So a couple of weeks ago, brian_edminster mentioned that he'd been offered some tickets to the Nationals/Orioles game on May 20, and would I be interested in going?
Of course I answered YES; here we are seven weeks into the season and I hadn't seen a game yet, thanks to finals, CPA exams, and the subsequent lack of $. So we made tentative plans to meet up at the stadium, and despite the recent bout with cellulitis I was in good enough shape to consider...well, not taking the Metro, because the crush at the Navy Yard station on game days is horrendous and my SmartCard is carrying a negative balance anyway, but parking a mile or so away and walking to the park wasn't out of the question. And that's what I wound up doing; the plan was to motor up 295, get off at South Capitol over by the old Navy Photographic Labs, and park in the commuter lot between South Capitol Street SW and South Capitol Street SE, near where Howard Road merges into SoCap. I ate a decent lunch so that I wouldn't have to eat at the park, and headed out...

...only to find, as you can see from the previously linked map, that the parking lot was now blocked off and inaccessible! Botheration! After some puttering around by Anacostia Park, I finally decided to park under the Douglass Bridge itself, a reasonable distance from the park itself and the riverbank and not too far from the trail leading to the bridge. From the south end of the bridge to Nationals Park was 0.8 mile, but I walked around to the left field gate at Half and N Streets which I'm sure tacked on at least another 0.2 miles. There I settled into wait for my hosts...who were a while in coming, as they had parked in Shady Grove or some similarly distant place and taken the Metro in. They got to the park in plenty of time for the 1335 start (which I had thought was 1305, but that was good since I was on time for once) and we enjoyed some decent seats in the shade down in section 140. A pleasant surprise was that the seats were part of a Harris Teeter Family Fun Pack, so that the tickets came with soda, chips and a hot dog.

And it was a good game. Baseball Jesus was a bit shaky in the first two innings, coughing up three runs (although two of those were due to Bryce Harper being dumb in the outfield), but those were the last runs the Hated Birds would score. The Nats tied it up in the third with a single from Strasburg, a double from Espinosa, a triple from Harper (scoring Straburg & Espy) and a fielder's choice by Desmond that snuffed LaRoche but scored Harper. Things got even better in the bottom of the fourth when Jesus Flores came up with two outs and promptly jacked one into the right-field stands, after which Strasburg followed suit with a bomb to center. O's starter Chen left in the bottom of the 5th after giving up a run on two singles and a walk and was replaced by troublesome sidearmer O'Day, who held the Nats scoreless for the next 1.2 innings. He in turn gave way to Eveland, who loaded the bases in the 7th before getting Ankiel to fly out. Eveland's luck ran out in the eighth: Lombardozzi pinch-hit for Clippard and singled, after which Espinosa launched the third dinger for the Nats. Harper walked, went to third on a bungled fielder's choice that put Zimmerman on, and came home on a sac fly by La Roche. Mattheus mopped up in the top of the ninth, and it was all over: 9-3 Nats.

Harper and Clippard helped me close out the week in my fantasy baseball league on an up note; I am now in second place with a 5-2 record, and this week am matched up against the last place team. We'll see how that works out, especially with my supersub Emilio Bonifacio on the DL, which is already clogged with the Youk, Yoenis Cespedes, and Drew Storen.

I've spent most of this week running back and forth to the VA medical center downtown or sleeping, but I do believe that on the fifth day of oral antibiotics, things are starting to look up for my poor suffering legs.

To recap, there had been oozings of a suspicious blue color in the bandages over last weekend, and on Sunday the bandages gave off a disgusting spoiled-meat smell. So I packed a couple changes of underwear and T-shirts into my backpack along with Netzilla and its peripherals, a bottle of water, and my Kindle, and so prepared trundled off to the VAMC downtown. There I spent about six hours in the emergency room before being sent home with starter packs of Keflex and Bactrim and some Vicodin for the pain. I did take one of the latter when I got home, and not only did it knock me out for about twelve hours, it erased my memory of the evening from the point at which I climbed into the Toaster to drive home from the hospital. Weird and unpleasant; it's a good thing I lost the damn pills, although I will probably find them when I clean the place up for the July PRSFS meeting.

Tuesday I went back to the VA to get the rest of the antibiotics and see the wound care nurse; she told me to come back Thursday when she'd try to squeeze me in during the normal clinic hours. Pharmacy triage claimed they were out of Bactrim, but when they handed over the bag it actually had both the Keflex and the Bactrim, so that was good.

Yesterday I went back again for the wound care clinic. There must have been a lot of no-shows, since the nurse saw me right around 1400 and had me out and on the road home by 1500. She cleaned the wounds, debrided them (with a scalpel *cringe*) and re-dressed them with Mepilex bandages, which not only have silver nanoparticles but absorb a metric fuckton of drainage. More of that is on the way. Nurse also directed me to start making with the compression sleeves again, which I will definitely be doing.

It should probably go without saying that there has been not even a rumor of work this week. On the other hand, I have a food stamp appointment on the 29th. So at least that will be covered.

Also, I thought I had finished this insane manga about mahjongg, Space Nazis, and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, but apparently it just KEEPS GOING.

Apparently Major League baseball and the NCAA are in talks to get MLB more involved in college baseball. The major leagues want more control over the college ball programs, in terms of wooden bats, scheduling, and summer leagues, among other things, and are willing to pay for scholarships in order to get that control. This is certainly attractive for the colleges, for whom baseball is often a money-losing proposition, but is this a good idea for baseball in general?

I'm inclined to say no, especially if what MLB is interested in is increasing diversity on the diamond, which appears to be one of their concerns. Most college baseball programs tend to be whiter than a fifty-pound bag of rice to start with, and having MLB pony up for some additional baseball scholarships isn't gong to make that much of a difference. If MLB really wants to change the way college ball operates, they need to quit being a bunch of damn cheapskates and spend the money necessary to get the NCAA out of the business of baseball, period. Players who are going to college should be allowed to concentrate on school during the school year and then go out in the summer and pay for actual money on teams associated with the colleges. Hell, I have no problem with colleges running minor league teams as a sideline, for that matter. This nonsensical ideal of the "scholar-athlete" needs to be disposed of, though, because if it's implemented with MLB cash, you're going to have kids used and abused by colleges for the ultimate benefit of the MLB the same way they are in basketball and football.

If MLB is really concerned that black kids aren't getting into baseball as much as Latino or white kids, maybe they ought to consider spending some of the money they put into the Dominican and Venezuelan baseball academies on similar schools in their home towns. There are a lot of kids who don't have the physical tools to play basketball or football, but they could be great baseball players if they got the chance - and if nothing else, they'd get an actual education, which is more than you can say about the public schools in a lot of major league cities.

Just say no to the NCAA, Commissioner. Drive them out of the baseball business and replace them with minor league teams operated by the colleges and at least partially funded by MLB. In the long run, it would be the best way to achieve the goals you say you're after.

Well, it's been about a week since I finished the CPA exam, which means I only have 2-3 weeks more to wait until I find out whether I passed or not. In the meantime, this is looking an awful lot like a rerun of last summer, when I couldn't find any temporary work to save my life. Doubleplus ungood.

Aside from talking to staffing managers, there hasn't been much going on. The run to Brian's was good, even if Mark got the date wrong and had to be reminded; also, grilling the other 2 1/2 pounds of the bacon slab may not have been a good idea. Well, it'll get used up.

Probably going to head down and reapply for food stamps tomorrow if I don't get called to work.

Finished up the Emberverse novels and am now rereading Kratman & Ringo's The Tuloriad.

Well, having dealt with half my weekend obligations at Stacy's joint, it's time to clean up and head out to Chez brian_edminster for the burning of meat, conversation and other joys of life.

But first, this documentary on punk/gospel band Gee As In Jesus, which I found during my futile search for a suitable video to accompany the post linked above. Unfortunately, their CD Remind The Forgetful is no longer available, but you can experience some of their weirdness at their MySpace page, which has the sidesplitting "Jesus Loves You" and "Jesus Is The Answer" but not, unfortunately, "Immolation For The Lord".

Time to change bandages, get dressed, and head on up the road...

Went in, did the Regulatory part of the CPA exam yesterday, stopped in at The Compleat Strategist in Falls Church on the way home (yes, it's still open) to do some window shopping, then came home and crashed hard...slept from about 1600 to 0100 this morning, after which I got up and got caught up on some blogging that has been delayed by the internet outage on Sunday and the CPA exam this week. I think I did well on the tests, but I won't know for sure until the grades come back in 3-4 weeks from the Board of Accountancy.

I do have one last test this morning; the fourth unit test in Business Law. I think what I'm going to do is just take a short nap, re-read the chapter objectives for the last three chapters, and have at it. Between that and having gone through the regulatory part of the CPA yesterday (which is half business law, half taxes) I reckon I can muddle through.

And after that, I guess I'll need to update my file with Accountemps and talk to them about things to do until the CPA arrives. I'm still in an awkward place in the job market - all kinds of experience, but no accounting degree, and no offsetting CPA. Maybe being a candidate waiting for results will count for something. Maybe it won't. Anyway, I am sick to death of classes, and if I can avoid having to go back for a couple more semesters at NVCC just for the sake of finishing the AA, so much the better.

Finished April at 339, down seven pounds from the beginning of the month. Perhaps predictably, I put some it back on, but that's coming back off, and assuming there's work out there for me, I can get back on a regular schedule and do a better job of sticking to the diet. In related news, the VA sent me a big box of bandages, gauze, and paper tape, and the new compression stockings are awesome, so I have some faint hope of getting the leg ulcers healed up before the end of summer and getting some pool time in.

Finished the first Emberverse trilogy (Dies The Fire, The Protector's War, and A Meeting At Corvallis) and am now working on the second trilogy (The Sunrise Lands, The Scourge of God, and The Sword Of The Lady).

Block came through pretty quickly with my commission payment; unfortunately about a third of it was eaten by taxes, and I'd forgotten about my last week of pay, but it was better than nothing.

So I spent a good part of the weekend and Monday stressing over the end-of-semester crunch, but in the end I put the pedal to the metal and managed to get all the backlogged business law stuff done, along with the necessary studying for last night's unit exam in Intermediate Accounting II, following which I came home and started going over the horrible details of pensions, bonds, and leases so that I wouldn't completely screw the pooch this afternoon when I went in for the Financial portion of the CPA exam.

Well, apparently it was the right thing to do, since both exams, last night and this afternoon, seemed ridiculously easy. I had wasted some time yesterday afternoon boning up on the Statement of Cash Flows, which I thought was going to be on the unit test (but wasn't). Even that worked out, because there were a couple of questions on the CPA exam that I was able to slam-dunk thanks to doing that review. Maybe I'm thoroughly delusional, but I have gone from an attitude of grim determination to joyful optimism. We'll see if the rest of the tests are this easy when the results come back from the Board of Accountancy in three or four weeks. .

So tomorrow is the comprehensive final in Intermediate Accounting. This is a change from the schedule; it was originally scheduled for May 2, but that's when I'm doing Regulation, so since the Testing Center is closing early I get to go into the STAB office and take it tomorrow before class. Weehu. The weekend will be spent immersed in Auditing and Business, not so much in Regulation since half the latter is taxes and the other half is business law, and as you recall I've been doing a lot of both this semester on top of the review classes.

I'm picking the really good bits out of A Meeting At Corvallis and Dies The Fire and using Quartered Safe Out Here as a bedtime book.

Made decent progress on clearing the business law homework backlog, and started to review the Becker Financial material. Today will be mostly about reviewing the relevant chapters for Tuesday's unit test in Accounting.

The Nationals canceled today's game with the Marlins, probably because after raining all night it's looking like it's going to rain all day too. Which is too bad, but we get out of the weekend series with a sweep. Somewhat related: John Lannan, who has been exiled to Rochester, may be going to Boston if the Red Sox have any brains. The Yankees have been bashing the BoSox pitchers so hard this weekend that the starters are mumbling in tongues when they come off the mound, and the bullpen's been doing even worse. There's already speculation that Bobby V's days may not be long in the land of the bean and the cod. My fantasy team is only in its third week of head-to-head matches, which aren't working quite the way I thought they did -it's more like football than baseball in that regard- so it's really too early to tell how I'm doing there.

Stuff I've been reading lately that isn't about accounting or business law: Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space and Scatterbrain, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and Charles Stross' The Trade Of Queens, which I still like quite a bit in spite of some Grauniad-inspired caricatures of conservative icons.

So here's how things are piling up: Tuesday, I have two chapter reviews and a reaction paper due in the morning law class, and in the evening I have my unit III exam in intermediate accounting.
Wednesday afternoon at 1430, I have the Financial portion of the CPA exam. The following Monday, it's Auditing at 1500, followed by Business Environment on Tuesday at 1730 (simultaneously with my comprehensive final in accounting; going to have to reschedule that) and Regulation on Wednesday at 1100. Thursday is the final in Business Law.

I can do this. Calmness, confidence, optimism...also, a ton of reading, writing, and homework problems between now and then.

Or is it?

I've been planning for the last few months to take the CPA exam next Monday and Tuesday, April 23 and 24, but between the late arrival of my Metro State transcript at the Board of Accountancy and not paying for the exams themselves until late Monday night, there's a possibility that NASBA is going to tell me I'll be taking the exam some other time. Later in the month or maybe next month, even. Still, I'm going ahead and preparing for it, going over the Becker stuff, doing flashcards, reviewing my notes, and all that. If I have more time to study, that'll be good, and if I don't, that's pretty much what I was expecting.

Yesterday, unfortunately, was eaten by snakes or a relapse of the flu. I went to bed about 2300, intending to get up at 0300 and do the morning linkagery for Stacy but didn't wake up until 0630. Felt tired and achy, didn't get much done, and wound up going to bed around 1800 after dinner instead of going to accounting class. Needless to say, I blew off the morning law class as well. Thursday will be better, to say nothing of today; after 9+ hours of sleep I feel much better, with only a little achiness in the neck. Going to take two Tylenols and drive on.

One of the things I am going to do today is visit the prosthetics shop at the VA Medical Center downtown so I can swap out the lightweight compression stockings (more like knee-high panty hose and even less useful) for the heavy-duty compression stockings they gave me a few years ago. Need to get enough of those so I'm not having to wash them every other day.

Surprised to see that Block is paying me early, but also gratified - assuming that the Daily Activity Report is correct, I'll clear a little over $300 in commission for the year's work.