Monday, January 10, 2005

Gasp, it's already been eight days. Not entirely sure where they have gone. I've just finished laundry thankfully my clean socks admit. Unfortunate to learn that Steve Madden didn't have good material specialists working on their insoles. Even after having them reglued they managed to bunch up under my feet by mid-day, and those socks bit the dust as soon as the shoe were off. Bella suggested trying to soak them in hot water; however, the glue used during the shoe repair is not likely to be light weight or effected by water. So long soaks; you've served me well. J Crew, actually. Not that I've ever owned much from there. Nothing that fits all that well. And what about Eddie Bauer. They guarantee their products for life, and my new jeans couldn't last a month. Insult to injury is that neither could the price. They were discontinued for not being too successful, and I only got 60% of the original price in a credit. This does however serve as some justice because when I was in high school I had the better of them. Traveling from New Orleans to Taft regularly, I was quite tough on luggage. My Eddie Bauer bag, which was entirely too big took me many places over six years or better. Finally, it got tired of me putting more than forty pounds at a time in it, and the strap stitching came undone. In my mind life was life, so I brought the bag back and got a credit. It almost makes it appropriate for the jeans to serve as retribution of sorts. Not that putting any credence whatsoever maintains an ounce of guilt; merely intrigue.

Monday, January 03, 2005

Tomorrow will officially be my first day as a Development Associate at American Jewish World Service. It has been great working there over the past three years. In addition to having wonderful professional experience, meeting amazing people, and doing good work in the world, I have began to develop a sense of social justice. I am in large part ignorant to the complexities of the world we live in, but each day my eyes open a little bit more. The sights before me invite a rush of thoughts and feelings. Can we really be doing all of this to one another? Why don't we do more for each other? I have not chosen the most lucrative path in this new endeavor, but the opportunity for growth may very well be unavailable eslewhere. Regardless, I'm happy with what I have, and that's a really wonderful feeling.

Tonight Bella and I had our first game on the Deluxe Scrabble board I received from Merle. It's no surprise that she kicked my ass, again. She beat me a couple times before on her old set, by 70 points or so, then again by 40. This time was a real walloping though weighing in at a monsterous 90+ points. Reading Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis has gotten me back into my old competitive game mode. While traveling I thought about taking up chess again as I have on several other occasions. However, now, I want to follow through on this desire. I have on my desk a posting for the 7th Annual Foxwoods Open, which will take place towards the end of March. If I can commit to training enough, I will eventually register for the event. This is a huge event that I would like to compete in, so I'm contemplating. But back to Scrabble for a moment, I need to learn some new words, yea. Bella has a significantly larger vocabulary and wields it accutely crossing triple word scores and racking up huge points. I'm going to narrow my margins with the hopes of one day surpassing her. I'm not counting on lucky tiles, I need to do some work...

Saturday, January 01, 2005

"Napoleon, this is Pedro, will you show him his locker." Starting afresh at AJWS won't require too much adjustment. I began in Communications, shifted to IT, back to Communications, now on to Development while still dabbling in Communications. It has been a full on submersion since returning from New Orleans. We have been responding to the atrocities in South East Asia. I have a very difficult time comprehending 150,000 lives extinguished within minutes. There is so much going on in the area; I find it difficult to keep up with what is happening in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India. We have been inundated with support from all over. Our website has proven to be an amazing asset during this time. To process all of the requests by hand would have taken a great many more people for the sheer volume. I'm glad to say we can keep our overhead to just 5%. Unfortunately, I missed the presentation on what the latest relief efforts were focusing on, but I was off settling another network's affairs.

Merriam Webster's hottest word of the year, 2004 -- blog. It's a great way to spread the word. Happy New Year to everyone.