This one goes out to my friend Eleeza, who finally made it out to the east coast

Actually, this post has nothing to do with Eleeza or the east coast. Or maybe it does; I don’t really know where this is going yet. All I know is that I’ve been called a “bad blogger,” by virtue of my lack of posts. I’ve been duly ordered to update my blog. Now.

Well ok.

Let’s see. The basics are love, life, friends, and work, n’est-ce pas?

 

Love
Fred-bunny got a funny haircut, but don’t tell him I said that, he’s already paranoid about how short it is. He also got a JEIG (aka John Edwards Is Good) t-shirt in the mail recently. He coyly left it on the table unopened since it was addressed to me. Silly Fred. It was addressed to me because he asked me to buy it for him. He knows that. In any case, there were instructions enclosed with the t-shirt, due to which Fred made me put the shirt on and pretend to play electric guitar (plugged into nothing) while he burned through as much digital memory as my little Elph could take. I believe we are supposed to send one of them somewhere in the virtual world.

 

Life
Our apartment now boasts flora as well as fauna (at the moment the fauna include Fred, a half-Swedish-half-Greek couch crashing Daniel, and myself.)! The new additions include a festive pinewreath for the door (smellsogood), a mini-Christmas tree made from rosemary (mmm.. smellsogood), a spiky green houseplant, a hanging viney kinda houseplant, and a poinsettia plant that was a gift from one of my Cookie Monsters’ Ball party guests. Aside from the gifty, I bought all the plants at the Plantshed on 96th street with the specific instructions to give me things that could not die. Well, not too easily anyway. I really love our plants!

Friends
Last Saturday I hosted an afternoon holiday party for Cookie Monsters and Guitar Heroes. We decorated whimsically shaped cookies, listened to soul and jazz, drank steamy brandy apple ciders, and later took turns transforming into rock gods. The intimate but eclectic gathering of some of my favorite people (those in the NYC metro area, anyway) included a faculty member and her 8-year-old son, recent TC grads, a newlywed couple, a CA-transplant, and a few visiting Swedes. I think it’s funny that the Swedish word for gingerbread cookie sounds vaguely like “pepper kicker.” In conclusion, being now three days removed from the main event, I have three loaves of scrumptious cookie dough in the refrigerator waiting to take shape. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity, come on over for your cookie-fix.

Work
I’m at my third of three sites for my community rotation of the Dietetic Internship. At my first site, I worked with 3rd and 4th graders within a handful of NYC public schools (grant-funded). My second site was United Way of NYC-HPNAP (hunger prevention and nutrition assistance program) – government grant funded – where I had the opportunity to go to several conferences as well as help score grant applications. Now I am at Columbia University Head Start and Early Head Start (locally and federally funded), where there are way too many cute babies to concentrate on my work. I’ve really enjoyed the very diverse experiences I’ve had at all three sites, though one thing has held true throughout – no pay! Just kidding. Well, no, not really, they really don’t pay us. Which stinks. But seriously, it’s been great. They all serve the populations who are the most in need of health services, and I’ve been honored to be a part of it.
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I hereby do solemnly promise to make a better effort at this so as not to attract any more of that bad-blogger juju. At least not from lack of trying, anyway. Night!