A Long Long Day

A long day yesterday - made for a long day today - and it's not even done yet. Yesterday I had to make the two hour journey East to St. Louis. Well I, being who I am, did not leave when I had intended to do so. I first thought about leaving at 3 or 3:30...after I got to see Hubby. Well seeing Hubby only lasted a quick five minutes in which I gave him some cantaloupe (if I didn't give it to him it would not have been consumed this week while I'm gone and it would have sat in the fridge and would have been icky when I got home). So anywho Hubby had an exam that was supposed to start at 4 pm and end at 7 pm...I told him I didn't want to leave at 7 so that is why we had made the plans for me to pay him a visit...yeah - I left at 8 pm. I have a hard time getting myself out the door when I know I have a long drive by myself ahead of me - especially away from Hubby. Oh well, c'est la vie, I travel, and travel a lot, if it's not for work it's for fun, so I'm either subliminally addicted to it or I <3 to torture myself with the traveling, IDK.


So the drive ended at 10 pm when I rolled into the hotel parking lot. (Note to self don't forget to make hotel reservations till the day of or you'll get stuck in a hotel that is not your brand of choice, not that it was a bad hotel, it wasn't great either - it was just a place to sleep, and I will make the reservations for my choice brand for next month...today.)

Why a hotel you may ask? Well I am NOT a morning person - like I'm pretty sure Hubby has been growled at in the mornings and my mom always had to fight me to get out of bed for schoool when I was yonger. So when I have an exam at 8 am in St. Louis I have to stay the night before so that I don't have to get up at 4 am to get on the road (STL traffic is annoying and for an exam I never want to chance anything).

So naturally I didn't sleep very well last night - I was nervous/excited/weirded out all in one. Nervous because of my exam, excited because of my upcoming girls weekend with some of my bests and weirded out because of the non-choice brand hotel. I did finally get some sleep - not sure at what time, it was around the number 1,000 though (seriously I do count when I can't sleep). I woke up this morning not too excited about my exam. I did not adequately prepare for it. I know it's my fault, but I also have to blame it on the terrible Webcast that I purchased for review and thought it would help me in my studies - wrong.  All it did was distract me and make me not want to study anymore. I didn't realize that I was paying for unedited materials (seriously there is a clip with the two instructions discussing Peking duck and how to say the word Peking) ummm hello delete that crap before you send it out to the people paying for this material! Yes so amid the slew of bad jokes and chair creaks (background noises were not edited out) I was less than thrilled with studying this month. Plus the massive book I had been reading just ended up being words at times, it was so technical and didn't really explain some key points. Good study questions though, in hard copy, on the computer, not so much.  The computer version was lacking explanations for questions missed, although I might not have been in the correct format (study mode versus exam mode) I don't know I was frustrated every time I played wiht it.

So I took my exam today...yeah we'll see about that one, I really don't know, I have until November 30 to get through two more exams, I am going to get some good quality study materials if I have to re-take this one, and I WILL get it done! The one thing that made me happy about the exam was that the staff there really was pleasant - sometimes you don't get that. The one lady made me crack up on my way out. She asked the guy going into the check-in area after me if he wanted to sit and take a moment to collect himself or use the potty before he went in for his exam...yeah he was like 40+! hehehe it made me laugh.

The flat flat scenery through Illinois on my way to Chicago.

After all the fun that is included in the journey towards my CPA I got to leave and get in my car, grab some lunch and head to downtown to hop on a train. And that is where my long day is at and still not done. Next stop Chi-town and some girlie quality time :) Very excited about this weekend - it should be fun. Don't expect any sort of posts until next week though!