Happy New Year (Again) !!

Today is Chinese New Year. Or at least, in China today is Chinese New Year. In the US we have to wait until tomorrow to play with our firecrackers and annoy our neighbors.

Oh, how I wish I was there....this year, I have to settle for Chinatown.

But we're hoping that the year of the dog turns out to be a little more auspicious for us than the year of the chicken was - and I'm a chicken! what's up with that?! The car broke down last week, to the tune of $2200, which is almost as much as the whole thing is worth all by itself. We didn't have any choice but to fix it; with John working two jobs it was almost impossible to survive without the car. He was getting up at 1 a.m. to catch a bus to Costco and coming home from his second job at the Times around 5 p.m. I literally haven't seen him for a week and a half.

But with the help of some family and a little finagling with some payday loan places, we were able to scrape together the money we needed to get the darned thing fixed, so we've traded the stress of exhaustion for the stress of no money. Actually, it's not as bad as it sounds. When you're a student, you're used to both kinds of stress, and we've found that the no-money kind of stress is decidedly the more tolerable of the two. The thing I find especially ironic in a grim sort of way is the fact that I sold my piano last week - two days before the car broke - to get some money to put toward the impending move halfway across the world. Instead I got to spend it on rent and a new head gasket.

And I miss my piano. It may be the closest I'll ever get to having a child. And since it's been gone, I've had to get my stress out by banging on John instead.