Past, Present, Future

Hey guys! I'm still here. Sorry if this entry is a bit disjointed, let's just say I turned in a big assignment today and Happy Harry's is having a penny sale right now. Since the last time I wrote some things have happened. Teddy came to visit me, and we drank ever so much beer and watched ever so many James Bond movies. We continue to be serious about getting tattoos together, and I continue to be too poor to feel like that's a justifiable expense. But soon! Soon. I have made even more friends at trivia, and have met a few new vegetarians and vegans through Trevor and Angela, which has been great (and I've got another potluck to look forward to before winter break!). I was home for Thanksgiving, which was great -- I sang with the choir Thanksgiving morning, I entertained Becky with my extremely specific Salma Hayek impression, we had the most delicious vegan Thanksgiving dinner + turkey, my parents and I saw Interstellar (physics!), and I saw a whole bunch of friends. Since I got back to Fargo I've been very productive, and I'm feeling good about the end of the term.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post -- my excitement about the future! The immediate future. I'm terrified of anything more than about five months out. I finally (finally!) scheduled my thesis proposal for next Friday. Is my proposal any good? Hard to say, but I can't look at it anymore and I'm looking forward to that being out of the way so I can finally start collecting data. The only other thing that I need to do before the semester ends is a paper for Jessica's class, but I've got a pretty good outline in the works. There are a whole bunch of fun activities happening in the next couple of weeks, too. There's the vegan potluck, a holiday party at Erin's place, more trivia, and maybe some going out with Emmanuel and Amy to celebrate E's passing his dissertation proposal (congrats again!). I think next semester (other than finding a job, yikes) is going to be a lot of fun -- I'm taking mitigation, (hopefully) an independent study with Jessica on disaster insurance, and some thesis credits. There's going to be a lot of writing, but I think I'm ready for it. For obvious reasons, I don't usually look forward to winter in Fargo, but I've been doing these yoga videos online, and I'm even look forward to my seasonal depression because there's a video for "Yoga for the Winter Blues."

I've also got big plans for winter break. Well, I have a big plan. As some of you may know, I only read the first Harry Potter book, and consequently did not have a childhood, basically. I'm going to try to read the whole series while I'm home to close out what, if I do say so myself, has been quite a good year of reading (seriously, guys, add me on Goodreads!. In addition to Harry Potter, I'll also be doing a wee bit of traveling -- Sam invited me to go to Times Square for NYE, which I can guarantee you I will hate, but I love Sam and I'm going to do it for her. A couple of days later, my cousin is getting married in New Jersey, which is great for me because it's the first time all the cousins will be together again since March. I'll also be turning 26 over break, and I'm excited for my traditional birthday bash, by which I mean singing at Mass with a bunch of old people.