemson) and perfect weather for Ashley & Weston!

And in between, I hung out with friends, organized my closet, went on a bike ride, tried to steal a few dogs, and I did a lot of drinking as evidenced by my camera roll...

I also went gluten-free (more on that later this week) and have planned several upcoming vacations!

What all have you been up to while I've been away?

Instagram Recap

Sorry for the radio silence around here. Work ( + everything happening in Boston) was making me super grumpy this week and my mom always said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

But it's the weekend and that makes me very happy! 

I did get to have a little fun on Monday of this week (<-- officially the end of busy season, booya!)

Our office has 8 tickets to the Greenville Drive games and they give them away to all the employees in a lottery. Sarah happened to win tickets for Monday night, so she and I, plus our roomies, made a night of it by stopping by Liberty Tap Room for dinner beforehand.

I don't hate Monday nights that involve soft pretzels and queso, Goose Island 312 brews, front row seats (first baseball game of the year!), free popcorn, and best friends.

If I could just repeat every Monday night, life would be golden!

Linking up with Sara Elizabeth

Weekend Update ~ Beer Festival

I always get a little bummed when Sunday night rolls around. It means the end of another great weekend. This one was equally fun and relaxing. I hate to see it end!

Friday night, Lauren and I went to our End of Busy Season party at one of our shareholder's house. It's always fun to hang out with our co-workers outside of the office. The house was beautiful, too! I could've definitely moved in.

After the party, I met my parents for the last few innings of the Drive game. My dad had gotten box seats through work, so I didn't want to miss an opportunity to see my parents and the end of the game. I was only there for about an hour, and the Drive lost, but it was still fun!

There's an apartment building with sweeping balconies that overlooks the stadium. I've always thought to myself how cool it would be to live in a condo there and I wondered what they looked like inside. Ryan texted me to tell me that one of his coworker's lived in an apartment there and to come join them out on the balcony. I jumped at the opportunity! The apartment did not disappoint! I was casually asking them when I could move in, too!

A view from the balcony overlooking the stadium

We lingered as long as possible before heading home. We had to rest up for the Beer Festival! We had lunch at Mellow Mushroom before heading over to the Bi-Lo Center. They decided to move the festival inside because of the chance of rain forecasted. It never actually ended up raining, so it would've been cool to stay outside, but that's okay! The festival was so fun! We made stops at pretty much every station, sampling beers as we went. Most of the breweries were familiar, but we got to try a few new brews for the summer as well. I'm already looking forward to going back next year! 

Abita Beer Garden! (they unfortunately didn't have Strawberry Lager) 

Our mini 2 oz. sampler mugs

So many people!

Reading the map proved to be a challenge

We ate dinner at a mexican restaurant downtown and called it an early night by watching the Braves game at home. While waiting for a cab, I managed to catch an amazing photo of the sunset!

Ryan and I are now enjoying a lazy Sunday at his place. The weather was so crazy today, with some rain (and rainbows!). I took some pictures from Ryan's huge loft windows. 

Awesome rain cloud

Double rainbow! 

Water tower/blue sky after the storm

We also managed to cross three movies (3 movies in one day! It has to be a record!) off my list today! We watched Office Space, Reservoir Dogs, and The Breakfast Club. I had seen Office Space a really long time ago but I enjoyed the new ones as well. Yay for making my movie list a little smaller.

Hope y'all enjoyed your weekend as much as I did!

An Ode to Busy Season

Happy Friday! Yay for the weekend! Since that beautiful tax deadline (April 15th, in case you forgot) has come and gone, I thought I would opine on the great three and a half months known to accountants everywhere as "busy season." I won't bore you with the details of how (or why on earth) I chose to be an accountant. We'll save that story for another day. However, I will give you a little background, followed by some numbers. Because, obviously, I love numbers!

I'm an auditor for a mid-size regional public accounting firm. Hold on to your seats while I explain what that means. Most companies require an audit, mostly by law or in order to get and/or keep a loan with a financial institution. The most basic definition of auditing I can find is this: "a systematic examination of the books and records of a business in order to verify and to report upon the facts regarding the financial operation and the result thereof."  So yeah, that's what I do on a daily basis. Which means we spend a lot of time in our client's place of business, working with a senior or manager (someone with more experience than a 1st or 2nd year staff), looking through their files/documents/reports, etc. As an auditor, busy season is a little different than a race to the tax deadline, but we're still busy this time of year with our own filing deadlines.




Here's my cube. I'm working on the decorations...

The firm I work for is amazing. I interned here twice and never thought about working anywhere else. While busy season is rough (i.e. a LOT of hours and less sleep), they do their best to make it as bearable as possible. Enter: food. Lots and lots of food. They fill empty file cabinets with snacks to keep us fueled. The snack drawer just happens to be conveniently located directly outside my cube. Let's just say it's a good thing I wasn't in the office much over the past few months. They also provide lunch every Saturday for us while we're working. They also let us dress as casually as we want on Saturdays, too. They provide an "afternoon surprise" every Wednesday (candy, cake, ice cream, you name it). Have you noticed a common theme here? Apparently busy season = stress eating. But hey, it works and we all survived. We're having a party at one of our shareholder's house to celebrate another busy season in the books. I can't wait! (PS. It's a complete lie that accountants are boring. We are fun people, okay?!)

Now let's do busy season by the numbers, shall we??

701 hours worked

8 different clients audited

2 different states visited (Savannah, GA and Birmingham, AL)

6 Saturday lunches consumed

10 weekends worked

93.5 "overtime" hours

300 (at least) lunches and dinners eaten out

10 Friday night happy hours

2,483 visits to the snack drawer (an exaggeration? probably not)

Whew. There you have it, folks. I survived my first busy season! I think It'll be fun to do this comparison of the numbers each year. 

Until next time...