Salmonamanwich's Blog

Another exciting and rather pleasant weekend is now winding down with me writing in my blog and telling myself to work on hw. Friday afternoon, John came in to town to join me at the beginning of busy season tax party at the tax partner's house. That was a lot of fun and a great chance to get to know the tax people I'm working with a bit better. Then John and I went to check out Club Oasis, but it was too early, so we came back here and just talked about really random things until way late.

Then I got up at 10 a.m. and got ready to go pick up Patrick at the airport. His flight came in basically on time (it obviously wasn't AK Airlines), and I got there just a little bit before it landed. From the airport we went to brunch at IHOP, then came home to get some directions to where we wanted to go. Then off to Title Wave Books... the most awesome bookstore I've ever been to. Patrick fell in love with it as well. And we both bought too many books. Then we came home and practiced some salsa. Then it was off to the start of a very long and amazing evening. First we went to dinner at Glacier Brewhouse... the waiter there was very cute. ;) Then we went to an opera: "The Flying Dutchman". It was my first opera and it was amazing. I loved it! Then we headed to Club Soraya to do a bit of dancing before we were both too tired to do anything. That was a lot of fun too... I absolutely need to find someone to dance with down here... it was way too much fun having someone who knew how to dance to just about everything, and loved doing it! Then we came home and wound down a bit before falling asleep. After sleeping in til well past noon today, we headed to the Folk Festival and sat and read and listened to a large variety of folk musicians. It was very relaxing and fun, except the lighting wasn't very good for reading, so my eyes were being a bit strained. Then we went to Cold Stone Creamery for "dinner", followed by Barnes & Noble books. I finally picked up my own copy of "Looking for Mr. Right" by Bradley Trever Greive. (The BEST book for any woman even remotely interested in any guy or guys.) Then we headed to the airport to drop him off.

So, that saga is now over and it's time to go back to "normal" life. i.e. I need to get some hw done. Goodnight all!

I almost forgot to tell you guys the most important thing that's coming up soon:

Patrick's coming to visit me next weekend!!!

Ok, enough of silly me, although I am very excited. ;) Goodnight again all!

One week of work is now done. It was a lot of fun, but at the same time, very stressful. I really do enjoy what I'm doing. I'm just not used to the constant brain overload and not knowing exactly what's expected of me. I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but everyone seems to think I'm doing a great job. I got a lot of compliments and praise on my work this week, which was encouraging. But by Friday afternoon I was so tense that it felt like there were streaks of lightning coursing up and down my left arm. Not fun. So Friday night I drove out to Wasilla with the intention of completely relaxing and not doing anything particularly important and definitely not drive back that night. So John, his parents and I went out to dinner at the Wasilla Resort (or something fancy like that). It was a very good dinner. I got a bit of a shock at the beginning though. The waitress already knew John's parents, so when she came up she asked who we were. When John's parents claimed him as their son, she quickly said, "and this must be his wife." Yeah... that was a bit of a shock. We of course quickly corrected her, assuring her we were just friends, not even dating. It was funny though, definitely worth a good laugh. :) Anyways, after dinner we went back to the hotel John's staying at and John and I watched a couple movies and gave each other massages. That was exactly what I needed. Then we crashed at some ungodly hour and woke up at around noon. Today we went out to see the remnants of John's house, which was rather depressing. Then we went to Perfect Look in Wasilla and I finally got my hair trimmed again, and I also got some lowlights put in. It looks really nice now. :D And I convinced John to get his hair highlighted. It looks really good too. Then we got some food and soon after I headed back into town. Next up, KPMG neon-bowling night. A good number of the people from KPMG were there and we just had a great time bowling. (I was disappointed that no tax people were there though except for myself and the other new hire, Stasia.) I'm by no means good at bowling, but I managed to do decently and scored a 90 on the first game and 91's on the next two games. At least I'm consistent. ;) After that we headed home and now here I am typing in my blog. Now I'm going to get ready for bed, crawl in, and assuming my eyes will stay open for a little longer, I'll grab my book (Harry Potter - The Order of the Phoenix) and read for a bit before completely crashing. :) Then tomorrow I have training from noon til 4 p.m., hopefully followed by some clothes shopping and then dancing. :D Hopefully I will finally make it to Club Soraya on a Sunday evening and check out the stuff that's happening. Alright, enough chat from me, goodnight all!

Ha, wow, this trip really has been incredibly exciting. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get home to relatively humdrum AK. Oh wait, yes I do know... I'm going to sleep!!! That is the one thing I wish I could have gotten a bit more of during this trip. It's 2:50 a.m. right now here and I only got in about 20 minutes ago. :S

So, this evening's adventures: First off, all 400 of us interns piled into buses and were taken to Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure. KPMG had reserved a portion of the park for us and only us. Everything was free, from a street buffet to each one of the 4 rides that were available to us. So, even before getting on the bus, 2 guys (who both have crushes on me) herded me in with their group and we headed off to see what adventures we could find. The first thing we did when we got there was head to a ride. One girl in particular had already discovered that I had never been on a theme park ride or a roller coaster in my life, so she was bound and determined to remedy that. So we went to the Spiderman ride. I enjoyed it, but it was a bit blase' and the 3D glasses made my head hurt. Then, while walking past the street buffet, we decided that we should go ride the roller coaster before eating. So we headed to the Hulk. It has about 7 times where you are upside down and a decent drop or two. I wasn't exactly worried about riding it, but I really didn't know what to expect either. I sat in the 2nd row from the front and strapped myself in. I was in for the ride of my life! It was freakin' AWESOME!!! I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that the moment we got off the thing, we headed around and got right back on. This time in the front row. That was awesome as well. Then we headed back to the food. To make a long story a little shorter: I rode the roller coaster 4 times, the shoot-up-really-fast-then-drop-suddenly ride 4 times, the cars-that-spin-in-several-different-circles-simultaneously ride 4 times, and the Spiderman ride just once. I now am a huge fan of roller coasters and other such things, and I won't bat an eye, except to the price, about going on that bungee ride at the fair in Fbks this summer. :D That was the best part of all those rides... they didn't cost a penny! And I had some pretty good company too. One of the 2 guys with a crush on me ended up spending most of the entire evening with me. His name is Tae ook and he is from Korea. He's kind of cute and a lot of fun to hang out with. We ended up ditching the group fairly quickly and roamed around together and went on rides. Then we hopped on one of the last buses to head back to the hotel. When we got to the hotel we asked at the desk if there were any miniature golf places open that late. (It was nearly 11 p.m. at that point.) Fortunately we found one and we grabbed a cab and headed there. I knew I loved playing miniature golf, despite the fact I am horrible at it, but I never knew you could have quite that much fun playing with a cute guy you had only recently met. We had a blast. We took a few pictures along the way and I'll have to put some up on here when I get home to my normal computer and can get them off my camera. After the miniature golf, we started walking down the main street we were on and thought we were headed towards downtown, but discovered later that we were actually heading back towards the hotel, which appeared to be a decent walking distance away. It was a gorgeous evening with warm moist air and cute clouds flitting across the sky above us. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a Denny's for some food since Tae ook was hungry. Then we headed out again. And we got back about 2:30 a.m. Yes, an enchanting evening. I got a quick kiss on the cheek as I got off the elevator on my floor and now I'm here, telling you all about my evening. Tomorrow all I have is breakfast at 8, (I know, very early seeing as it's now after 3 a.m.) a final mandatory meeting at 9, then we're done at 9:30 a.m. My plane doesn't leave until around 2:30 p.m., so I'll leave here on one of the shuttles at around noon and before that I very well may take a nap or something. We'll see. Then I get into Anc, about 10 and a half hours later, at about 9 p.m. But in the meantime, I'm going to go to bed. Goodnight all!

... there lived a beautiful young and ambitious woman *flatter flatter flatter* who went on a business trip to a land of warmth and magic. This land was called... *dun dun dun* ... ORLANDO! *CRASH BANG* And in this land lived a handsome young man...

Ok, fine, so I saw a cute guy at the Cirque du Soleil gift shop, and I'm apparently really bad at "once upon a time..." stories. LOL But anyways, wow, the show was amazing!!! (Cirque, not the guy in the gift shop, although he was pretty cute) ;) I took my roommate for the week (Melissa from Tulsa, Oklahoma, with an oklahoman accent... and she says I have an accent too... weird) with me. Btw, before I forget, and in case someone didn't already know this, Kate is the coolest, most amazing, awesome, wonderful, fantastic, terrific, etc, person there is! Sorry guys, if you were contending for favorite person in my life, you all lost, Kate wins!

Seriously though, I am having the time of my life here, minus the lack of enough sleep each night. There are approximately 400 KPMG interns here in this fabulous resort hotel from all over the United States, including one person from Puerto Rico and one person from Alaska... me. People seem to think that those 2 places are exotic or something. It makes it easy for me to start conversations with anyone though. All I have to say is that I'm from Anchorage, watch the pause and then the dramatic, "Wow! What's it like there!" reaction. Then there's the, "I've never met anyone from Alaska", and, "How long of a flight was it?", and, "Do you ski a lot then?" I think those are probably some of the questions I get asked the most. Only one person has asked about igloos so far... sadly I think he's dense enough I could tell him I live in one and he'd believe me. He literally started shivering when I mentioned 20 degrees (positive), anything colder and he looked like he might go blue on me. *rolls eyes* (He's from Florida, btw.) It's been balmy here, around 80 during the day, and perfectly warm in the evenings. I went swimming last night in the pool and blinded everyone with my white legs (not to mention everything else). The training is going well too, yesterday was "charms school" where we learned to to charm people with our professional demeanor. Today we started technical training. Yay! I got to do a tax return today! It is so sad how happy that made me. :S (And I'm seriously not kidding.)

This resort hotel is located right next to SeaWorld and is an absolutely beautiful place. It's 10 floors tall (I'm on the 4th) and the inside of the place is a huge atrium with the rooms all around the four sides. The ceiling is mostly glass. And there's a very large, ornate aviary in the center, as well as several fancy restuarants around the edges and tons of space. It is so airy and gorgeous. And the ballrooms are beautiful as well. The Crystal ballroom is where we usually do large group things, but we've also been in the Oceans ballroom too. The Oceans ballroom is exactly that... an ocean. It's immense! Most of our meals are catered by the hotel, and are very good. I'm loving all the fresh fruit! Pineapple, melons, strawberries, other berries, and all of it really tastes fresh! That is definitely one thing I miss about living down south. But of course no one can match Alaska's scenery and beauty.

I've decided I want to come back to Orlando again though, for about a week or two, with a good friend (guy or girl). Whomever it is, it needs to be someone who is a bit daring, fun, and willing to do some crazy things. Then he/she and I will come down here and have the time of our lives for a week or so! (This of course is all after I and he/she have worked full time for long enough to be able to splurge a good bit and do everything. But also before we get too old.) ;) So, that's what I've decided.

Well, I know there is so much more I could talk about, but it's after midnight here (although only 8:10 in AK) and I have to get up at about 6:30 a.m. So goodnight all!

Well, I'm in Anchortown finally. And I'm pretty much entirely moved in too. My room is nice, I basically have my own bathroom, and I'm vaguely starting to understand how to get around this town. I'll have to put some pictures up soon, when I feel a little more settled I guess.
Yesterday, Chris and I drove down here from Fbks. We stopped at Brad's house to say hi to him and his family and ended up staying to dinner, which was excellent. Then we drove the rest of the way and managed to find the house without getting lost or having to turn around at all. We spent the evening unpacking and managed to finish unpacking just about everything.
Today, Chris and I went to the Alaska Zoo. That was a lot of fun. I woke up with a sore throat, so I wasn't in tiptop shape, but it was still fun. There were lots of interesting animals. I think my favorite was the arctic fox. It was so cute, especially when it cocked it's head to the side like a pet would. Although the baby goats were definitely one of my favorites too. They were sooooo cute! After the zoo, Chris and I went to La Mex (my favorite mexican restuarant here in town) for a late lunch. Then, after coming back here briefly, I took Chris to the airport to send him home. It was a bit sad, since it was both a goodbye and a end. We had agreed that, due to distance, we would end our dating relationship. But I am going to miss him. He is definitely a sweet guy. :)
Then I went home and waited for a call from Brad. He and I wanted to go see Phantom of the Opera. The movie was beyond awesome. I absolutely loved it. But then, after the movie, Brad and I stopped by Fred Meyer to get some throat lozenges to calm my throat a bit, (I'm still not feeling so well.) and when we came back out, my car wouldn't start. We couldn't find anyone around to give us a jump, so I had to call here and get Richard (the husband of the girl I'm staying with) to come help us. He came out and determined that it wasn't in need of a jump, the clutch wasn't engaging the starter. (Or however all that stuff works.) So he figured out how to override it and got the car started for me. Then he asked if we could pick up some food for him on our way home so he could get back to what he had been doing. So we were in the drive through at Wendy's and I successfully managed to kill the car. Not a good thing. So we had to fumble around for awhile and figure out how to do what he had done, while having him on the phone trying to tell us. We eventually got it going again and came back here. Brad called his dad to get a ride home, since I didn't really trust my car to go all the way to Wasilla and back without killing it. Then, just a little bit ago, Richard went to look at my car again and he tells me that it just needed a little adjustment, which he did, and that it'll work fine now. So, yeah, that was this evening's adventure.
Well, it is definitely time for me to go to sleep and not wake up until I really feel like it tomorrow. :) Goodnight all!