What Can I Say? This House is Falling Apart

Lots of things to talk about right now.  First, I feel like I should mention that I am currently sitting in my local Apple store because of Murphy's Law decided to strike on Thursday but I'll get to that. 

This past weekend, I got to go to DC to spend time with some of my favorite people.  It was a quick trip but definitely a necessary one.  I got to spend a whole day with the wonderful Campbell which was a lot of fun even with the rain.  Big Boy Campbell and I had never really spent time together so discussing things like how Lizzie and I are sisters like he and Reagan are brothers was extremely entertaining.  I wish I had more time to spend with his big brother but I know that I will make this happen on a visit and will not wait quite as long to go back.

I forgot how much I really did love DC.  I say that all the time but now I realize that I still don't really want to live there, it's a little too humid for me, I like my summers warm but not sticky.  I don't do sticky.  It was nice having public transportation all weekend and not worrying about parking and such.

So now getting to why I am sitting in the Apple store.  I am taking a Web Development class this summer.  It is scary and intense and will be essentially a full time job all summer.  I came back from DC and continued to finish the prework I was supposed to complete prior to my course starting, everything was good for about two days.  I planned to finish the rest of my work on Wednesday but my computer had other ideas.  Long story short, my hard drive crashed, I'm an idiot and didn't have everything backed up so I had to have the whole thing recovered in addition to a new drive installed. 

My computer should be ready Monday or Tuesday but that still means a fair amount of school time without all the programs I need.  I do have the best mother and sister ever though.  Both of them have lent me their computers (well Lizzie's old one) so I could try to make them work.  Hence, the second trip to the Apple store this week, to update the operating system on my mom's computer.  It is taking what feels like a million years to install but slowly but surely, I will make this happen.  Seriously, my mom is the best though, she didn't have to lend me her computer let alone let me make all these changes to it but she is because she loves me and doesn't want my head to explode. 

This is going to be an interesting summer and apparently I will be reflecting on it online but I haven't decided if it will be here or somewhere else.  If it is somewhere else, I will post the link but I might want to keep the two separate. 

Sunshine Blinds You If You Stare

So I guess I will start off by saying that as of yesterday, I have been a big sister for over 21 years which is pretty solid.  My sister kinda rocks.  Seriously, she's great.

Now on to life updates:
Is it possible to be ready for a career change without ever really having a career?  Well, it's starting to look like I am.  I have been trying to teach myself code off and on for a while but now I am actually trying to stick with it.  I spent a few hours working on it today and will do more tomorrow and so on, until I can get this down.  I am looking for a boot camp program where I learn A LOT in a very short amount of time (between 9 and 12 weeks) so I can leave being a Jr. Developer.  I'm realizing now that at 18, I had no idea what I wanted, very few people really do but we are all expected to have found our path by then.  Well, at least the path to take us to a midlife crisis change.  I've always liked computers and making things happen yet I was too afraid of failing to take the risk and study it in college.  Turns out that it may not have done me much good taking that route anyway but now, I think this is what I want to be doing.

More updates include a few interviews I had over the past few weeks.  I interviewed at two very similar companies only to realize that I didn't want to be doing the job they had to offer.  If I thought I could tough it out for a year, I would have pursued it but then I would be back where I am now in a year.  This was really the catalyst for changing career objectives.

I had a phone interview this morning which was really nice.  I wasn't sure I wanted the job when I found out I had the interview, but I thought the location was great and figured it couldn't hurt to see what they had to say.  In the end, I would really like to see this one through, it could be the right stepping stone for right now.

Speaking of location, I took a road trip to Northern California last week.  I didn't have work due to the local school district having "Ski Week" so my friend asked if I wanted to go play tourist in San Francisco, so we had a great time.  She is currently on assignment in Southern California and since she was only here for a few months, she wanted to try to get in a trip up north while she was here.  It was a lot of fun because I don't always feel like I can go and play tourist up there because so many of my friends live there and I have been a handful of times.  I think I am now in love with the city.  It combines so many of the things I love about both LA and DC that I am leaning towards a move up there if I can swing it at some point.  I'm 24, now's the time to move and make changes right?

After the weekend in San Fran, I spent the next 36ish hours in wine country with one of my oldest friends.  My coworker and I always joke that we fail to act our age but I actually had an adventure and went wine tasting.  I think I will need to work on my tasting abilities if I go again in the future, I'm not sure I appreciated it as much as I should have.

The end of the trip was spent in Berkeley just spending time with a friend I missed very much.  I got to see some of the town but was honestly just more interested in catching up and hanging out.  I left early the following morning to have an exploratory meeting about a company that I would love to work for and then after a quick stop in Santa Cruz to see yet another friend, I started the long journey home.

I really want to plan a really solid road trip with friends that included some white water rafting and maybe a skydive or something but we shall have to wait and see when the timing works out.

This was a lot more than I had intended to write but I want to go now and see if I can manage a little more code learning before bed.

I'm a, I'm a-a diva (hey), I'm a, I'm a a diva

Forgive me, it's been a while.  I am starting this post at about 11:25 on January 17th and it will be one that will be overindulgent on feelings and just me in general.  My birthday starts in 35 minutes, which is part of the reason I am still awake after a mentally challenging day.

I love my birthday, I try not to since I guess that is the appropriate thing to do but as Lizzie called me earlier, I am a Birthday Diva.  There have been some I have been really sick for (the plague of having a birthday that falls shortly after school starts again), some not so great ones, and some that I have spent exactly how I wanted to.

I love the nice little things that people are kind enough to do for me, having little cousins sing happy birthday, the phone calls, the personal messages, the cakes and the time people take out of their day to acknowledge it.

I have been reflecting on the last year, trying to figure out if I really accomplished anything.  I have a part time job that I love and I feel like I am making at least a small difference there.  I don't know if my friendships have gotten weaker or stronger from the changing distances that have been increasingly cemented over the last year.  There is still so much uncertainty and a lot of me still feels very stuck and unchanging.  It's hard to be the one who doesn't seem to change when everything else around you is.

I planned as full a day as I could for tomorrow because I know I will need to keep myself distracted from the one thing that really changed this year.  January 18, 2012 was the last time I was able to see one of my favorite people ever alive and fairly well.  My grandmother passed away less than a week after my birthday and I had gone to see her in the hospital.  Everyone who knows me well knew what a rough blow this was and a year later, it's a little easier to talk about but I miss her everyday and think of her through all the little habits she taught me.  She had great joy in using her rewards card at the end a grocery check out rather than the start because she loved watching the price drop and seeing her couponing success.  She was the original extreme couponer.

So tomorrow, I will be a huge Birthday Diva, and that's just the way it's going to be.

What do I stand for? What do I stand for?

Since I am no longer as diligent about posting as I used to be, I tend to have a lot of ideas of what I am going to write about by the time I actually get around to sitting down and writing, and this time was no different.  I think future topics will include my fear about raising children in the future, the increasing use of technology in the classroom, increased updates on my life etc but this time, I think I need to talk about how I feel about the current situation in Israel.

Let me start by saying that I find  my connection to Israel fascinating because unlike my connection to other places, this connection is not derived from a stay there.  Being Jewish in the Diaspora generally means we all have an assumed connection to Israel and while I have yet to visit, because of camp, I know a good number of people who call Israel home.  I want to visit but at the same time, I think I'm scared not because of the threat of physical danger but because being there is supposed to be lifechanging.  What if I go and don't have that lifechanging moment of clarity?  How will it alter my view of myself in respect to my religion?  It's extremely common for most Jews to struggle with their Jewish identity, some would even say that that is what makes us Jewish but I sometimes think that this struggle has been a little more intense for me because it was a decision I had to make over and over which will impact large decisions in the future.

So the situation at hand is impossible to grapple with from this distance.  I am sitting at work, excited that I will not have to get into a pool for the foreseeable future, that I bought gas for less than $4 a gallon today and my friend was in a bomb shelter not too long ago.  Hearing from her that she was evacuated to safety in Tel Aviv put the whole situation in clearer perspective.  She is one of my closest friends and not an Israeli citizen, she is an American student spending six months abroad in Eretz Yisrael yet the bombs are still coming at her.

I work with Israeli citizens now and have since I was 17 and I can't imagine being in there shoes right now.  Some of them are getting called back up to fight, some are being evacuated to shelters and the ones here are constantly trying to communicate with their loved ones back home.  During Superstorm Sandy, my family was unable to contact one of my aunties until about a week later (she's fine) because we couldn't get non-local calls to her.  That was scary enough and these people are dealing with direct relatives.

It's hard feeling as helpless as I do because there is nothing I can do to make the situation any better for any of these people in my life.  I feel like everything I have to say is so trivial about the whole situation because I am so detached from all of it.  This is not my reality by any means and trying to reconcile how to be there for my friends without overwhelming them is a hard line to balance.

The American media covers most things Israel in a very interesting light.  The bias changes depending on the situation but if you are unaware of Israel's policies, the media can sometimes spin it in a way that makes Israel look like the bad guy to support American policies.  Looking back at the release of Gilad Shalit last year, this was an important move, reenforcing to Israelis that they would not be sacrificed or forgotten by their country even if it means negotiating with terrorists.  I understand the idea behind not negotiating with terrorists but it would be nice to know that my country stood behind my friends in our military the way Israel stands behind their soldiers.  It's hard to get an accurate account of anything going on because the media is starting to treat Hamas like it's something other than a terrorist group.

Okay, I have not been articulate or connected in any way through this but I think I got my point across a little.  I should really do productive things at work now.

So This is the New Year and I Don't Feel Any Different

So hard as I might try to be good, I think of a ton of things to post here and then somehow never seem to remember to post when I have the time.  This obviously leads to things like a 1AM post when I should be sleeping.

So life updates first:

I still have a crazy schedule since I currently work three jobs but two of the schedules stay pretty stable so that helps create a little more routine than I had last year which is nice.  The third job is starting to taper off since the weather is finally getting cooler so that means it might be time to find a new third job in addition to the constant search for something a little more permanent.

I guess I should go back a bit and just talk about the things I was brainstorming about a few weeks ago.  Working at the synagogue has reminded me about so many holidays that I either never understood or appreciated as a kid and has made me realize that as Jewish as I feel sometimes, I have been very disconnected from the community as a whole for the past few years.  This year was the first High Holidays I had actively participated in for a few years.

Since I work with some of the teens, I was hired to design and run the teen program for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this year.  I read a lot of programs designed by other people before I could choose what I thought were the most important things that I wanted to discuss with these kids.  I always go in knowing that I can't get 100% approval rate from parents and kids but it's still hard not to worry about all those things.

I realized that I would love to work with these kids on a more regular basis because there are so many things that I would love to talk about with them but it's not possible to create the kind of bond you need to really tackle tough issues with teens.  Sometimes I wonder if they ever get some of the important lesson that they teach in college, for example, all the issues pertaining to sexual assault and how to handle it, but they are being faced with earlier than adults expect.

I am getting off topic but I guess programming for these holidays was also a lot about trying to convince the teens to look inside themselves and see the good and the bad within themselves pertaining to their actions for the past year.  I know that I have helped the teens I work with feel like they are a more valued part of the community but I also know that I fell short on planning and implementing programs that teach them what could be invaluable lessons if it could help them handle future situations more positively.

I will attempt to have a more coherent post soon but I was just thinking that I should at least put something up tonight since I was thinking about it and had a little time.  Hopefully I will get my butt to yoga tomorrow so I start working on my goal to treat my whole self better.

Believe in yourself! Take your game into outer space!

So I know it has been FOREVER since I last updated this and I had all sorts of ideas of what to write about and now the Olympics are here and that is really distracting.

I could complain about the Olympics and the frustrations I have about the way they broadcast them but I think it would be better to just focus on the things that I am loving about these games.

1. The athletes without a country marching in the Parade of Nations actually looked like they were enjoying themselves.  They were dancing and just generally having fun unlike a lot of the other athletes who looked too serious to enjoy themselves.  Yes, it's an international competition but sports are also supposed to be fun.

2. The pictures I get from the stands of some of the events from my British friends who are actually there.  It's cool, but I am jealous.

3. We get to hear about athletes from around the world that might go unheard of by the general population otherwise.

4.  I record the events I want to see so I can skip all the silly commercials and commentary.

5. When John Orozco got off the floor, you heard Horton comment to him that he was now done with his first day at the Olympics as if he was trying to make it seem like it was no big deal.  If I could work with an Olympic team, it would be a tie between swimming and men's gymnastics since both are very entertaining.  Have you seen the video of the swim team?

I am almost ready for bed since I just want to watch a few more events and then go to bed since I have to be in the pool for a long time tomorrow!

But you don't know which page to turn to, do you?

Yesterday I started to reread the Harry Potter series again.  With all of this Hunger Games craze, I just reread that series and needed to be reminded of what started it all.  I realized that this made me a little sad.

When I started reading Harry Potter for the first time, it was before the craze started.  I had no idea that Harry was a wizard and I think it made the books even better for being able to discover that for myself.

I love that there are these books that make kids want to join up and read before the movie comes out but sometimes I wish that my future potential children would have the option to read these books and make all of the fun plot discoveries by themselves.  I know that there will be other books that will be new and different for them but it makes me sad when I see kids who don't read in favor of TV.  To be fair, a number of parenting technique that I witness make me a little sad but on the flip side, I know some truly amazing parents who are in the process of raising some pretty stellar kids.

Sorry it has taken me so long to post.  I couldn't think of anything that I felt was important enough to follow the last post.

There are some new and exciting things brewing but more on that when they work out a little more clearly.