the question is how fast

basically a cut-and-paste of a recent email, sue me:

two big things to share: one good, one heartbreaking.

today i had my first day of work at my new job. it was good; it felt great. true to form, the morning commute was a clusterfuck/comedy of errors and i very nearly ran late, but the stress was soon forgotten. i mainly just had training/icebreaker stuff today, and lunch with an adviser. it was really good, not, like, some guy with a power point presentation droning on. in keeping with my previous experiences, everyone i dealt with was super-encouraging, down-to-earth, and funny. nothing sugarcoated but no needless psych-outs. it was good to hear, repeatedly, that: i'm not supposed to know anything right now, or for a while, really; i ought to focus on figuring out/actualizing what i want to get out of the job rather than just being a team player; that i shouldn't worry about hours for the rest of the year, and that i should make a point to take all the vacation time i get. i got along well with all the other new hires, and truly, would-have-a-beer-with-them-anyway liked a lot of them. lunch was great and i liked what i heard about the some of the work i may be doing. it's a little weird to suddenly have my own office and support staff (i.e. to be someone's boss)...but it's exciting.

then, the other stuff. as some of you know, my brother suffered a serious head injury a week ago and has been in the hospital ever since. that's the nutshell version; all i can say is it's actually way more complicated. physically, he's recovering well and more rapidly than expected. but he has a very long road ahead of him. it just really kills me, for the obvious reasons, because he's already been dealt more than his share of bad cards in the past, and because things tend to hit him harder emotionally than the rest of my family. though they have responded in a startlingly positive, pragmatic way, it's been really hard on my parents.

...and then, in a few days, there's moving.

hope your lives are more boring right now! seriously.

hey you guys

if you happen to pray or that sort of thing, could you send some of it in the direction of my family? someone that i'm close to is going through a really, really hard time.

no one uses the phone anymore

an excerpt from this week's email from marsha:

"Hey...forgot to tell you I love that bed in the Crate and Barrel photos. Watched the brand new season opener of Curb you E tonight...So funny. He and Cheryl adopted a black family from a poor area after a Katrina like storm. Their name is Black...so he said that is so funny...'Like I'm a Jew and my name is Jew!!'"

from furniture catalogs to larry david quotes in 5 seconds. and you wonder where i get it from.

break your own glass ceiling

Capricorn (Dec 22- Jan 19)

You cannot escape the stress now, for seeking the safety of stable structures is not an option. Things you have relied on in the past could be changing. Everything is different now. Fortunately, once you get past your fear of the unknown, you may find it quite exhilarating. This is a ride that you'll remember for a long time.


perhaps it's corny, but it's reassuring to read something like that when you just sold all your furniture, you're about to start a new job and move to a new place, and half your friends have moved away. whee!

(p.s. if the last entry did not already clue you in, i have decided to try out the well-worn blogging fallback of titling entries with song lyrics. i might as well put all of those verses in my head to SOME use, and maybe you will google your way to some new music that you enjoy. it's...fun?)