Thusfar, this holiday has been notable because James' and my parents met officially for the first time. We arranged (rather haphazardly) a dinner at La Cantinita's Havana Cafe in Clarendon and it went fairly well. There were no fights or gritted teeth, and we all managed to agree on the cuisine, which was Cuban. The restaurant was throwing what looked like an office party, and a woman in shiny gold pants kept climbing up on one of the tables to make announcements. Latin music played loudly in the background. This made for some conversation.

After a few days at Christmas to see my family and James' family (James was included in a trip to see my 85 year old italian grandmother, who unnerved both of us by smiling charmingly at him while slashing knives together to sharpen them before disembowling a roasted chicken. She also told him to take good care of me, apparently), I've begun making the rounds to see friends. I'm looking forward to a New Year's Day party with James' family, and lunching with his grandparents on Tuesday.

The weather since I got here has seemed brutally cold to me (I must be becoming a californian). Meteorologists keep threatening snow - although it hasn't appeared yet in DC. It just lurks, threatening to ruin my New Year's plans. :)

Otherwise, I've just been a consumer (bought shoes, as I needed work shoes that were a little more conservative than stuff I'm seeing in San Francisco right now), and have been doing a lot of reading.

I'm looking forward to starting my new job January 8, but am also feeling a little trepidation (*change is bad*). Increasingly, however, things that my brain has convinced me that I should be frightened about turn out to be perfectly fine. I guess we'll see how it goes!
12/30/2000 05:55:49 AM

Sunday, December 24, 2000

So I've finished my last day at work at JCF (whatever happens now, I just don't have to worry about it), and yesterday James and I spent all day in transit between San Francisco and Washington DC. The trip, on USAIR, transfering in Philadelphia, was a very smooth one, although I would have liked to be able to spend 6 hours on a plane with a man who wasn't constantly driving his knees into my lower back , and I'd never noticed how lame the USAIR terminal in San Francisco is.

12/24/2000 07:36:09 AM

Wednesday, December 20, 2000

I've spent the last two days training a remarkably intelligent potential successor, a woman from Connecticut (is that spelled right?) named Alyssa. I know I've spent all this time posturing about what a lame duck employee I am, but I've found it isn't true. I've thrown myself headlong into training her, and I'm tremendously relieved that she may be taking my place (because she's smart, conscientious and competant). I'm just amazed because I was dreading training her, and it is actually just fine.

At this very moment, Sylvia is telling me about trying to take the california express bus home (to be home early to rest, because she is ill), and having it break down before it even got out of downtown. If she lived 12 or 14 blocks from JCF, like me, she could have walked home a lot faster!

I'm just filling space in here at this point; I feel I've been neglecting the blog almost as much as I've been neglecting my cat (who has taken to sneaking under the bed in the middle of the night when james or I gets up and crawling into bed with us so that she won't be lonely. I have tried to kick her out, but she just crawls under the bed again, and at 3 am, it just doesn't seem worth it.)
12/20/2000 04:58:48 PM

Saturday, December 16, 2000

Despite the election and the sad fact that I am going to have to spend four days next week with my replacement at JCF shadowing me (I wish her well, but I really, really, hate training people), I'm pretty happy. It's a gorgeous Saturday morning in San Francisco.

12/16/2000 11:39:52 AM

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

Justice Stevens on this travesty of an election:

In the interest of finality, however, the majority effectively orders the disenfranchisement of an unknown number of voters whose ballots reveal their intent-and are therefore legal votes under state law-but were for some reason rejected by ballot-counting machines. . .Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

You know, I've spent the last 12 years telling my peers that voting matters, and that they should step forward to choose their leaders. In the end, apparently, it is perfectly alright for the guvm't to throw out tens of thousands of votes, so that they can proclaim a victory by less than 500 votes for the son of a former president.

If I were in Washington now, or Florida, I might be rioting. Isn't that what people do in other parts of the world when their elections are fraudulent? Either way, I'm so angry now that I have to remember to unclench my jaw.
12/13/2000 10:01:10 AM

for those of you who actually read this and might inquire:

James and I fly into DC on Saturday, December 23 after 10 pm.
We leave town on Wednesday, January 3.

I'll almost certainly be tied up Tuesday the 26th to see my grandmother and Christmas Day is reserved for family.

I've made no other plans, because scheduling things is exhausting for me these days (probably because I've spent the last two years in an uphill battle to schedule between 30 foundation meetings a year). Even if you haven't heard from me, I'd probably like to see you:Write me.
12/13/2000 09:28:20 AM

"I never thought that I'd live long enough to see English workers on Irish building sites rather than Irish workers on English sites," says Garvin.

12/13/2000 09:05:15 AM

Thursday, December 07, 2000

Remember me saying - just Monday - that I was amazed as how much work I was getting done?

Scratch that. I am now a lame duck employee. I'm just going to try to get through December as conscientiously as possible.

Spent last night helping my dance teacher (who runs a food project in the Mission) wrap presents for her yearly holiday party. Then came home and made ricotta and chocolate pudding, and watched James work to finish a paper.

Life is currently mundane, and I'm hopelessly behind on Chrismas shoppping.
12/7/2000 09:09:26 AM

Tuesday, December 05, 2000

It's just astonishing how hard you can work at a job that you know you are leaving in two and a half weeks. I was here from 8:30 until 7 yesterday. I'm pretty certain I'm going to be putting in a long day on Sunday. But it is all okay, because there is an end in sight!

Thanks to Wanda I'm reading Armistead Maupin's The Night Listener right now. His writer-narrator feels very real, as if the novel is autbiographical, but then the writer-narrator also spends a lot of time explaining how his own books are NOT strictly biographical. So Maupin is kind of playing with the reader. I actually haven't read Tales of the City, his "classic," but I'm enjoying this book so much, that I just might.
12/5/2000 10:43:15 AM