Playing with Numbers

This last week has seemed to have an overall theme with numbers. Every day I have been working on my tiger project data and working out what statistics to do. I spent many hours just researching two different tests, and I had to spend a lot of time setting up my data sheet to be stats ready. After I finished that I couldn't remember how to even load it to R (my stats program) and had to review many of my notes from courses I have had. This morning I realised I had missed something and need to fix my data sheet again and then load it into R again. Hopefully today I will be able to start playing with tests!! Stats and I seem to have a love/hate relationship as it takes so long just to figure out what test to do, how to do the test, understand the results, etc. In the end though, statistics are awesome in telling you a lot of things about your data!

Additionally, Matt and I met with an H&R Block accountant to sort out our Australian taxes. Since Matt is basically self-employed it is so much easier to have a professional do our taxes. In case you are wondering why we chose H&R Block....we chose them because I wanted to make sure we had a reliable and trustworthy accountant to work with, and they also have an expat division that will help us do US taxes as well. Last year I estimated how much Matt would owe in taxes based off how much he earned and what percentage is owed to taxes. I figured we would owe around $8000! To my surprise our accountant said we will likely owe less than $1000 after he enters in all our deductions! This is huge!! Matt made a lot less for our US taxes in 2013 and yet we owe $3000 to the IRS. I had to spend the next day creating a spreadsheet with all of Matt's business expenses, counting receipts, looking up house bills and whatever else the accountant needed.  It may seem like a lot of work, but it is worth it. There are definitely some differences between US and AUS taxes!

Matt has also been working with numbers, but in a whole different way. He has spent many numbers of hours working and earning extra money. For the past month he has been working his regular job and then every night and all day Saturday he has been going to a side job. This particular side job is at my colleague Tim's home which he has recently been renovating. What we thought would be a weekend job ending up taking way more time! He hopes to finish this week.

Despite Matt's long hours we were able to have some nice evenings together. One night we watched Divergent and the following night we went to TGIF's for dinner. We may have had to wait nearly 30 minutes just to have someone take our order, but the food was awesome! Their Jack Daniel's sauce is so good and I wish they would sell it! It's nice to get out and do something together once in a while.

Saturday I also spent a couple hours doing some much needed cleaning! As I mentioned before, we decided to dispense with teaching our cat to use the toilet. Well, we have had issues with going back to litter boxes. We bought a storage container with high walls, but he didn't seem to like it so we switched to the small litter box from when he was a kitten. That didn't work either because he would dump so much of the litter out from trying to cover up his messes. Finally, I found the holy grail with a cheap $10 storage bin that has slighter higher walls and is quite long. It works great and he doesn't get litter everywhere. I was so happy I had to take a picture of the new set-up.

Sunday was a busy day. I got up early so I could make a red velvet cake for one of my young women's birthday. After that I had to prepare my chastity lesson for the class. It's not that easy to think of ways to explain to 13 to 17 year old's the importance of keeping themselves sexually pure. In the end I think the lesson worked out well, but the highlight was easily my red velvet cake with homemade cream cheese frosting! I wish I had taken a picture because I think all those episodes of Cake Boss paid off because I impressed myself.

Some other Sunday events was Matt's discovery of a blue-tongued lizard in our back patio. He was so excited about that and made me run to get a camera. Although those lizards are quite common he hadn't actually seen one yet and not only did he get to see it but he got to catch it! We were a little worried about the cat attacking it so Matt released it behind all the townhouses and watched it run to a nearby den.

Also, we had Brock and Kaytlin over for FHE that night. We had a nice dinner, lesson, and then watched Meet the Robinsons. Kaytlin's lesson was about provident living/food storage and preparedness. It really got me thinking about some things that Matt and I could be doing better with emergency preparedness. We have a 72-hour kit that my dad bought me one Christmas, but that's not enough for two people. Kaytlin also mentioned about having a USB with any important files for an emergency and I had never thought of that. I think I am going to work on finishing my Master's project first, and then use my time off to look into things I can do for emergency preparedness. Hopefully no major disaster happens in the next month and a half! It's back to numbers for me! An what would a blog be without cute cat pictures?