ahhh... The holidays. Here I am, midway through the big finale of 2003. I spent the last five days staying at my parents' house in Santa Fe, always a weird experience since I no longer seem to fit there, in a literal and figurative sense. When I was in college or just out of college and my brother went to boarding school, my mom took over one of the bedrooms, leaving only the smallest room in the house as a guest room. That summer, my brother came home and converted half of the garage into a very cool room but since one wall is just an un-insulated garage door, the room is completely uninhabitable in the winter. And so, Dustin, Neil and I shared one room with two beds for the holiday. Dustin slept on the couch in the living room and Neil and I waded through the mounds of clothes that Dustin had strewn on the floor and the four suitcases I brought with me. (if you counted my purse, I brought a bag for each day of my stay)

Despite the crowded, displaced feeling I have at my parents' house, I had a really good five days. I saw a bunch of high school friends that I now only see once a year. I did the annual Christmas Eve walk to look at the faralitos and bump into people I know. I got to spend some quality time with a few friends. I saw Rachel's wedding dress. I made lattkes for a last-chance Chanukah party with my family on the 26th. I went to the Catamount, which has somehow become a holiday tradition as well.

Overall, my time in Santa Fe left me feeling fulfilled. I got a big dose of my friends and a much-needed reminder that even though my life in Albuquerque is not overflowing with friends of my own age and a bubbling social life, I do have a lot of people out there who are good friends and who like to hang out with me. They just don't live anywhere near me. But at least they're out there.

Now I have two and a half days until 2004. I think a couple of friends will be coming to my house for New Years Eve. I, of course, have nothing planned for such an evening, but I'm looking forward to it anyway. I love New Years. I love the way the holiday invites us to make new beginnings and to renew our efforts to be good, to be better, to be kind and passionate. I am all for fresh starts, as often as I can get them.

Moving

It is kind of creepy, how natural it felt to build cardboard boxes and pack them up last week before the big office move of 2003. I was only putting my work life into boxes, but it felt like something I was supposed to be doing, as if moving has become part of my nature. It was as though the move saved me from some oncoming restlessness. If I get the chance to pack up boxes and purge junk every year or so I am content. I'm glad, however, that this move didn't take me to a new city or a new house, just a shiny new office building that still smells like paint.

Old Friends

There is really nothing better in the world than friends. I am especially fond of old friends. Most of my friends from high school are back in Santa Fe this week and it feels nice to know they are here. Last night, I sat around in a room with a bunch of them and even though some of us only talk once a year, it is still comforting to know that these people I grew up with are out there doing well and being happy. And it is somehow life-affirming that we can still get together and laugh every now and then. I like to laugh and laughing with friends is a fantastic feeling. I can't wait until Christmas Eve when I can leave work at noon and drive to Santa Fe for four and a half days of friend-filled fun.

Left Out?

At least two of my co-workers left the office with little gift baskets today. Was I left out of the present circuit? I hate feeling left out.

Many months ago, Neil put his name on a list of tennis players at the neighborhood public court hoping that some people who also have most mornings off would call him to play tennis.

A few weeks after his name and number were posted, I was at home one night when the phone rang. I answered to hear a very old-sounding voice on the other end asking for Neil. I proceeded to take a message. The man told me he was calling about tennis, and then he told me his name. "My name is Semen, S-E-Y-M-O-N" I almost cut him off and asked who was really calling. I was nearly convinced that one of our friends was just being funny. But nope, this man who wanted to play tennis with Neil was actually named Seymon, pronounced semen.

And so, Neil has been playing tennis with Seymon and some of Seymon's other old friends for at least six months...probably longer. About once a week we get a message from Seymon on the answering machine. Sometimes he says things like, "Neil, I'd like you to check your dance card and see if you can play tennis on Tuesday" Later he'll say to Neil, "I bet you've never heard of a dance card have you?"

Neil and I have taken to saying SeyMON when refering to Neil's tennis partner around the house... like we're the reggae-crazed kids I knew in high school who spoke in Jamaican accents. SeyMON is much less disturbing.

After months of wondering, Neil finally figured out that his weekly tennis partner is not just old, he's 85.

While I had talked to Seymon on the phone many many times, I had not met him until last night. Neil and I were invited to go to Seymon's house for a holiday cocktail party with some "tennis buddies" and their wives. So, at 7:30 we showed up and were the last guests to arrive. (the other two couples must have gotten their early?) Seymon bounced to the door and took our coats. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots with a denim shirt under a leather western-style vest. He is a skinny and tall man with a nice white-whiskered face. He looks like he's 70 at the oldest. His wife, Jean, also looks fairly young, but she has recently lost her balance and now has great difficulty walking.

The other two couples were also at least in their 70s.

Neil and I sat in the living room surrounded by six people who could have been our grandparents and I was terrified. What will we talk about? Will they regret inviting little kids to their holiday party? But, we talked about food and cooking and snow and traveling and movies. Seymon, the gracious host, kept refilling our drinks and offering us food, and by the end of the evening, the people I met last night seemed less like old people and more like people. We had things in common to talk about and they were all very nice and treated us like we were peers and so it felt like we were. So now I am wondering if this means I am really an adult now. When the age difference begins to take on less importance and grandparent-types seem like people I could hang out with, have I completely left my childhood behind?

I am glad I finally met Seymon. He's a very cool person.

Oh...
I can't believe they caught Saddam Hussein. My dad called to tell me yesterday morning. I thought it was a joke.

I feel two ways about this news:
1) glad because this means that all the soldiers might get to come home sooner and it makes my country look a little bit less retarded. Glad because even if I want the president to fail, that doesn't mean I want my country to fail. Glad because a terrible tyrant is finally in captivity and can't hurt any more people.
2) not glad at all because this is another feather in Bush's cap that he doesn't deserve. It's another thing he can hold up and say he did and even though it shouldn't, it weakens the argument against this disaster of a war. It makes Bush look good when really, he's just lucky.

Just because it is good that Hussein is no longer a free man and is no longer in power, that does not mean it was good to start this unprovoked war. Especially when there is a man who is arguably much more dangerous to the U.S. still on the loose. Capturing Saddam Hussein, as terrific as it is, is just a diversion because Bush and his men can't find Osama. Now we have troops in two unstable countries and we are responsible for de-stabilizing two nations. We've got one evil dictator in captivity, but no guarantee that the terrible conditions in Afghanistan and Iraq are not breeding more men like Saddam and Osama, more people who hate America and Americans.

Thank goodness there is a lot of time before November's election so that people can come to see the way the snow is continually blown over our eyes by this administration.

In the meantime, I hope Saddam Hussein is made to pay for his crimes.

Backtracking
On Thursday night, I picked up Neil's mom and grandma at the airport. We had dinner at Chili's and then went to the house where we looked at photo albums and watched TV until Neil made his nightly appearance on the news and then came home. We all put on PJs and went to sleep.

I was incredibly stressed out between trying to finish up all my work so that I could pack my office and move to a new building and worrying about making the visit with Neil's family smooth. My mind was whirring and I could feel my blood pumping through my veins even as I buried my head in my pillow and tried to relax. I couldn't get comfortable and my breathing was fast and uneven. Just as I was about to get out of bed and pace the bedroom until I got tired, something miraculous happened, I fell asleep. I slept so well that I had dreams and couldn't remember them. It was the first night in months when I hadn't looked at the clock at least once and despite all the stress, I woke up feeling happy and refreshed. When I got out of the shower and raised the blinds, there was a thin layer of snow blanketing the ground, and as with all snowstorms, everything looked fresh and new.

Holiday Treats

I want to know why on earth everyone makes fattening cookies and fudge and candies and cakes and then distributes them to unsuspecting workplaces like they are doing something nice. I doubt that there are many Americans in this day and age who are not deeply concerned about the fat content of their food intake. Nobody wants to be fat and I believe we are all struggling to eat healthy and be active. It would really be nice if these goodie-givers would drop by the office once a year with celery sticks and low-fat dip along with their holiday cheer. Then I might feel inspired to send a thank you card.

The mother- and grandmother-in-law will be landing at an airport near me within the hour. Time to head to the arrivals gate. :)

I am old.

Ok, I know, you are thinking something like, "Hello, Jodi, you're only 25." But I feel old. Not physically so much. My body still mends quickly, loses and gains weight quickly and is mostly pain free. But I am 25 years old and not yet rich, not yet famous, not yet influential, not yet who I thought I was going to be.

That sounds very shallow. Allow me to explain. As part of my job, I am in charge of writing snappy articles about finances for a teenage audience. The girl who had this job before me subscribed to Teen People and YM magazines as sources of inspiration. This was a good move on her part since these magazines provide interesting ideas for my co-worker who designs the newsletter and examples of teen-friendly writing for me. The problem is that I often find myself reading these magazines from cover to cover. I would never buy them on the newsstand. Jane, Allure, Real Simple, In Style, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Newsweek and maybe maybe US Weekly -- these are the magazines I am allowed to buy at my age. But when I have the teen magazines sitting on my desk and come across something as captivating as an article about Mary Kate and Ashley and their plans for college, I cannot help myself. I have to read.

Today, I read the majority of Teen People and wasted about 40 minutes before I realized what I was doing. And what I discovered is that nearly everyone in the magazine was my age or younger. All of the new crop of famous girls are little kids. Kera Knightly is only 18! Then we have other teen sensations like Hillary Duff and Raven. Even Britney and Christina are younger than me. And the ones who are my age or older have been famous for eons already. I used to read teen magazines and think about how I would be in their pages someday for something amazing like writing a bestselling book at age 18 or being randomly discovered and transformed into an international film star. Now I am looking at kids as old as the neighbors I used to babysit who have achieved a very tangible form of success. Compound this with the recently gained knowledge that Sarah Michelle Gellar made $350,000 per episode during the last season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and I feel like a failure.

It's not that I want to be a famous actress and let's face it, as much as I'd like to dream, rock stardom is probably not in my future. But I want to make a name for myself, make an impact. Be somebody of note, or at least somebody of merit.

Maybe this crisis is in part due to the fact that I used to be a...newspaper reporter...which was a heady thing to be at times. I had a power and a certain prominence that other people did not have and I also believed that I was doing something very important. So what if I was not making much money and was working for a corporate devil, I was doing something I believed in and I was making an impact. Now that I don't do that any more, I have sort of lost my focus. Where am I going again?

In high school and even in college, I always felt like I was in the process of becoming someone. There was an undefined state of being looming on the horizon. I knew I would get there someday and all the work would pay off. Then I graduated from college and I wasn't there yet so I fled back to graduate school. And here I am, one year after getting my MFA in writing and all I've published since then have been articles telling teenagers how to save their money. Sure, I received a few flattering rejection letters, but this won't do. I am 25 and I am still on my way to being whoever it is I am destined to become. I just hope I'm not too late, too old, past my prime.

I'm staring down the backside of my 20's at 30 and in this youth-obsessed culture, I am afraid that each day, I become less and less interesting.

(I am mostly sure that I will get over this soon, I just need to stay away from the teen magazines.)

Dinner with the elected official was great. He was very nice, as was his family and it was a blast to have little kids in our house for the first time. They found the toys within thirty seconds of walking in the door, even though the toys were in a bucket behind the couch. Amazing. It was like they could smell them or sense them on some other level... sonar perhaps?

Neil cooked and set the table and bought flowers and everything looked beautiful and the chicken was delicious. He was very cute during his Martha Stewart stint. It is great to know that my husband can put on a dinner party on his own.

The rest of the weekend went by quickly. Saturday was nice because Neil and I saw our new favorite Western band, Syd Masters & The Swing Riders, play at Barnes and Noble and then we looked through Annie's book, America 24/7 (Annie is on the staff of the group that put the whole thing together) and then we went to sushi and to see Elf, which was actually a really cute movie. I really enjoyed our date evening. We haven't had a ton of those in recent months.

I just read on CNN that Al Gore is rumored to have made the decision to endorse my man, Howard Dean. It is solid proof that I am a political dork/junkie that I got really excited when I read that and wanted to call everyone I knew. Wow. After at least a year of being a Dean supporter, I still find myself energized and psyched about his campaign. He makes mistakes sometimes and isn't always the best speaker, but he is so real and so charismatic. I think he will make a terrific president. If he doesn't win and none of the other democratic candidates win and we have to face four more years of the lunacy of Bush, I will have to seriously consider a move to someplace else... if other countries will still accept U.S. citizens at that point.

Recently I have been very much in need of serious intellectual stimulation. I think it has been too long since the glorious residencies in Bennington for graduate school. Those two weeks where I was so over-stimulated that I got my fill of talking to incredibly intelligent people about things I am passionate about (writing) for at least six months. Lately, other than long talks about the tax-exempt status of credit unions, I don't have tons of intellectual conversations. Not sure what the solution for this is. I would suggest going back to school... but I think I need to do something more amazing than that. I'll see what I can come up with.

Ever since I started my job last March, I have had a major problem being warm in my office. In the winter, no amount of heat seems to warm up my small square room. In the summer, I have to tape the air conditioning vent closed with masking tape and wear sweaters. I complained a little bit about this situation, but nobody ever said anything. I run a small space heater in my office every day and by 2 or 3 it approaches warm in here.

About a month ago, I was complaining about the icebox that I work in and one of the people I work with said something like, "That makes sense. Your office doesn't have any insulation."

Ah ha.

Nice of them to let me in on that little secret a full NINE months after I began working here. I need to find a way to de-dilbertify my life. Meanwhile, my fingers are freezing.

A co-worker just walked into my frigid lair carrying two bags of chocolate. One bag of Dove squares and one bag of Butterfinger Christmas bells. Of course, I helped myself to two of each. I say bring on the holiday bulge. Or as my Dove fortune (or do they call them promises) on the inside of the wrapper says "Add a little sweetness to your day"

My impartial journalist husband has invited over the president of the city council and his wife and kids for dinner tonight. Should be fun. Neil is a big fan of this family so I will probably like them too. (I am really mostly kidding about the impartiality part)

Ahhh four day weekends. The Thanksgiving holiday was incredibly long. It was almost long enough to make me forget about the fact that I am a working stiff, but not quite.

Thursday was really a perfect day. Neil and I slept in until 9:30 and then drove to Santa Fe where we were greeted by a house full of people. My dad and brother were there as expected, but my cousin Pam was also there with her girlfriend's three sons and their best friend. The kids were playing with the pool table and we didn't interact with them a whole lot, but just having the house filled with voices and bodies and holiday energy was terrific. My grandma showed up a short time later, followed by my mom and the dog who had been on a run in the arroyo.

We spent the afternoon talking over each other, talking to each other, laughing, snacking while preparing food etc.

Dinner was at 4 (way earlier than I am used to and probably part of my mom's weight-loss/health philosophy) And I quote: Mom: "We don't want to eat dinner too late it's not good for us!" Me: "Mom, since when was 4:00 late for dinner?"

After dinner, my dad and brother crashed on the couch and my mom and grandma and Neil and I hung around. Then we woke everyone up, ate pie and went to see Love Actually, a perfectly fun movie to end the holiday.

The rest of the weekend was ok. My brother got really bummed on Friday about college and life in general and I felt frustrated and helpless to help him which is really a miserable way to feel when you care about someone so much... But he seems to be leaving NM this morning in a more positive state of mind.

Neil and I went rollerblading on Saturday and walking on Sunday and we managed to go to only one store the entire weekend, Target. We went on Saturday in hopes of finding some perfect Chanukah gifts for family and left without any gifts but with $80 worth of stuff and massive headaches. Why on earth do so many people LOVE shopping on Thanksgiving weekend. So what if it is tradition, it's a terrible one.

Now I just finished the second day of the five day work week. Ahh, how quickly reality sets in.

I did it. I couldn't help myself. I drove to Circuit City and bought Buffy Season Three last night. That means I didn't make it one night without watching. I am completely neurotic.

It is finally cold and winter-like in New Mexico. The weather has that crispness that makes me feel like the world is full of possibility. I don't know why I associate cold, red noses and ears with possibility, but I do. When I step outside after a day of work and head to my car, I feel like the road home can lead to anyplace and I can do anything.

Tonight will be a no TV night. I am planning on relaxing and working on holiday gifts and cleaning my many piles that have somehow accumulated on the kitchen counter.

Tomorrow I will probably be going home shortly after lunch as everyone is leaving early for the holiday. I think the four day weekend will be just what I need to rejuvenate. There should be four day weekends every couple of months so that the workforce will always feel refreshed. Note to self: Look into working on national reform for workers in the U.S. from gas station attendants to CEOs. Some reforms will include at least one month of vacation annually, more long weekends, and possibly designated nap times. ha.

In the past three weeks, I managed to watch 34 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That amounts to about 25 hours in front of the television. I am sort of ashamed to admit to this atrocity...and yet, I had so much fun. There is nothing else like Buffy for intelligent entertainment with characters that I care about. I am not sure if it is the kick-ass girl power or the great love stories, or the snappy dialogue, but I just love Buffy. I am now completely finished with seasons one and two and thankfully I don't own season three yet, so I can take a break and do things like write holiday cards and clean the house up and exercise and everything else that I have been neglecting for the past three weeks.

Thanksgiving is coming and I'm excited. It's not so much the food that I love, it's the tradition of the food. It's the one meal each year that I can count on. For the past two or three years, my family hasn't celebrated Thanksgiving together and I have been longing for the tradition. Last year, I attempted making the meal myself, but it was different and not as much fun. I can't wait to go to Santa Fe and sit around the table with my parents and eat the turkey with my mom's amazing stuffing and the sweet potatoes that I don't even like. My brother will eat the majority of the cranberries and I'll be lucky to get a scoop. Hopefully it will be cold outside and we'll all sit around and be warm together and the next morning my dad will make turkey sandwiches with ketchup and I'll look at him with an "eew that's gross" expression and all will be right with the world.

Patty called today to tell me about an incredibly mean flower-store owner in Florida who yelled at her and said a myriad of not-nice things that nobody should ever say to anybody, much less a customer in their flower store. I have no comprehension for people like this. How do you grow up and think it's ok to be mean to people? What must be missing in a person who unleashes on random strangers? How can you own a flower store and still be evil? It's sick. Should verbal assault be criminalized? Just a thought. I am not fond of rageaholics.

Nauseous

I am nauseous but it is not from something I ate and I don't think I have the flu. Somebody I care about and basically think rocks has a really really screwed up belief system and it makes me sad, especially because I thought progress had been made and minds had been opened. But now I am sick to my stomach.

Howard Dean

Onto happier topics, Howard Dean is in town today. I wish I could go be a groupie supporter, but I will be at work.


Lack of Sleep

Last night, Neil and I went to Walgreens and bought Tylenol PM and I took one before bed and I STILL didn't sleep. I need to get to the bottom of this before I turn into a complete disaster.

On Sleeplessness

The main problem of my week so far is that I am not sleeping. I go to sleep and toss and turn and wake up ten to fifteen times nightly, half the time without any blankets covering me and then my alarm goes off and I hit snooze a few times and I'm late to work and I never feel rested. It's not good. In fact, I recently saw a TV ad which told me about how I could take a Tylenol PM before bed and all my aches and pains would go away and I'd also get a restful night sleep and I actually thought, "Hey, that sounds like a great product." This from the girl who recently stopped taking all pills and pill-shaped objects except for multi-vitamins. Sleeping aids are SO against my principles.

On "Legends"

When I was in Phoenix last week at the meeting of credit union leagues from border states, I had lunch with some guys. One from California, one from Texas. They were old, probably older than my dad... or close. I knew they were the CEO's of their leagues and since most people there were CEOs I didn't think much of it. We talked about the California fires and Arnold and how beautiful New Mexico is and how I used to live in El Paso, no biggie.

So when I came back and told my boss who I hung out with he had a look of shock on his face and said something like "both of those guys are legends" At first I was like... "Oh no, I hope I didn't say anything offensive if they're legends... I should have been more nervous and and and...." But then I realized they were just nice guys who might be legends to people who devote lifetimes to credit unions. (Thus far, I am not one of those people.)

On Wanderlust

I have been having serious travel urges as of late. I feel a constant need to flee to a Latin American country, this is not new, but now the urge is spreading. I heard Jacque Chiraq talking about combating anti-semitism on NPR last night and suddenly became aware of the fact that I absolutely NEEDED to be in France at that moment, needed to be around French people and hear them and hang out in cafes...all this despite the fact that I absolutely HATED French class in high school, have very little understanding of the language and don't usually long to visit the country. Then this morning Tony Blair was talking about Bush's visit to England and instead of the seething hatred that I usually feel when our president is mentioned, I just got lost in the British accent and started imagining myself in London (ok, more than imagining, I got an impatient feeling and started thinking about purchasing airfare.) Then I re-read an e-mail from my friend Christine about how she's in Tokyo as I am typing and... well... I'm sure you can fill in the rest. I'll just say that it involved fantasies of Sushi-eating. I must develop a plan to somehow be paid to travel around the world and immerse myself in different cultures.

On Rejection

I got my long-awaited response from Fourth Genre last night. They will not be publishing my essay on living along the U.S. Mexico border. I was so hoping they would.

They sent a two paragraph rejection letter telling me I should submit again and that some of their readers had comments that might be helpful to me.

Comment one said "This is exactly the kind of personal cultural criticism Fourth Genre should encourage." (O.K. sounds like that person was in favor of publishing.)

Comment two was less memorable but said that the reader enjoyed the essay but wanted to know more about the narrator (that would be me) This is valid and perhaps slightly helpful. I will look at adding more of myself into the prose...

Overall, this was a rejection letter that made me feel mostly warm and fuzzy instead of giving me that sinking feeling I usually get from life's rejections. But it left me feeling perplexed as to why they didn't publish it. I mean, if you're going to include criticism in the rejection letter, shouldn't it be just that...criticism?

Back to square one. If anyone knows of a place that would like to publish a terrific essay on the ambiguity of living along an international border, please contact me.

I am sitting in my office with a space heater blowing in my face and making my eyes dry and I'm eating a mushy apple. I hate mushy apples. Apples need to be cold and crisp, not spongy and disgusting.

Last night we brought our bunny (Boo Boo) into our bedroom (in her cage) and let her spend the night. It is very bizarre how animals, even small less-intelligent animals, can become such a part of a human family. If we didn't have Boo Boo, our lives would be much less full...and yet, it seems weird to me that I am saying that about a rabbit.

At work today, I am printing 100 copies of a paper I wrote to try to keep the state legislature from imposing a tax on credit unions. The paper is 18 pages long and the executive summary is 6 pages which means I am wasting 2,400 sheets of paper on this endeavor. It takes a long time to print 2,400 pages. On Monday, I get to use the little binding machine to put those plastic covers and spines on them all.

Tonight I am going to eat sushi with Neil and hopefully relax and have fun and do other weekend activities. I am really looking forward to it. This has been a draining week.

Phoenix wasn't really a disaster. I was the youngest person at the conference by at least 10, maybe 15 years and most people there were CEO's in their 50's. It was daunting, but I didn't feel totally and completely terrified and I spoke at the meeting several times since I was the only New Mexico person. Even the talking in front of people went well.

The meeting itself, while much of it was boring, was overall very interesting because it was about serving Hispanics, especially recent immigrants from Mexico. There were three guys from a large credit union in Mexico and they spoke only in Spanish. I understood some of what they said and a translator filled in the rest, but by mid-afternoon on the first day, I was spacing out, entranced by their rolling r's and the graceful cadence of the language. There is something magical about the Spanish language that makes me feel at home and like a foreigner all at once.

On day two, a man who was a big-shot in Presidente Fox's campaign spoke. He was incredibly charismatic and convincing. By the end of his talk about why credit unions are on the verge of a revolution and why credit unions need to take Mexican culture into consideration when serving "New Americans" I was ready to follow him around and be his disciple. He was one of those people whose eyes disappear when he smiles and who wins you over after saying exactly five words. Everybody else in the room seemed to feel the same way because they all batted their eyelashes when near him (even the men) and needlessly dropped his name in conversation. Eg: Q: "What are you having for lunch?" A:"I will be having lunch with Juan today" Q:"What time is it?" A:"Oh look it's Juan." and Q: "What do you think about the weather?" A: "When I was talking to Juan earlier..."

Instead of following the man home, I grabbed my bags and checked out of the hotel. Then I hopped into my first rental car and drove to the airport. That's right, I rented my own rental car for the first time. Oh the joy of being 25.

I am still determined to find a way to incorporate my love of the border and border culture and Mexico and New Mexico into what I do...updates when I come up with something.

Now I am back home and I got a bucket of work dumped on me today and my shoulder hurts from stress. It's also freezing and rainy out. Ugh.

My little brother is 20 today. 20. My little brother is 20. How did that happen?

Happy Birthday Dustin.

The weekend.
On Saturday, I slept too late. I also slept too late today. Sleeping too late is really really cool. I wish I could do it more often and not feel guilty about it.

Last night there was a complete lunar eclipse. The earth cast its shadow on the moon for a couple of hours and it was really amazing. The moon was blotted out by shadow, but still visible. But what was even cooler than the moon being shadowed was the fact that the earth was casting a shadow. I looked really close and imagined that I could see my own tiny shadow on the edge of the earth's shadow. (that didn't quite happen) But seeing the earth's round shadow was really proof that I am sitting on a big round planet. This seemed much more profound while I was thinking it last night.

Today, I took my little sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters to eat at a diner for lunch. She likes hamburgers a lot. I am constantly trying to connect with her and to be cool enough for a 13-year-old girl to hang out with. I hope I am succeeding.

Now I have to pack for the Phoenix disaster of 2003.

It is really creepy to be the last person at the office on a Friday afternoon when the sun is mostly gone. I need to go home.

On not getting enough sleep...

I am tired and I find it annoying. No matter what I do, I never seem to get enough sleep. It is partly because Neil comes home so late and is always totally full of energy and I, of course, usually want to talk to him so I stay up later than I plan to. But then another part of it is the light in the morning that comes streaming into our bedroom through a little arch-shaped window that I thought was going to be a favorite feature of the house when we moved here a year ago. Ha. Two nights ago, Neil got paged by his work at 4:15 in the morning -- not helpful. But I think my biggest problem is that I am always so worried about getting enough sleep that I don't sleep well. I am sabotaging myself unintentionally.

On iTunes and other technology in general...

I love iTunes. Christine gave me a $20 iTunes gift certificate for my birthday and I spent it all yesterday and now have 19 songs of my very own. The fast connection at work was awesome and it took only a minute or two to download each song. I could see myself doing that every day... (except my gift certificate is gone and I am not in favor of running up a credit card bill) But now I need an iPod. I really really really want one. Not just any iPod, though. I want the one that can hold 10,000 songs because now that a little machine like that exists, I am absolutely convinced that I should be carrying 10,000 songs with me everywhere I go. It is necessary, essential really. And while I am at it, I want a new computer and a picture phone instead of my plain old cell phone that only works for phone calls. Sheesh.

Sad Birthdays

I have had more than my share of sad birthdays. This year was another sad one, but somehow it was still ok, almost good. My mom called me around 11 yesterday and said "happy birthday" in a very sad tone and then told me that my great aunt Bessie died an hour earlier. I knew something was wrong already because it was the first birthday that my mom hadn't called me early in the morning and sang happy birthday to me. Her abandoning this tradition was proof that all was not well.

My aunt Bessie was the wisest woman I have ever known. When I was little and we would visit her at her home in Michigan, I used to feel like I was on a pilgrimage to my profit or oracle. I was on a long journey to visit the little old woman who would impart wisdom and help me to see. We would sit on her fragile-seeming furniture in the front room of her small house, or was it a duplex? She would offer us food or drink and then we'd talk. Bessie had a deep calm about her, the calm of someone who is completely self-assured and knows exactly what is and is not important. The rest of us were struggling through life and she already had it figured out. She was a little treasure. I wore the old perals she gave me for my Bat Mitzvah around my wrist on my wedding day to honor Bessie because she couldn't be there and my grandmatold me that Bessie was touched by the gesture. Bessie died on my 25th birthday and she was 93 years old.

It is easy to be sad when losing someone special, but hard to be too sad at the death of someone in their mid-90's. But, Bessie was the last member of my grandma's immediate family. She has lost two parents, a brother, two husbands and now a sister. Is the curse of living longest lonlieness? I just want her not to be sad. Simplistic, maybe, but that's what I want.

We spent the afternoon with my grandma yesterday, helping her pack for her flight to Michigan. (Neil had my birthday off from work and I left work after talking to my mom.) After looking at old pictures and laughing and crying with my grandma, we said goodbye and went to eat thai food (yumm) and rent a movie (whale rider). So this birthday was a mix of saddness and normalcy. I have had at least two friends suggest that I start celebrating my half birthday instead of my birthday... but I am going to give Nov. 3 a couple more tries before getting that drastic.