Someone up there has to be laughing

You know those moments where something is so exasperatingly comical, it seems like someone has to be controlling events to conspire against you?

Well, that just happened to me, but thankfully, it was a minor episode: trying to finalize my phonetics term paper.

1. I finished my paper! 7 pages of transcription, and 8 pages of analysis! Yay!
   
2. I print out all 15 pages, only to find that I forget to center the "References" title. I print out the last page again.
3. I notice that ALL the pages have page numbers in BOTH the upper right corner and bottom center. Not sure how that happened. Delete bottom page numbers.
   
4. I print out the entire essay again and staple it and discover I forgot to include the last page of the essay.
5. I take out the staple and staple it again, only to realize that my conclusion has center alignment (as opposed to right justified). It's the only section of the essay in center alignment. WHY? WHY?!
6. Whatever. If the professor doesn't like center-aligned conclusion paragraphs, I don't like him. OK, that's not true, but I just don't care anymore.
   

In one day (today), I ate ALMOST a whole loaf of challah bread. I decided to allow myself to enjoy non-vegan food till January, so I bought the challah (with egg in it).

And now it's 11:37pm and my stomach is STUFFED with bread.
It could be worse.

It's time to set a date

I haven't posted in a while because I've been overwhelmed with starting my job (working two hours a day. I still can't handle it!) and a lot of term papers coming up in the near future.

Luckily, I spent 6 hours yesterday finishing up my biggest project: a transcription and phonetic analysis of a native Chinese speaker's English. It's actually really interesting to me, and I'm sad it must go the way of so many school projects: loved the topic, but wish I'd had more time to spend on it.

Also, my title of "setting a date" refers to my goal to become vegan. Yes, folks, it's high time I took that step. All the cool kids are doing it (literally--it seems to be a hipster thing, but also CAMMY has been vegan for years now). So I'm trying to set a date for when it will happen. I'm thinking New Year's. That way, I can still pig out on sweets on Christmas and post-Christmas, but once the new year starts, it's purely vegan delights for me! Of which there are many, many, many in New York City. Thank goodness.

OK, back to making final edits on the paper. Hope everyone had a bonne week-end. (And I am too lazy to look up if that French is correct.)

I forgot to mention

Since writing yesterday's post, I realized that a lot, and I mean a LOT of my friends have also done amazing things and taken huge life steps in the last few years.

These people have done things like move across the country, start medical school, start nursing school, start law school, start other graduate studies, move to freaking DC (I don't know how anyone can afford to live there; I think it's more expensive than New York, (although this theory is not based on any fact)), get married....

So in other words, I just wanted to give a little more love and recognition to the friends at home. Or far away from home, as the case may be.

How did this happen?

It dawned on me today that I live, work, (love) and go to school in the heart of New York City.

I have achieved a goal, or dream, that I subconsciously didn't think would happen. And I'm kind of amazed that it actually did happen.

So, uh, the moral of the story is: Go out and achieve your dreams!*


*Even if it means you will have no money afterward.

Confession

I have a confession to make today: I didn't vote.

Argh! It was due to sheer laziness. I suddenly got motivated Sunday night to try to fax in my absentee ballot, but couldn't get my fax machine to work (and if you try to fax at the UPS store they generally charge $1 per page, and the ballot is 12 pages).

So I fail. And I think the Democrats might be sort of failing in this election as well. :(

In other news, I got punched really hard at karate last night (we don't usually do contact, but I got paired up with an aggressive black belt):



The bruise is a bit difficult to see in this picture, but believe me, it's there. I'm a little embarrassed about going into work with this thing, so I'll be wearing sweaters and long sleeves for the rest of the week!