It’s tartan week!

Following up on my previous post about the tartan-covered Mercedes outside of my house, an anonymous reader tells me that that Mercedes was probably driving around the city because this week is Tartan Week in NYC (tartan is just a type of pattern)! You’ll probably see lots of Scottish folks in tartan all over the city as they celebrate their heritage.
This coming Friday, April 6th, is Tartan Day, so be sure to wear some tartan in your outfit!

The US Senate designated April 6th as National Tartan Day in 1998 to honor “the outstanding contribution of millions of Scottish- Americans to our great nation” and the House of Representatives passed a similar resolution in 2005. The significance of April 6th dates back to the 1320 signing of the Declaration of Arbroath, which was the model for the American Declaration of Independence.

New York City has celebrated Tartan Day since 1999 and, every year, the amount of activities here has increased to the point that it is now referred to as Tartan Week.

Throughout Tartan Week 2007 there will be a huge variety of events, most of them FREE, highlighting the vibrancy of Scottish culture, past and present.

Here’s the tartan-covered Mercedes from yesterday.

If you need some new tartan clothes and accessories, maybe you can find something at ScotlandShop.net.

Ha! Norman sent me this one. It’s hard to hear at first but if you really listen in, you’ll realize that the rhymes are actually quite clever.

Remember last week when I posted the above video of a cute polar bear cub? Well, it turns out that this cub is famous. His name is Knut. Unfortunately, some animal rights activists (yep, you read correctly) want Knut killed because they don’t think it’s humane for humans to raise a polar bear cub (Knut was “abandoned” by her mother and left to die but Berlin zoo officials took the cub in and started to raise it).

Wow, I went from the 4th largest public school district in the US to the largest public school district in the US. Impressive. I am moving on up.

The 2007 New York International Auto Show is opening on April 6th (2 days!). If you’re interested, you can go and catch a glimpse of the future of NYC taxis at the Design Trust for Public Space exhibition showcasing the Taxi 07 designs. If you’re a Parsons student, you might have seen this exhibit already in Parsons a year ago. But still, it’s cool to see what they have up their sleeves in terms of ideas for new cabs.
I wonder if my dad’s friends have passes to this year’s show. I’d like to go just to waste some time and get some random free stuff (new stress balls maybe?).
And yes, I know I can view some of the new cars in the NY Auto Show online gallery, but it’s not the same as seeing them in real life.

Mac users, you now have an awesome new torrent client in Xtorrent. No excuse now not knowing how to access torrents. Ok? Good.

I’m so retarded. All night, I kept telling myself that I’d start on my paper and presentation (it’s due today in a few hours). And all I kept doing was watching TV shows and chatting online. I didn’t stop chatting until maybe about 1AM, where I then began to get sleepy. So I told myself I’d take a short nap and wake up later to do my work (I thought, hey, I have over 12 hours…why not?). So I slept, and when I heard my alarm, I just turned it off, telling myself that I still have enough time to do the work. What was supposed to be only a 45 minute nap turned out to be a 3 and a half hour nap. I woke up at about 4:40AM and thought, “CRAP!”.

Still, I did not start on my work. I checked email, played with Joey, and listened to music. When I finished with all that, an hour had past and it was nearly 5:30AM. I got tired again, so I decided to take another nap (mind you, I STILL had not begun my paper nor my presentation). I set an alarm for 6AM but unfortunately I didn’t hear it. I ended up waking up at about 7AM, at which point I was like, “OK, NO MORE FOOLING AROUND. I NEED TO DO THIS PAPER/PRESENTATION!”. And so, that’s when I actually began my work.

Now, at about 11:15AM, I am blogging. Moral of the story: don’t bother to start your work on time because it’ll just take that much longer to do. Start it much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much later and still have time to blog! Whee! School is so important to me (but I’m doing so well!).

I LOVE YOU ALL!