Life, lately.

Or life after CPA. Or life after being promoted to audit manager.

Wait, what?!!

Apparently things professionally couldn't be better at the moment. Passed the CPA exam and effective July 1 (coincidentally tomorrow), I'm a manager at my firm. Holy. shit. It's so weird when things start to just fall into place. I know it's been a lot of work to get to where I am right now but it's just like one day all of a sudden everything makes sense and it just all clicks together. It's very refreshing. I'm very excited for the prospect of this next year in my new roles.

Tim also just passed his national medic test on the first try Saturday, which was very exciting. It's quite the accomplishment. The test is not given very frequently (once per year) and it's kind of the practical equivalent of my CPA exam. If he wouldn't have passed it he would have had to fly to California to retake it and if he didn't pass then, well, he would have basically been screwed till next year. My understanding, anyway. I'm very humble in how little I know about his profession. Most often when he talks about any of it, I'm standing there with my mouth open, like, "You. have. got. to. be. kidding. me." I don't think I really need to explain how nuts saving lives must be but to really hear all of the intricate details involved in it-including even the petty politics that exist in his field just like any other- but to deal with that coupled with everything else usually just leaves me shaking my head in astonishment.

This was one half of the ending of his year of medic school and finale of his degree in para medicine. The only thing left is one trauma team lead on a call (meaning he has to have a trauma patient and he has to completely lead the call, make all of the game time decisions, etc) and a written exam. Then he's done.

To celebrate all of our accomplishments in our professions as of late, we spent the weekend in the sun. Wait, did I just say in the sun? When referring to Seattle? I know, it surprised me too. So much so that I want to run around like a two year old on Christmas and tell everyone- "hey, guess what, it's 80 degrees outside. And sunny! And I've been wearing a bikini for the past three days! Aren't you excited?!" While they look at me like I'm on some sort of drug and that if I'm that happy, maybe I should share.

It has been ABOVE 80 degrees here for the past 4 days and shows no sign of any worse weather in the next week. I. am. so. freaking. excited. I really thought we were skipping summer this year. I'm TOLD that every June it takes a while to warm up and "that's just how it is here" but in my reality June is summer and I don't care how it is here. Finally summer cooperated. Anyway, Saturday while Tim was gone all day, I was at the beach. When he got back that evening, it was so hot we went BACK to the lake. Sunday we coupled beach time with running up a mountain. I do have to say that even though we practically ran up 2.5 miles in 90 degree weather at about a 10% incline, it was SO much more tame compared to the beasts of mountains we've done the prior two weeks. No comparison and probably the one and only reason we were even remotely able to run up the thing on Sunday.

Two weeks ago we started with Mt. Si then last week we did mailbox peak. I will write more about mailbox in another post once I have my pictures downloaded and have not already written so much. It was by far one of the most intense hikes I have ever been on. Suffice it to say for now, we were hiking in snow (in June), we were ABOVE all other peaks around us, we were asked by people if the top if we were either a) training for Rainer or b) just trying to kick our own asses (the latter), we were hiking for approximately 6+ hours, the trail was just made by some mountain men (so it was not clearly marked in the slightest...actually that was very cool) and the day after we did it, I stayed home from work. I spent the majority of the day working from home wondering if sliding down the stairs on a cookie sheet would work to get me from point a (upstairs) to point b (downstairs). My only issue was trying to figure out a way to propel myself back UP the stairs after using the cookie sheet down. More on all of that later.

Until then... I'm off to sleep with the windows open and the 75 degree breeze blowing in. In Seattle. I'm in warm weather heaven.