Hello, everyone.

I have once again neglected this blog for far too long. When you see what I've been up to, I think you'll understand. First up, business:

Accounting Stuff

Life keeps happening, and I have not yet managed to get into the accounting industry. However, I have renewed my learning efforts. This week I completed the accounts payable aging project for my accounting portfolio, and there will be many more projects to come.

I am also using ChatGPT to develop a strategy for making connections in the accounting industry in my local area. This week I plan to start reaching out to CPA and tax firms to ask them what sorts of projects they would most like to see in an entry-level candidate's portfolio/skill set.

I have some ideas for videos as well, so stay tuned for those.

Here are a few podcasts I've been listening to lately to track the pulse of the industry:

• Accounting Best Practices with Steve Bragg
  
• My first accounting capstone class (2021) at Chemeketa Community College Featured Steve's book Accounting Best Practices 7th Edition. I remembered how useful that book was, especially in discussions of internal controls, and that got me excited about the podcast.
• I have been listening to the oldest episodes first since it seems to increase in complexity until it begins to focus on more contemporary issues, and I want a review of some basics.
• In the early episodes, Steve has some guests or co-hosts who have truly terrible accounting puns, and I love it.

• Journal of Accountancy Podcast produced by the AICPA and CIMA
• For this one, I have been listening to the newest episodes first and working backwards since it has good coverage of contemporary issues that I don't want to miss.
• My favorite recent episode is The Power of Active Listening in Addressing the CPA Skills Gap, which touches on The Profession Ready Initiative.
• A quick look into The Profession Ready Initiative led me to an article on JoA titled "How will accountants learn new skills when AI does the work?" That article was thought-provoking, and I will write a blog post or make a video about that in the near future.
• AI: Accounting Intelligence with Isaac Heller
• As the title suggests, this one focuses on artificial intelligence in accounting, which I think is a natural use for AI.
• Some of the early episodes seem a bit cheerleadery, like "get with the program. Accounting is changing," which isn't terribly useful to me as someone who already accepts that this is part of the profession. I may try listening to it in reverse order to see if I like that better. 

Books and More Books

Just before Lent (February) this year, I realized that I had twenty-six books on my "Currently Reading" list. Twenty-six! So I decided I was not allowed to add any new books to that list until Easter. That was my fast. In that time I finished a bunch of books that I had started, and since Easter I have finished many more. So far this year I have finished 40 books including:

• Most of Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher series (I started it last year). With the show's steady downward trend after season one and Henry Cavill leaving after season three, I decided that if I wanted to enjoy the story, I needed to just go to the source material.
• The Margaret of Ashbury trilogy by Judith Merkle Riley. Highly recommend this one for anyone who likes early medieval historical and fantasy books. These have been my favorite fiction read so far this year.
• Six books of poems or on the art of writing poetry.
• Two books on keeping chickens that convinced me not to do that right now.
• A cheesy mystery novel written for French learners.
• Ten books on religion and mythology.
• Five books on gardening.

My Garden

Since moving to my current place in April of 2025, building a kitchen garden has been one of my big projects.

My philosophy is that food gardening should save me more money than it costs me, so I have been working with salvaged materials like pallets, scrap lumber, old gates, pre-owned chicken wire, old tires, upcycled kitty litter buckets, stones I dug out of the ground (very laborious, but abundant), and soil I sifted myself. I have started as many plants as I can from seed since that is much less expensive. In total, I think I have bought all of six or seven plants, and they were all perennial herbs that I could not get starts for from friends or family. I have also been given quite a few plants, from berry bushes to herb starts. My mother, who was a home economics major and is pretty inventive herself, had better be proud of me.

In addition to fruits, vegetables, and herbs, I have also planted quite a few flowers, all from seed. Most of the flowers are edible or medicinal, but some just deter pests and attract beneficial insects. The garden is a whole system, and I have learned it functions better if I work with nature rather than against it.

While this project needs a few more beds filled to be truly complete, it has moved from being primarily a construction project to an established system that produces a significant amount of food. I anticipate canning many batches of pasta sauce and salsa in the coming months as the tomatoes begin to ripen.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for stopping by. Never stop learning, friends.

How did your homework from Writing Roundup #10 go? Did you do anything crazy, like fast drafting your novel? Are you any better at conveying emotion in fiction? Have you learned to distinguish between tricky words?

How was your homework from Writing Roundup #9? Were you able to re-focus your writing priorities this month? Have you improved with showing and telling? Were you able to finish The Elements of Style? Have you learned any cool new words?

Final Quarter of 2018:

Family/Romantic:

The husband and I have successfully transferred our main date time from one day of the week to another. We are still having dates once a week, sometimes twice. We have done no hiking in the last three months, but I am okay with that. I think I’m ready to write off my hiking goal from last spring as a hilarious failure. Next year I am definitely not buying more than day passes.

I visited my grandma once or twice in the last quarter for no particular occasion, plus I got to see her at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last week I had a movie marathon with one of my nieces. I went to a birthday party for another niece and got to see some family I don’t see often. I would like to see my family more often, but for some of them “more often” is once a quarter, rather than once a year.

Social:

I’m still having tea parties with my girlfriends about once a month. Over the holidays, Megan and I hardly saw each other (she works retail), so we haven’t been having many writing dates.

The husband and I have transitioned to another church in our community, but haven’t plugged into it as much as I’d like yet.

Physical:

I’ve cooked a lot of the stuff in my pantry that I wanted to get rid of. Surprise, surprise—pantry food can be fattening if not eaten with large quantities of vegetables to crowd out more calorically-dense stuff. So I gained more weight than I lost last year.

Remember last quarter how I said I was going to incorporate resistance bands into my fitness routine? I totally fell out of exercising again. I should seriously learn my lesson and get rid of all of my non-Pilates exercise equipment. It’s the only thing I use consistently anyway.

I quit caffeine for a month or so, just to see how I felt. Even with sleeping 10+ hours/day, I was tired, so I’m back to drinking a pot of caffeinated tea every morning and now I feel normal again. What have I learned from this experience? Too much caffeine is bad, but I also can’t seem to function well on none. Between moderate daily caffeine consumption and the medication my doctor prescribed me last August, my energy levels and mood have been pretty reasonable. Yay!

Writing:

Last quarter I was all gung-ho to write the next draft of my book. I didn’t get far with that—maybe 1K words. Then I got sidetracked on writing blog posts (I wrote a TON before the end of October) and a nonfiction project I’m calling Lunch Notes. I got about 5K words on Lunch Notes During NaNoWriMo, and about 5K more in December. It’s still not done.

The main distraction, however, was not writing other things—it was making things. Bath & body stuff, knitting, etc. for Christmas. It was my weird, all-consuming passion project for over two months. Two months! That’s what I was doing when I forgot to finalize and publish Writing Roundup #8 on time (oops!).

I haven’t drafted any new blog posts since the beginning of November, so I have a bunch of books to catch up on. Some of them will get series reviews because that just makes more sense.

Grand-total last year I published 37 blog posts. That’s not bad, especially considering that I didn’t start posting consistently until April (and I took a break in August because moving is hard). Post-wise I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish this year, but I still have a bunch of standalone pages I’ve been meaning to write for ages. Gah! The work is never done. The blog also got a labor-intensive template update last year. That’s one thing I hope to not do again for many years…or I could hire a professional and stop acting like I can do everything myself.

 Re-drafting my work-in-progress was a fail multiple times last year. I also never joined a writing group. Moving further away from town made incarnate meetings even less practical, so that’s not likely to happen in the future either.

Reading:

I haven’t read La Mirinda Sorĉisto de Oz or Trans La Spegulo kaj Kion Alico Trovis Tie yet but I did read  La Aventuroj de Alico en Mirlando. I also haven’t read Megan’s books, though a couple of the other ladies from our tea party group have. She’s working on a minor revision of one of her books, so I think she might not want me to read it until she’s done with that.

Beyond those specific books that I wanted to read, I got a lot of reading done. I closed out 2018 with 76 books counted for my Goodreads challenge.  Four were actually radio drama adaptations of Tolkien books, and there were a few health-related books that I read twice. Six were Adventures of Tintin books (comics). Many were children’s chapter books. Others, like The Count of Monte Cristo (review coming in two weeks), were massive. You can see my 2018 Goodreads challenge here.

Goals for 2019

I’ve thought for a while about what I want to do in 2019. I’m cutting my categories down again this year—because there are only a few areas where I need blog accountability, and reading about my casual successes can’t be interesting. So romantic, social, and spiritual are out. Music, Esperanto, and needlework likewise will find no place on this list, because I’m trying to prioritize health, reading, and writing above other hobbies this year.

Health:

I have been slowly transitioning to Dr. Joel Furhman’s Nutritarian style of cooking, shopping, and eating. My blood pressure is so low that limiting sodium would not be a good idea, and I plan to keep using Stevia, but in most other ways I’m trying to stay on-plan unless I’m having a weekly cheat meal. I’m still working out the kinks on scheduling my cheat meals to coincide with family events and such.

My husband is joining me on the getting healthier bandwagon, and this time I’m sending notes in his lunch to explain the nutritional stuff, because knowledge is power, and having us both on the same page will make success possible, if not quite easy. I’ve already begun sending the notes (this was my NaNo project).

I got a new activity-tracker for Christmas. I’m aiming for at least 10K steps on most days, but cutting myself some slack the day after 24K step days (they happen with remarkable frequency for me—cleaning is brutal and I’m addicted to pacing).  On my non-cleaning days, I plan to return to doing a short Pilates and yoga routine, because my back needs it.

I’m also trying to return to a steady sleep schedule. I haven’t decided whether I want to go to bed at 10 and get up at 6 or go to bed at 9 and get up at 5. Next quarter I’ll let you guys know what I settled on.

Reading:

There are a number of specific books I want to read or reread next year, but I have no real goal for the number of books. For now, I’m setting my Goodreads goal to 50, but I’ve never read that few in a year of my adult life, so I’ll probably hit it without trying.

This year I want to read:

• All seven books of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (reread)
• All thirteen books in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (reread)
• A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
• All of my Joel Furhman health/diet books, but especially Eat to Live (reread)
• The Letters of C.S. Lewis (finish)
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (reading it to my husband)
• The Elements of Style (finish rereading)
• The Elements of Grammar by Margaret Shertzer
• The Elements of Editing by Arthur Plotnik
• The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne (finish)
• Trans la Spegulo kaj Kion Alico Trovis Tie by Lewis Caroll (translated by Donald Broadribb)
• La Mirinda Sorĉisto de Oz by L. Frank Baum (translated by Donald Broadribb)
• Genre short stories & fairy tales (I have several volumes of fairy tales)
• The Writer and Its Story by Ann Charters (finish)
• Other nonfiction writing books (I have a lot of ebooks)
• Megan’s books

I cut down my podcast subscriptions to just my four favorites so that I can listen to more books while I’m cleaning and doing needlework this year.  I plan to keep my library audiobook holds in Overdrive maxed out (6 at a time) and borrow some audiobooks on disc from the library to listen to as well. Public domain Librivox books will probably also make it onto my mp3 player.

I’ve downloaded the Voyzer app to listen to some of my ebooks read aloud, especially writing-related ones that don’t have audiobook versions. The synthesized voice isn’t great, but better than the other apps I’ve found so far (it’s at least tolerable and understandable). The UK English female voice is definitely my preference over the American English one.

Writing:

My first writing goal of the year is to finish my healthy-eating Lunch Notes project for my husband and gather together some resources for him to look into when I’m done lecturing him.

I also plan to continue writing weekly blog posts. I may need to do more writing, what-I-learned-from, or hobby-related posts this year since I plan to review entire series’ at once instead of writing a review for each book. I also really need to get a bunch of technical pages written for the blog, and I need to learn how to use SEO for my posts and for my blog overall. There are lots of ways for me to grow in blog-land.

Fiction-wise I plan to rewrite/revise The Spirit of Sacrifice (working title) enough that I’m comfortable letting Megan read it. That will take some serious work.

I also want to look into virtual writing communities more this year since getting together with my regional NaNo-ers in person twice a month or going to other writing groups in Salem is so impractical with my current living situation. The NaNoWriMo forums, Wattpad, and some Facebook groups are on my radar, but let me know if there’s anything else you would recommend. I really need people to help keep me accountable and cheer me on when I’m in a funk.

What goals have you set for 2019? Leave a comment below or my hairless ghost lemur will haunt your dreams.

Three Month Goals Update

Family/Romantic:

I’m still going on dates with my husband on Sunday afternoons and/or Saturdays. Our five-year wedding anniversary was in June. In lieu of going on vacation, we have decided to go hiking several times this summer. We’ve been on a couple already, but we need to hike in national forests at least seven different days to make our annual Northwest Forest Pass worth it. The goal is to do that before it expires next year, and state parks don’t count because they have a separate fee system. I felt kind of stupid when I figured that out after I bought the pass.

I hope you finished your homework from Writing Roundup #2 because today we get a whole new set of assignments. If you're new to the class, I recommend checking out the Eclectic Writing Class post hub for explanations on the categories and links to the earlier lessons.