12:52 PM:

Hmmph. I probably should've expected this to happen. Mail.Com is joining the ranks of the free-services-that-ain't-free-anymore. Well, sort of. Apparently, reading your e-mail on the Web will still be free, but having your mail forwarded to another mailbox -- which is what I've always used it for -- is now gonna cost $19.95 a year. Although if I sign up now, they'll charge just $9.95 for the first year.

I have two accounts with Mail.Com. Or if you prefer to look at it another way, I have one; my alter ego who used to work for Clean Sheets has the other. The latter hasn't been used very much, and I might as well let it lapse to Web-only. The former, on the other hand... in addition to being all over this site, it's the one I give out in general, not to mention the one on my business cards. Getting new business cards would cost more than the first year's annual fee, which might settle the question right there.

(Then again, unless I wanna commit myself to paying said annual fee for the next few years, getting new cards might be necessary anyway. Hmmmph.)

I may be more annoyed with myself than with them -- I shoulda seen this coming. Although the reason why I started using Mail.Com to provide my default address in the first place was that the other providers I've been using have been less than stable, so I'm not sure I had a better alternative.

3:44 PM:

Oh, I almost forgot. I got an unexpected bonus today. See, I need to show basic proficiency in two languages as part of the requirements for my grad program. I'd already passed the test in Hebrew last semester, and I took the test in French this past Friday. I didn't study for it, and my preparations consisted solely of taking a really big dictionary out from the library. (We were allowed to bring two; my other was my cheap (but good) paperback.)

One is given two tries at any given test before one has to satisfy the requirement through coursework instead, so I figured I had nothing to lose. If I passed, wonderful; if it failed, at least I'd have had a trial run, and would have an idea of what I needed to concentrate on when studying for the real test.

On emerging from the test this past Friday, I was convinced that I had failed. I hadn't translated enough of the passage in time, and there were a couple of clauses I really wasn't sure I'd gotten right. But this didn't bother me at all, for the reasons given in the previous paragraph.

Turns out that I just barely passed. Wholly unexpected, but cool. I'm certainly not going to complain.

I just got my copy of Voice Project 2, and have been listening to it in the background as I type these entries. It's quite good so far. Everybody else enunciates much better than I do.

I had my first class session of "Editing and the Creation of Texts" immediately after dashing across campus to drop off copies of the linguistics project with the relevant professors. It went pretty well. I'll be keeping this course.

While going over the syllabus, I discovered that we don't have class on Monday, January 21st, as it's Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. I had not known this. In particular, I had not known this when I booked my flight back to New York for my brother's wedding, which will take place on the night of Tuesday, January 22nd. When I booked my flight, I thought that I had two classes the day before, so I booked my flight for 6:35 AM the day of the wedding, necessitating my leaving my apartment somewhere around 4 AM. I opted to fly back the following afternoon. Grand total of two missed classes, but it couldn't be helped.

But now it turns out that there's no class on the preceding Monday. And of course, none on the preceding Sunday, so I could have flown back on Sunday, had a couple of days to hang out with Jen and Elaine and get some good kosher food into my system, and then fly back. Heck, I might even have been able to have flown back the preceding Thursday evening, although I doubt there was anything suitable in my price range for that. As it stands, the price to change the ticket rivals the original price of the ticket itself, and while I can't say I'm not tempted anyway, I can't say it would be worth it.

I think the word Kymm would use for my feelings about this is "shattered."

I think the two most beautiful words in the English language may be "It's finished."

The project, the linguistics project, the bloody linguistics project, it is over, it is done with, it has been handed in.

It is not what I wanted it to be. It is not even close. A large chunk of one of the three essays which comprise it is concerned with listing areas of the project that still need to be researched, and are not included. It is only a partial list. Quite a bit of what I'd intended to get to in this version of the project, even stuff foreshadowed in the current draft, even most of the stuff I'd included in the abstract for the project, was left out entirely. It is rather a mess, and I say so in the prefatory words.

But it is done, and I don't have to worry about it until the next time I take this on. The two courses in question are done.

Huzzah!

9:53 PM:

Getting somewhere. Not there yet, though. Catch is that the campus computer lab (which reopened today, greatly boosting my productivity) closes in just over an hour and a half, and I'm ready for bed. The options are: force myself to stay awake, toiling as best I can in the apartment through the night once the lab closes, or go home now, get some sleep, get up first thing in the morning, work as best I can in the apartment until the lab opens at 8:30 AM and hope I can get done in time (noon being the absolute deadline). Bearing in mind that I have two classes tomorrow on top of the current crisis.

Yeah, I'm tending towards the second option myself. Although how I'm going to get enough done in time... well, one crisis at a time.

One thing I can now take as established: for whatever reason (or combination of reasons), I seem to be all but incapable of writing anything academic in my apartment, but far more productive in the campus lab. I think at least part of this is that my apartment is too darn hot (and I can't find the thermostat), but I wonder if that's all. Hmm.

...but, anyway, I'll worry about the bigger picture later. G'night, all.

You know how, a few weeks ago, I said that I was pretty good at crunch time, but not good enough to turn out a thirty-page final project in one night? Heaven help me, but I'm trying to prove myself wrong now. And I'd darn well better, 'cause otherwise I'm sunk.

In other news, I now have two more nieces, as both of my sisters-in-law had a daughter yesterday. Yay!

And now back to the salt mines...