For better or worse, it is done. My daycare budget is complete and was handed in at 9:00 this morning. All in all, I am very proud of the ways I thought to balance it and am happy with how thoroughly I examined the problem and the solutions. I think I really gained a good understanding of the dynamics of budgeting and felt that my method of calculation was much more accurate than a lot of other ways. At the same time, my presentation is pretty poor because I rushed at the end and was not sure the best way to present the information. I hope that the thoroughness of my analysis comes through inspite of my muddled presentation. But I do fear that the fact that TAs have to grade so many and that I can't really defend and explain the methods used, what I did will not be noticed and may hurt me because of my lack of definition. Ah well.

Today was a pretty good class (the last minute budgeting is why I am posting now and not earlier). The stuff we were talking about was really clicking and it made me think about different and innovative ways to create tax structures. It was like a whole puzzle laid out before me and I really want to start playing with it. (Wow,reading that tax structures line again, I am such a nerd).

Any way, right now I am enjoying some respite from budgeting until I have to start studying for my final on friday. I hope I can pull all the stuff I learned together because in doing this stuff, I find that either everything is clicking and the budget just flows or every little step is excrutiatingly difficult and you get frustrated and can't pull anything together for the life of you. Lets hope friday brings more of the former.

On to traveling news, my family is off to cancun to do a makeup vacation after last week's category 5 hurricane caused them to cancel their first attempt. Also Elena will be visiting this weekend. It will be nice to see her. I also got a few copies of the report I did for Citizens Against Government waste in the mail the other day. It is nice to have a hard copy for when it is pulled off the website or whatever.

My music club CDs finally came. I am soooo excited. I have waited for these 6 free cds for goddamn ever. I got the Beach Boys - Pet Sounds, Moby - Songs (his early greatest hits record); Velvet Underground - Greatest Hits; Echo and the Bunnymen - Greatest Hits; The Cars - Greatest Hits; and Marilyn Manson - Greatest HIts. Yes, I know there are a lot of greatest hits records and only poseurs buy greatest hits records, but I am trying to expand my music collection and explore new artists that I know a few of their songs and think I might like and if they tickle my fancy, I can purchase more of them. Anyway. That is all. I have to go and do all the stuff I didn't do the past few days cause of my budget.

bye.
-Jesse

It is official now, Lance has wone 7 straight Tour de Frances. Watching the last stage was pretty interesting. They have to do 8 laps on the champs de ellyse, which is cobble stone. This makes it very difficult and causes a ton of crashes, but because it was drizzling, the tour officials initiall had cancelled the time bonuses on the part making the players final times when they started on the champs de ellyse their final time. But then it got sunny and in the end they did end up awarding time bonuses, which screwed and American rider Levi Leipheimer who was in the 5th position less than a second ahead of Alexander Vinokourov. Vinokourov ended winning the stage after the 8 laps and got a time bonus pushing him ahead of Levi for the 5th spot. I like vinokourov generally, he has a lot of fight in him, but I felt that Levi got screwed and couldn't even challenge for the time bonus cause he didn't know there was going to be one.

Anyway, I have one more day until my budget project is due. Saturday I had a huge break thorough after must frustration and figured out a more accurate way to calculate the number of employees. I will have to run it by the TAs today to see if it is correct. It still gives me a higher number than what they say is correct but I think they might be rounding incorrectly. Yesterday was pretty rough and it had gotten the best of me for most of the day. But after a nice soak in the tub, I destressed a bit and got a lot done. Hopefully I can push through and get the last bit done and done well for tomorrow.

Well class beckons.
-Jesse

Yesterday was no good and just frustrating. A lot of things that should have been much easier were just a pain in the ass and some things that should have been done are still not. arrrrggghhhh.

Ugh. Republicans also are getting on my nerves too. Not all Republicans, just the ones who shoot their mouth off and sound like morons and/or assholes. There are a couple of people in my program that fall in to this catergory. The more I hear them speak, the more I feel repulsed by them. What comes out of their mouthes always sounds selfserving and greedy. Last year I saw former Bush press secretary Ari Fleisher speak at my school. He made the point that the one thing he would change about how the Republican party presents itself is that they do not show compassion for others. As a Republican, I could not agree more with this statement. I am sure there are some Republicans that are greedy self-serving bastards,but many do care about people who get the short end of the stick. I am just sick of the greedy ones with the loud mouthes being the ones representing our party.

Gotta get to calss,
-Jesse

Day 2 of daily posting. So right now for my Public Budgeting class I am working on a budget for a hypothetical daycare center. (If you would like to see the actual assignment, here it is ). I like it but it is such a pain in the ass. We are working in excel and the budget has to be "flexible" - meaning that you have one page of inputs and the second page, which is the actual budget, cannot contain any numbers on it just refernces to numbers on the inputs sheet. It is very useful but it can cause problems in that one little mistake or bad assumption can throw everything off. This becomes really annoying when the TAs keep telling me that my deficit is still high. So last night, I went through the calculations by hand but I forgot to email the revised excel sheet to myself. So now before I can work on it at school, I have to go back to my apartment to email to myself. It is just annoying.

Today we have a brown bag lunch on the specialization I want to have on my MPA. Some key professors in the State and Local Government Financial Analysis and Management program will come talk to us about it and their classes. Hopefully it will be useful.

Now for some random thoughts:
1. Everyone in Graduate school is married or engaged regardless of their age.
2. I am really obsessed with Billy Talent songs lately, but I don't know if I could handle the whole album. It might be a little too whiney. But I really like the singles. To get a sampling go to the videos page
3. Packing a lunch for yourself is a good way to save money, but it sucks when you haven't gone shopping for any snack foods so you just have to make two sandwiches for yourself instead. I guess I better get on that.

Oh well, I guess that is all for now. (e:Mike) I would be happy to help out in your soap opera if I can. Let me know and good luck finding people. All (e:strip)pers should go and do a part it was fun the last time I did it.

Take care,
-Jesse

Lately, I have been obsessed with the Tour de France. Watching it is now part of my nightly routine and I haven't missed more than 3 stages. (I do kind of cheat because I watch the 3 hour nightly shortened replay of the tour rather than watching the entire thing live in the morning). I was surprised at how exciting it is. There is so much strategy involved and whether you work with your opponents or not. I am quite impressed. Unfortunately, there are only 5 days left. But I guess it will be good for me to not waste that much time doing essentially nothing each night.

I am also going to try and start posting for a little each morning. I arrive on campus each day a half hour before my class starts. I usually use this time to check my email, read (e:strip) etc. But now I will try posting each day too so I can be a bit more regular in my entries rather than going weeks at a time without posting anything.

Well that is all for now. Got to get to class.

-Jesse