abada abada

So as a result of the post-holiday morass, I haven’t done other wrap-ups or much else. I had a week of good sleep and getting ready for work and then I woke up with the sniffles and was like “Oh THIS again” but it seems to be mostly at bay. Works going fine. I quit my job at the library. You can read about that decision over at librarian.net. I still feel pretty weird about it. I’m sort of at a point where if I make a big decision in my life, I’m likely to have a bunch of people being supportive (see librarian.net comments). This is lucky for me, I’m fortunate to have a large peer group of people who mostly like me, and yet it’s hard when I’m doing something that feels wrong. I wonder if they’d tell me if I was screwing it all up? Maybe I can’t screw it all up.

Unlike in the past where I’ve had a chart about swimming, last year I switched to a more maintenance approach to exercise. That is, I do it for mood balancing and if I feel I have been slacking in the fitness department, but not in the same auto-competitive way as years past. I also started running. I know, weird right? I had always assumed I couldn’t really run, both because of my mild asthma and also my “loose ankles” which means I was always spraining them. Some combination of years of swimming and better footwear seems to have mostly fixed this. I now trod along on the treadmill sometimes instead of swimming. I like this because I can listen to music and the time commitment is less and my pulse races higher. I can do a mile in 13:22. I am aiming for 12:00, for starters. Kelly’s been good at setting me up with some good habits and now I’m sort of motoring along on my own.

As a result of this, I had to buy sneakers. Since I’m paid something like adult-level wages now — and we got healthcare and assorted benefits with my job at MetaFilter this year — I figured I should invest in some decent clothes. So I now have a new winter vest, new sneakers, new “snow clogs” and a few sharp-looking pairs of second-hand pants. I agonize over spending money like this, but less than I worry about becoming some crazed Hetty Green type person, so sometimes I shop.

A few more things you should know:

- As a result of rejiggering my morning routine, I have now created a slot for brushing my teeth and do it every day. I’m dumbly proud of this, as well as embarassed that it took me this long to figure out how to do this.
- I have decided that if I’m going to eat soup every night [I love soup!] like some rooming house hotplate owner, I could at least make it myself. So there’s been some cooking going on. Man… soup!
- I’ve got a caretaker in Topsham who is paying (a little bit of) rent and that seems to be working nicely for both of us.
- The plan for this year is much less travelling-for-work. We’ll see how that goes. More to the point, I feel that there was some aspect of me that enjoyed scooting around and overprogramming myself because I was concerned about having downtime, maybe being bored? I have decided that I am never bored (even in the absence of the internet) and have set out to prove that with more opportunities for doing what my Dad calls “the nothing” We shall see.

Places I stayed in 2009. I am hopefully not jinxing this by doing it three days early. This year I lived in one place for the entire year. I also had/have an out-of-town boyfriend so a lot of these places are his place. See it evolve! I’m pretty sure this is the zenith of days away, though maybe I always think that…. Thirty-five distinct places. Seventy-four photos. One hundred and sixteen nights, more or less.

As before, stars indicate multiple visits to the exact same place. Numbers indicate number of distinct guestrooms at each location. Past years: 2008 2007, 2006, 2005.

Belmont, MA *
Cambridge, MA
Somerville, MA (2) *
Toronto, ON (2)
Mississauga, ON
Manchester, NH *
San Francisco, CA (2)
Boxboro, MA (2) *
Austin, TX
Westport, MA *
Crystal City, VA
New Haven, CT
Watertown, NY
Amherst, MA *
Long Branch, NJ
Ocean Grove, NJ
Springfield, MA
Athens, GA
Montreal QC (3) *
Kittery, ME *
Gloucester, MA
New Orleans, LA (2)
Lincolnville, ME
Trenton, ME
Lubec, ME
Bar Harbor, ME
Morgan, VT
East Village, NYC *
Fort Lee, NJ
Elko, NV
Des Moines, IA
Burlington, VT
Harrington, QC
Brooklyn, NY
Roslyn, NY

I can’t spell Hanukkah which is probably okay because I don’t really celebrate it. However as the Most Jewish member of the high school I work at, I felt it was my duty to make sure there was some sort of menorah around holidaytime. If you’ll recall, there was one last year but it got stolen. Well it turns out it wasn’t even stolen but rather mangled by an angry kid who was stuck in the principal’s office. It was never replaced. “Where do you get a menorah anyhow?” the lady in the office asked me. I had to admit I wasn’t sure. I did go around telling people the story of Hanukkah [somewhat cribbed from Wikipedia] and answered a few FAQs [no there's no Hanukkah bush, no it's not really a major holiday, no there's no Christmas tree involved, yes I still like cookies].

Yesterday I went to the school to pick up my car after its oil change — just another wonderful perk of working at a voctech school — and I found a little clip art menorah which I put on my classroom door. I don’t really have a classroom per se. That is, I don’t teach a class at the school. However, I’m there enough and there’s a free classroom so one of the rooms has come to be known as “Jessamyn’s Room” There’s a door decorating contest at the school where each class decorates their door in a holiday theme. This is the predictable presents, trees, red and green whatnot. Each classroom also adopts a family, a family from town having trouble making ends meet who gives the school a list of things they could use. From my position the lists are terribly poignant. No one’s asking for gameboys, they’re all asking for things like warm socks and a pair of women’s jeans, size 32. The kids all chip in to not just get the things on the list, but stocking stuffer stuff also. They then assemble and wrap it all and put it under the school tree which is out in the hallway and the families come pick up the presents right before the school shuts down for the holidays.

I used to have a pretty GRARGRAR opinion of the oppressiveness of Christmastime. Too much religion in my Wintertime. Too much shopping in my long dark nights. Too many well-meaning people not considering that other people might have different culutral traditions, or different choices, or different types of families. I’m still not totally pleased with the whole creche on the town commons thing, but I moved and I hear they don’t do that anymore since someone stole the baby jesus. Being more of a fixture at the school where they actually take pains to make sure the holidays are about sharing what you have with the people in your community, where it matters to people that everyone has enough, has really allowed me the room to enjoy the stressful Thanksgiving to New Years streak in a way that hasn’t worked as well in the past. Last night, when it was dark outside and I was leaving the school, I colored in one candle on the clip-art menorah.

I did manage to not buy anything yesterday, but that’s partly because Jim paid my way into the JFK Library/Museum [by previous arrangement, that's my idea of a nice date] and paid for some gas. I looked at my credit card statement to pay it off today and realized it had paid bills in my absence [a few bucks to ebay, a charge from a few days ago that cleared yesterday] and that really it’s pretty tough to have a day that doesn’t involve spending any money even though I don’t spend money all the time.

Sometimes I feel like I’m evading imagined pursuers in the ways I travel and make plans. I was away for a week this time and had a really stupidly good time considering how many things I did and people I saw. I also think I didn’t get sick. I’m home eating heirloom apples feeling the wind leaking into the cracks in the house and am happy to be here. Here’s a bulleted list of the holiday week.

• Friday - drove down to Providence, picked up Jim at the train station, went to the Providence MeFi meetup, stayed a little too late, stayed over at my Dad’s in Westport where my sister and boyfriend were already hanging out
• Saturday - Dad’s 70th birthday dinner [happy birthday dad!] with Kate and Ned and me and Jim and Dad. Turned out great. Stayed again in Westport.
• Sunday - Kate and Ned left early, drove Jim to train station later, stayed over after helping my dad fix a corrupt firefox profile, watched the football game with Dad
• Monday - Did house projects with Dad and shopped for misc nonsense and hung out and had the first of many turkey meals out for lunch at Marguerite’s
• Tuesday - took dad to eye doctor, went to Mom’s/Sister’s to say howdy and have dinner and hang out. Stayed over in Boxboro. Hung out with Jim a little but he scooted due to allergies
• Wednesday - went on awesome tour of the MA State Crime Lab [see flickr for more] and headed to Jim’s for Thanksgiving eve. Caught a late showing of 2012 (weather porn!)
• Thursday - slept in, headed to Frank’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Not as awesome as last year but pretty okay. Headed to my Dad’s for sleeptime to free up some room at Jim’s super-full house.
• Friday - got up had lunch at the Bayside, went to the JFK Library/Museum and then the Commonwealth Museum where I saw the Declaration of Independence and other neat MA history. Headed back to Jim’s for some hangout time and then drove home in a crazy windstorm.

Woke up today and it was sunny and windy outside and I’ve got a whole weekend at home alone for only the second time since August.