Category: Uncategorized

Notes to self

I’d hoped it would take longer for my disenchantment with my grad school life to return. Sadly, it did not.

I did meet today, totally on accident. That was pretty cool. Awww, the fledgling homos.

  • The next 9 months of my life really do matter. They are not [just] pre-hiring limbo.
  • I don’t have anything to prove. I can just be me.
  • I may have introverted habits, but I do have some extroverted wants.

Now to cheer myself up by sitting my homo ass on the couch and reading a comic book in graphic novel form with both title and central character of the prince of darkness.

password updates

It turns out that recently had his yahoo account hacked, and I got to hear from another “friend” who hadn’t chatted with me in years about his new webpage. I decided my yahoo account password needed some beefing up. AOL has bad password rules (alphanumeric only), but I updated it too, with an aol-abusive password, no less, even if it’s just incomprehensible gibberish to the rest of the world. =)

A new observation on bureaucracy

The more people it takes to do something the greater the likelihood that a critical party is on vacation when a particular action needs to be taken.

I was wondering where my student loan disbursement had gone, because I wasn’t receiving the expected direct deposit. Well, it turns out that I hadn’t signed the resarch assistantship paperwork for this semester. The research assistantship paperwork that the former financial administrator chased me down to sign for my past two semesters. This means no paycheck until the wheels finish turning, the wheels that I started in motion about 10 minutes ago. This also means that my student loan disbursement has been eaten by tuition, full out-of-state tuition, as opposed to half of in-state tuition. And I need to sign up for health insurance, which will also show up in my student account. And, of course, a critical first stage person is not in the office today. j. o. y.

scu possibly abandoning veganism

Well, now that I have your attention…

Here’s why. I was talking with Joe the other day about Agedashi Tofu, which I love, and he pointed out it was usually made with bonito, some sort of fish product. I ordered some this evening sans bonito, and some vegetable tempura udon besides. Of course, the udon broth also had bonito (as do many miso soups). Having basically been told that much of my favorite japanese food was not merely not vegan but not vegetarianism, I started thinking about why I’m vegan.

The environmental reason is all well and good. But I don’t kid myself to think that I’m making a huge impact by lowering my own ecological foot print. In fact, by living smaller on the land, I’m increasing the delicacy of the situation to a trivial degree. If everyone were to follow my example into veganism (just pretend), and some sudden food production crisis arrived, we wouldn’t have as much waste to trim to preserve our collective diet. This also brings up the point that no one I know has really gone vegetarian, let alone vegan, in my wake except , and he switched back over a year ago. Further, I miss some things. Sweet lassi, pudding (kheer), pizzas with actual cheese, almost all japanese food, pumpkin ice cream (try finding that in vegan form. Hell, try finding it in dairy form). I also think I might lead a healthier lifestyle if I ate meat occasionally (prions or mercury, prions or mercury). I know I gained about 10 pounds when I made the vegetarian to vegan jump. And I do wonder if there’s anything to the protein claims. I’m certainly getting adequate to stay healthy and Joe certainly doesn’t seem to have any trouble building muscle (he’s also more rigorously vegan than I am.), but I don’t think I’m getting protein in doses that approximate those of the kidney stone creating, high protein diets that seem to work for some people. So, to summarize, I’m not changing the world, I’m not leading by example (or at least, no one’s following if I am), I’m not gustatorily attached to my diet, and it’s not really a net health benefit to me. The abused chickens and the mistreated cows still tug on my strings a bit, I admit.

If I were to drop it, I’d probably drop it all, at least, as an identity. I’m not sure how much I’d change my diet. I don’t really like most meat. Or at least, I didn’t the last time I really had any. Fish, being cold blooded, aquatic, and not the brightest critters, trigger neither my environmental concerns nor my compassion to any great degree, and I’ve had them in tasty ways in the distant past. Maybe I’d eat just like I do now, but have pizza sometimes, or lassi, or japanese food, and shut the fuck up about being vegan.

Maybe. *shrug* I’ll probably take a few months to ponder it before making any hasty moves.