more fun horoscope

Aquarius Horoscope for March 01, 2010

After the stress and tension of the past couple of days, you'll be happy to know you're due for a nice, relaxing day -- as long as you find someone delicious to hide out with. Knowing you, that won't be a problem, but you'd better get busy! Don't keep that special person waiting -- or risk them thinking they should make plans with someone else because you're not going to call. Get to them, and now.

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yep... gotta go find that special someone to hide with, haha...

in other news, i spent the weekend at rae's house with her parents and cat, pepper, to celebrate purim. we made hamantaschen; it was awesome. i think i got the recipe down, but just in case i forget, here it is:

1. beat 1 cup of eggs (~4 eggs).
   
2. add 1 cup of oil, 2 tsps of vanilla, 3 tsps of baking powder, 1.25 cups of sugar, (and 1 tsps of salt which we didnt add).
   
3. beat in 5.5 cups of flour.
   
4. knead dough and spread on a floured surface.
5. cut dough into circular patties.
6. place a spoonful of filling in the middle. (we used apple, cherry, and blueberry pie filling)
7. pinch 3 corners together, leaving the center open.
8. place on a greased baking pan.
9. put in preheat oven for 30min.

it's so yummy. i would describe it as a cookie tart. her parents are really really nice. we also went to watch the movie, valentine's day. i enjoyed it. later that night, we went to see a high school play that her cousins are in. it was called "all shook up" and they sang elvis' songs. it was awesome -- many funny moments and their voices were spectacular.

but before all that happened, NYU called a second snow day for friday! it was amazing. and i didn't think the storm was as bad as the last one we got.

more fun!

last night was another fun packed night. i went to a friend's birthday party at mehanata. lots of dancing and really crowded. ended the night on a pretty confused note, but that's something for me to ponder in the days to come.

earlier in the day, after work, allan, rae and i went to play pool at soho billiards. the place was packed. i forget how many games we managed to play in 1.5 hours. i think i did pretty well considering i haven't played very much or very often. allan was like a pro at it, tho he did manage to get the 8 ball in on the break lol.

dinner at my fave viet restaurant. yummy, tho grilled shrimp wasn't that good. i should just go back to my grilled pork.

fri fun

first off...happy birthday sherry!
second, today was a blast! jinyoung, sherry, allan, john, and i hung out at rae's place and played DDR and watched a whole bunch of movies, including...

• nick & norah's infinite playlist
• the ninth gate
• matrix reloaded
• matrix revolution

we bought a cake for sherry and sang her the birthday song. allan made pot roast for us! it was gooooood... all in all, it was an awesome party...

but i think i'm coming down with something...

karaoke monday

had an awesome afternoon and evening at duet 35 for 5 hours! rae and i started early and then arjun and john joined us later. we thought more ppl could come, but everyone canceled at the last min. i almost got arjun to serenade me. almost lol. but everyone sang and it was funnn... the guys need to get less fearful and really SING (louder!).

i'm not ready for classes again!! pleaseeeee i need another week of vacationnnn

fascinating horoscope....

Aquarius Horoscope for January 18, 2010

You're usually the very soul of objectivity, but not today. You're in an extremely unusual mood -- in fact, you're feeling nostalgic, sentimental (what you'd ordinarily refer to as 'mushy,' and only if you were feeling generous). What's up with that? Well, look at it this way: Even Aquarians are entitled to gush a little every now and then. It's simply your turn. Besides, there's someone out there who'll be delighted at this temporary lapse. It's called 'romance' in some tribes, by the way.

morning after the fun

passport
the guy at the post office was really nice and pretty quick about it. it took bout 30min and cost me $100 ($75 for actual passport, $25 for processing). they took my birth certificate too. wait time is anywhere from 1 week to 2 months. i should get it by spring break! not that i'm going anywhere where i'd need a passport anyway... (which reminds me... allan! where's our itinerary??)

pool
rae and i played pool for 3 hours. we asked for the powerplay rate ($21 for 3 hours up to 4 players). we were expecting john to show up, but he didn't. it was still fun. we took turns breaking and played 9 games. we ran out of time on the last one. our scores were pretty much tied. i swear the balls were having a coup d'etat. mine kept getting to the pocket and then not going in. but, fun nonetheless...

moma
we met up with arjun at the train station and went up to the moma to see the tim burton exhibit. unfortunately for us, the free tickets for it were already all given out and the exhibit was sold out. it took forever to do bag check because there were so many people. then we met up with john and alysa and wandered the orozco exhibit on the 6th fl. let's just say i didn't really see how it was art... somehow i ended up wandering the gallery with arjun cuz we lost the other three. it was tiring; we wandered through the rest of the 6th fl and the 5th fl. i sat on the benches a couple of times. eventually the two of us just went to starbucks to sit and chat (and i got me a caramel apple spice~! yummm). rae, john, and alysa met up with us there after they got kicked out for closing.

dinner
john and alysa didn't want to eat cuz they ate before going to the moma so rae and i just went to dunkin donuts for a bagel. chitchatted bout a bunch of things. they went to the top of rockefeller instead.

salsa
we got to the place early so the dancing hadn't really begun yet. we checked in our coats and bags ($2/item! $$). my feet were already killing me. i'd been wearing 3inch heels all day cuz i didn't want to bring a change of shoes. bad idea -- gotta remember for next time, always bring a change of shoes. in fact, i could've worn sneakers because it's not like anyone cared about what shoes i wore, i think (tho the two strangers i danced with did keep looking down, but that might've been cuz i didn't know any steps; i was just moving, lol...)

music was great; there was a mix of salsa and club music. wilmer met us there first, then john and alysa joined us. wilmer's friend, oleg, came later. the dancing didn't really pick up till about 11:30, when a million people joined the crowd. the dance floor is relatively small so we barely had room to move. people kept coming in and out. we did a lot of group dancing (one big circle) and couples dancing. my first dance was with a complete stranger. he just asked and there wasn't a reason to say no. rae and wilmer were dancing. the stranger was good. he did turns and dips. needless to say, i was awkward, having not gone dancing in such a long time. i also danced with wilmer for a few songs. he's not big on spins, which is fine. i got one dance in with his friend. he's so shy, lol. the other stranger i danced with took me for a whirl. he just kind of swooped into our group and grabbed me. talk about being swept off your feet! i also danced with rae and alysa; the one person i didn't dance with was john. lol.

by the time it was bout 1:30, i was dead tired and my feet were killing me. i crashed at rae's place (we didn't go to bed till like 3am) and got up at 10am for work this morning at noon. we split a breakfast order at the diner next to the train station.

sooooooo awesome night. we gotta do it again some time...

a day with allan

lol, i saw this comic and immediately felt empathetic. it's like the story of my life... ty phdcomics for understanding

came to campus round 10am. played around with my netbook for bout an hour before buckling down and teXing some more. allan got off work around 1 and i met up with him. we went to jas market to pick up miso paste and tofu. then we headed into walgreens intending to buy soda, but couldnt find a cheaper one. so we got on the bus and headed to his place. we stopped by the market to pick up broccoli, an onion, orange soda, and beef.

cooking with allan is an interesting experience. i'm not experienced in the kitchen -- let's put it that way. and we got into quite a few disagreements. i wasn't prepping fast enough. sorry! i'm not a seasoned chef... =/

took the 6 -> N train home. finished reading my mystery book -- dim sum dead. i'm starting to get back into the mystery novel phase. apparently, according to pauline, librarians love mysteries. we bonded over this book -- lethal legacy. i don't recall where it was recommended, but i noted it. and pauline brought it to work on thurs -- she was reading it on the plane trip back.

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wake is tues 3-7. funeral wed. i think i'll be going to just the wake... gotta remember to bring lots of tissues...

movie night

i signed in before 10am and proceeded to get nothing done before 1pm. i spent the first hour reading/sending email, catching up on news, checking fb, etc. then rae came in around 10:45 and we spent like 2 hours talking about random things. then i tried to get started on one of my two papers, but i had a lot of trouble starting so i starting looking for a suitable hook instead. allan came in at some point (like 3pm). rae and john went to the review session. i added another 3/4 pg to my essay. and allan wrote a page long essay in favor of ebooks and saying libraries going to be obsolete! when john and rae came back, they convinced us to go do work in the lounge and watch a movie. it turns out the lounge is FULL of people. there was not one table that didn't have someone at it.

so i suggested we find an empty classroom and project the movie! we checked a few floors and finally settled into 312. we decided to run across to the supermarket to grab dinner and snacks. allan volunteered to watch our stuff. the three of us picked up some drinks and gummies and microwavables. then we hooked up rae's computer to the projector (ty allan the tech guy) and watched harry potter 6 and equilibrium -- both excellent films. christian bale is really hott... he almost deserves a CIATM post....

overall, a really fun night. i vote we do this again! along with karaoke...

fun and not-so-fun times

yesterday, i took allan and rae to big wong (chinese restaurant) for lunch and then we visited elizabeth center. we ended up walking back to campus because the bus took too long. i got some more teXing in before we went to the review session. kellen's really sweet. he teXed up his own sheet for us to use as review (6 pages of condensed material).

i got to the lab on campus at 9:30am this morning and proceeded to watch house while teXing the rest of my review sheet. rae came in around 10am and progress slowed down by ~25%. but i managed to get the thing done by 3pm (i forced it onto 20pgs). allan joined us around 1pm. they did complex while i teXed. sherry came around 2:15 but stayed in the lounge to eat lunch. we eventually moved to the lounge too and we did a quick review and rundown of my and kellen's review sheets. i think the major thing we need to work on is counterexamples. it started snowing too at some point and john was being wish-washy about coming to campus. he eventually caved and came.

then everyone else started working on complex again so i borrowed rae's computer to start work on my cataloging paper. allan lost motivation to do hw so he was throwing things at me and folding origami and paper airplanes. there was a guy who came in and sat at the table next to ours (the last one left actually) and i kept catching him looking at me (i dont know if it was just a coincidence or if he was actually staring at me). i think we did one hella job scaring him away with allan throwing paper airplanes around. he threw one that skimmed right over the guy's notebooks. anyway, i managed to convince allan to play some piano for us. he's not bad despite not having played for 4 years. i really sucked. lol. johann was taking a nap there, but he got up when we got to the piano. he even printed out twinkle, twinkle little star for me to play! ^^ it was fun. allan and i tried to do a few songs with him on the left hand and me on the right. i cannot read sheet music at all. i'm so bad. i would rather sing from sheet music than to play from it. i kept hitting all the wrong notes and i had no sense of rhythm. oh well... at least the only people in the lounge were johann and my group of mathies. johann said he didn't care. lol.

so i just got home and i'm starving so i'm going to grab something to eat. more work planned for tomorrow... hoping to get to campus around 10am so i can slack off for half an hour and then write my two papers before going to the review session at 4. after that, more review/writing papers...

an awesome sunday

except for the cold, yesterday was awesome.

met up with danielle for lunch at the film center cafe. we had to wait 15min to be seated and then another 20minutes after we ordered for the food to come. we literally inhaled our food in 10min. it was unusually crowded and noisy. they had the music turned up really loud and it felt more like a club atmosphere than a restaurant. (ps remind me never to order soda there again, costs $3! and it's probably less than a can's worth).

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then we walked down to duet 35. i couldnt remember the address, but we figured there's gotta be a sign. luckily, there was. everyone came late and we didnt start till about 3:30pm. first, we couldn't figure out how to get the machine to work. there were only two people running the place and they were busy running around servicing all the different rooms. there must've been at least 5 parties going on. at some point we couldnt get the mic to stop giving us feedback so we had to bother them again. (we bothered them alot, lol).

but the karaoking was so much fun. allan, rae, and sherry came just when danielle and i decided to get the room started. john joined us about an hour later. we sang a lot of songs -- most of which i knew so i could sing along. at one point, allan picked one of eminem's rap songs and i was rapping better than him. haha...

the guys did a few songs together (BSB lol). and rae and danielle did some shakira songs. they tried one in spanish and was like, whoa, let's do this one in english. lol. i'm really glad sherry found some songs to sing too. we even did one together since i knew the words to one of the older songs (one of mommy's favorites). we ended with Hey Jude and everyone was singing. pure awesome.

now figuring out payment was another thing. everything worked out and we even got the weekend pricing so it was cheaper than when i had calculated it beforehand. and she gave me a green business card with some squares stamped so that if we filled up all 18 squares, we get an extra hour! so we are totally coming back.
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then we headed back to campus for food. the guys decided they wanted johnny rockets so that's where we went. their menus are strange cuz they list all the calories you're intaking. so you feel like you can't order anything based on all these super high numbers. the average meal was like half of what your calorie intake for a day should be.

but we ordered and chowed down. conversation was interesting, but i'm not going to post it here. we split after dinner. i walked with danielle to her busstop uptown and the others went back to courant to do complex hw. (i feel incredibly lazy for not joining them, but at the same time, they're doing complex, which is a class i'm not taking!).

all in all, a fun day and hopefully we can do it again soon~

catching up on the last 20 hours

yesterday was my first time using the restrooms in LL1 in Bobst. we send people there all the time from the reference desk. WOW. it's like a fancy upscale restroom that belongs in a hotel or fancy restaurant. there are like 10 stalls in a row and those crazy dyson airblade hand dryers, where you stick your hands into this machine and the air blowing at you moves the skin on your hands. no papertowels anywhere. luckily, they still believe in foam soap to wash your hands with, unlike at smith where they only gave us antibacterial hand sanitizer.

helped rae install miktex/texmaker/texniccenter on her computer. she's got a choice of like 3 editors now. lol...
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then i met up with meg for coffee and catching up. we went to the think cafe that's right across from courant. i got a mocha and it was the strangest mocha i have ever had. but i think i like it. it wasn't sweet at all, but i added a packet of sugar and it was good (could've used another one actually). $$ tho so i can't buy that often... we talked about random stuff that mainly had to do with reference, internships, difficult questions, difficult patrons, the class i observed earlier, what i learned from that, what i found interesting, etc. we're gonna meet again on monday or tuesday...
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came back to courant; on my way up, i bumped into alex and we talked about the grateful dead archivist position that everyone's talking about. so i end up chatting with him and jen for the next hour before i actually get to obtaining all the stuff i need to do hw.

met up with allan and we walked/talked to chinatown. he wanted to see elizabeth center. i was fairly certain it was closed, but we went anyway (window shopping after hours lol). then we went to big wong for dinner. i was raving about how good the roast pork is and he wanted roast duck. so he ordered two dishes, one of each meat. i wanted a roast pork wonton soup with noodles (really good). unfortunately, it was late by the time we went and they had already sold out of both kinds of meat. haha... so we ended up switching in bbq spare ribs, which were pretty good (not as good as roast pork).
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supposedly, NYC has issued a gridlock for manhattan today and as soon as we got onto the belt parkway, traffic hit us like a brick wall. dad got off at the next exit and dropped me off at the D train and i took that to work this morning. i was afraid the traffic was going to be as bad as that day with the yankee parade. made it to work 20min late so it's coming out of my lunch time, which is fine. i dont really need an hour lunch.

first thing that mike had me do was replace the maintenance kit in the printer. it was surprisingly fun. at first i couldnt figure out how to get the back piece to open, but it turned out to be really easy and i felt really stupid for wasting almost 10min trying to lift it instead of just yanking it out. i really thought it was on a hinge! anyway, once i got that part out, the rest was cake. there was one part i was replacing that left my hands smeared in ink. i had to wash my hands twice before continuing with replacing some of the other parts. i had to get a stool cuz i was too short to reach some of the parts on top. i felt like such a mechanic lol. all in all, it took me about 40min.

after i shelved what little books we had, i rearranged the circ desk cuz we're using a different computer to check items in/out and the materials just weren't strategically located...

and finished the crossword puzzle with a little help from the internet. i found this awesome crossword dictionary!

a really tiring day

so today, i promised allan i would play handball with him so i came out to manhattan. my dad misunderstood where i wanted to be dropped off so i ended up walking up to 36th street and 2nd ave from chinatown cuz i missed the nyu bus. i stopped by allan's apt on my way up to drop off my books and get out of all the layers i was in. i thought it would be a bit colder in the morning, but since i had to trek my way up manhattan, i was really working up a sweat.

when we got to the courts, there were a couple of people playing tennis. i explained the basics and then more as we went along. i think allan was totally hustling me cuz after a few serves, he was already kicking my ass. he claims it was from his experience with tennis since the games are very similar. maybe, i believe that... maybe.

then we ordered take out from this chinese restaurant that's supposed to be really good. it was. they gave me so much, i couldnt finish, though it didn't look like a lot because the box was so big. i got egg drop soup to go with it. good stuff. then we just kind of hung out for a couple of hours talking about movies and music, before heading out to campus to meet rachel for analysis hw.

i was soo dead tired by the time we got there. i was ready for a nap. forcing myself awake to think about analysis is tough! i totally did not have the energy for it. somehow we managed to do most of it.

and now i'm off to bed...

NYAM trip

Edited 11/17/09

twas awesome. i just finished my paper summarizing my visit. i'm not going to post it here, but if you have access to the wiki space, feel free to read it.

11/11 11:11

my wish: [insert secret here]
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here's what i found on the idea.

• the wiki article (of course)
• the facebook page
• the first google hit i came across

so do you believe in its significance now?
now that i think about it, when is the "real" 11:11 since we all live in different time zones? is it where you currently are located? in which case, if i moved to different time zones every hour, i could potentially be making 24 wishes traveling around the world. omg, i want to do that in 2 years. which would be so cool cuz i'd be 24 too. hahahha...

this weekend = relapse

ok, i admit. i have an addiction to world of warcraft. i spent the whole weekend doing instances and raiding. it was worth it tho! i reconnected with my guildies and we had a great time downing yogg. i even got loot! (that i dont really need, but i'm using anyway for the set bonuses). it's ok if you don't understand what i'm talking about...

i slept in yesterday till 12:30pm. it was awesome. this was the first weekend i did not come into courant to do hw or studying or working. it was kind of awesome.

i also continued reading the celtic mythology book (i'm on ch 30 of 37 now) and the fml and mlia websites. i must say mlia is so much more entertaining than fml. there are lots of instances i was roaring with laughter and other instances going "awwww"... i highly recommend perusing the site.

so getting down to work again this week. things to look forward to:

1. getting my linear algebra exam back tonight (oh yay... /sarcasm)
2. going to another reference cohort session at 8:30am on wed (the longest and most jam packed day of the week for me)
3. shadowing evelyn at the reference desk on thursday for two hours (i'm a little scared)
4. going to the NYAM library for my 1.5 hour tour of the general collection and the rare book room!
5. spending all day friday at work in courant library (i'll prob be at the front desk -- which is actually a lot of fun -- remind me to start my paper on the NYAM?).

i'm already looking forward to next weekend...

hotpot @ john's

it was surprisingly a lot of fun. i met all these mandarin speakers tonight and the food was great. i still can't believe john lives ON wall st. it's just so wow. his roommates are all bankers. just amazing. his apt is pretty nice too. i certainly think alcohol made lots of things fun. at some point, rae started dancing (without any music) and tried to teach me and allan. it was definitely hard to do when you've had some rum in you. lol. it was definitely more girls than guys at this party. what they lacked was music. like seriously... still, lots of fun. i enjoyed the party. now i'm off to bed. nite nite...

last night

was one of the best nights i've had in a long time. rae, john, john's (girl?)friend alysa, and i went out to eat and drink at groove (bar and grill). we tried to convince allan to come, but he was being all depressed by himself. he went home before i even got a chance to stop him (i was still in class). we ordered a whole bunch of food and somehow managed to eat it all. a band set up round 9:30 and played awesome music. i'm going to have to ask when alex is going to play around nyu so we can go check his band out too. rae promised to find us a salsa club so we can go dancing. john's got karaoke covered. but first, i'm looking forward to hotpot on friday at john's place. sounds like it will be awesome as wellllll =D

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i should also mention that yesterday was dominated by the news that a male junior from CAS committed suicide in bobst library at 4:30am. the library was reopened at 9 and i came in to work around 9:30am. everything was normal, until i got the email about it. let's see if there's an update... indeed there is. gothamist also seems to be very good at getting news out there early. they even have a photo of the guy. and leave it to the daily news to make things dramatic.

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on a more upbeat note, now that i've depressed everyone who's reading this... i got an invite to google wave! thank you kit macallister! allan and i were playing with it. however, the computer i'm on is much too slow to make it more productive. i got another wave this morning from allan messing around with it more after i got off work yesterday. he found some amazingly cool stuff, like embedding mathematica, adding imdb, amazon, wikipedia, a chess board!, etc. the problem now is that the wave is out of sync a lot. i think that might just have to do with how slow this system is. but yea, totally fun. i'll have to figure out how to get invites for some friends. at the moment, i dont see an option to.