the winter is forbidden til December, and exits March the 2nd on the dot.

The month of December has been an in-between month, a month of transition. I’m coming out of it in a very different place than I started.

The month began with a lot of boredom at work, and a feeling like I wasn’t growing or learning so much. I resolved to solve this by applying to volunteer at the Academy of Natural Sciences in an entomology lab, after attending a wonderful lecture on the ‘superorganism’ by Bert Holldobler and E.O.Wilson, two luminaries in the bio world that I really respect and find particularly inspiring. While volunteering at the academy would have been lovely, it was not to be.
You see, earlier in the month of November I had applied for a few jobs I had seen on idealist.org, including one at ACEEE, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (longest name ever, right?), doing research and program assistance for the three directors of the organization. In the second week of December, I had a lovely phone interview, and then the next week I came down for an inperson interview, and three days later, I had a new job! It all happened very quickly, and I’m quite excited about it.

This means, of course, that I’ll need to move down to DC, an exciting prospect for me as I’ve always liked DC as a city. Plus, it’s my sister’s city, and some great friends are down there. I was understandably nervous about finding my first apartment on my own, but I just returned from a weekend-long apartment-finding trip (and the first apartment I saw was a winner). I also looked at a few others after that and have some back-ups, but barring any abnormal difficulties, I’ll be moving to Van Ness in northwest DC in a few weeks! I’m going to be living with two other jewish women, both in their late 20s, and in a rather nice apartment and building.

Needless to say, I’m pretty thrilled about going to DC – the beginning of a new administration feels like a great time to move to the capitol, and I’m happy that I’ll be working for an organization doing something I’m really passionate about.

slip a sable under the tree, for me.

I really love Christmas music -- even if it has little to no relevance for my personal beliefs, it's upbeat and commercial and it makes me happy.

This month has been a good one, among the best of my months here so far. Work-wise, it's been frustrating, because we're reorganizing, and somehow in this process I ended up with not so much to do, but that'll get better soon. Anyway, it was a good month, which clearly merits a blog entry so I'll remember it.

The trip to Boston in the beginning was really wonderful -- I ended up needing a lot less of Brandeis and a lot more of my friends than I thought I would. Which is healthy and normal and wonderful, and I felt good about it. Highlights included Madagascar with Sarah, Miri, and Matt, lots of Miriam time and Shaked time, Seth's birthday party, and a fabulous day of gallumphing about the MFA and newbury street with Esti and Shaked.

I was really looking forward to shabs at Brandeis, but it was good in ways I didn't expect it to be and bad in ways I expected to be good. Namely, I was not so excited about the prospect of BaRuCH davening, but excited to see BaRuCH people, and then that ended up being fabulous all around. On the other hand, I was really looking forward to dinner, which was rather blah and small and not so good (there were a lot of other things going on -- BOO Freshmen dinners, Koach shabs, etc, but it still made it weird). Plus the board did this psuedo-educational thing, which was interesting in concept but poorly executed (rule #1 of informal ed - people don't really like being read to.)

So that was a great trip, but more because of wonderful friends than anything else. Another great part of my November was the two trips to Nueva York -- one Sunday-Monday trip, and one Saturday-Sunday trip. In the first trip, I saw David's new apartment, dinnered at a yummy vegan place with Sara and Kat, bar-ed it up with Schutz and Kat and Sara, slept over at Schutz's and then Popover Cafe-d with Jonathan, and then headed home. It was quick and fun, and just what I need that weekend (I had been a smidge frustrated with home at that point). The second trip was two weekends ago -- for some unknown reason, i didn't have to teach sunday school, so I left right after work on Saturday, went out to a fun gay bar with Mat and Arnab -- we actually got Alli's BFF from home, Zach, to come play with us, which was great. def a fun night. The next morning I visited Aunt Li for a few hours, then gallumphed about AMNH with David (SO much fun), and then dinnered at the Shake Shack with Katherine-bear and two of the cutest 4-year-olds ever (it was crowded so we shared a booth with them).

The month was capped off in lovely fashion by the visit of one Ms. Shaked Hoter, my dearest furniture and friend. She came from Wednesday to Sunday, and I got to show her the Franklin Institute, and she survived/endured multiple Gold Family dinners (including Thanksgiving, of course) without injury. It was really nice to have her here, because I definitely miss living with her all the time. We also met up with Matt (Stern) and his friend Sierra, which was great and diner-y and ridiculous.

So that was my month, which I'm definitely thankful for. Especially because it is now almost socially acceptable to blast Christmas music from my Brandeis-sticker-adorned car. Oy.