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.

puppycam

I have a new love. No, it's not a man. No, it's not a new book, or an old book, or even a sweater.

It is a website. I am obsessed with the puppy cam. It's this website where you can watch a batch (6) of really cute puppies (not sure what breed). All day long. Most of the time, they're schluffing, or playing with each other, or schluffing.

Work will never get done again. Oh, happy day.

Check it out yourself; your day will instantly get better! http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.45.swf?cid=317016

we'll ask the local jet set, to dine on our dinette-set

This week was jam-packed with wonderfulness and busy-ness in a crazy way.

Last Tuesday, as the universe knows, was the election. I don't think I can remember a time in my life when I was quite that excited to wake up at 5:45am, but I zoomed through getting ready and bustled my way to the polling station in Skippack. It was totally packed with people, which made me happy, and so I spent a beautiful hour chatting with other citizens and waiting to cast my ballot. Note to self: casting a ballot in person is really so much better than absentee. I spent all day at work checking the polls and being ridiculous, and was quite glad that I have a non-office job because if I had been near my computer for any more time I would have exploded.

I got home, and Bubbie and I had a yummy meal, then alternated between CNN, ABC, and Jon Stewart all night. I got a lot of needlepoint done, and my poor Bubbie had to endure renditions of "Ohio" and "I was Born in Virginia" throughout the evening. I was on the phone with Schutz when Virginia was called, and we both figured out that this meant that he had won, and we were still on the phone together when they called it for Obama -- AMAZING.

So needless to say I went into work on Wednesday a very happy me. We were all pretty excited about things, and the day was going quite well until around 2:00 in the afternoon, when I got pulled off the floor. Turns out visitor numbers are way down, and they had to lay some people off, so we had this big awful scary quiet meeting, and my boss was laid off. It doesn't really affect my day-to-day so much, but I think before this economic crisis thing felt very far away, like it didn't really impact my life, and this made it much more personal.

Considering last week was only a three-day week of work, it was pretty ridiculously up-and-down. The trip to Boston that followed was even more ridiculous and was filled with many more good things, and not so many bad as the week before. More on that in a later post.

I'm just the cleverest feller twas ever my fortune to know

A bit of an update seems necessary, since it's been a while, and I no longer have the stress of the GRE preventing me from writing in the proverbial unnecessary, self-aggrandizing blog.

Speaking of which . . . I'm done with the GRE! I did well enough that I'm totally not going to retake it, and it's one thing on the need-to-get-done-in-life checklist. And, I'm now required to go to grad school within the next five years, or I'll have to take it again. Which would be gross, so grad school it is.

In much more exciting news, I'm headed to Boston/Brandeis/my happy place in two weekends -- I'm ridiculously excited to a. not have Hebrew school for a week (although I'm loving it and it's going well, I could use a break), b. see all the people I miss desperately, and c. be social, goshdarnit. I really don't love the whole not-seeing-friends ever situation that seems to be where I've landed myself at home. Perhaps it was silly to lose connection with all of those people from high school, but everyone I love is away or busy for the most part. And realistically, high school friends aren't quite the same as college friends (with some notable exceptions). So needless to say I'm excited about going to Boston.

In decidedly ridiculous news, my mother and I were sitting in the office the other day and decided to make her a facebook page. So Mona is now on facebook. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this, but amused is definitely a part of it.

So I believe a few countdowns are in order:
4 days - spending a night in NYC just for fun!
7 days - election!
9 days - Brandeis!

Happy happy day. Even if it is intermittently snowing and hailing and blowing nasty stuff. Plus, I just bought a new coat. So even that can't bother me that much, because I have prospect of happy warmth coming into my life soon!

One thing has been really bugging me throughout this very long, very fatiguing campaign. The accusation that Barack Obama is a Muslim drives me up a wall. First of all the evidence clearly indicates that he's not, but much much much much more importantly, it shouldn't matter. Not at all, not one bit. This is America, and there are Muslim-Americans who fight in Iraq, who run for Congress, who are every bit as American as my family or George Bush's family or John McCain's family. So if Barack Obama were a Muslim, I'd STILL vote for him. There are moderate Muslims all over the world (out of 1 billion people, I'm sure they don't all want to wipe Israel off the map), and I'm much more interested in a candidate's ability to affect change, position on the environment, position on Israel than anything else. And Obama's got it together on those counts. 

I've been ranting about this to everyone for months. It's a real pet peeve. But when Colin Powell said the same thing (and infinitely more eloquently than I could) on Meet the Press this Sunday, I have to say my heart leaped. Here is a moderate, thoughtful, former General who really knows a lot more than me about this country and he also thinks that the behavior of those who insist that a Muslim-American couldn't be President is deplorable. Of course, Obama isn't even a Muslim, but if he were, what would matter?

I almost feel like this is the Muslim version of the song If You Were Gay from Avenue Q. "If you were muslim, that'd be okay I mean cuz hey, I like you anyway. .. etc etc, followed by "but I'm not Muslim". Of course, it doesn't rhyme as well . . .

Anyway, check out the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_NMZv6Vfh8 

I am finding it simultaneously frightening and exhilarating (from a purely historical perspective) that the Northwest Passage opened briefly this summer.