After coming to conclusions, I try to seek out people who hold the opposite view and benignly solicit explanations. This resulted in having many lunches with people who routinely voted conservative while in school and a polite reconciliation with Ayn Rand. Despite nodding respect for Israeli culture and many fallafel based encounters, I've yet to meet anyone who can justify the entitled (American-bolstered) position. I'm also confused why people who claim to be owed one of the holiest sites in the world as a result of ages of persecution and violence can bomb the crap out of a non-state to mark the new year.

Oh, yeah.

NYE. The coked out host of the lounge/party we were at called midnight two minutes early, but there was flowing champagne and R's sister was DJing. What I love about this city is in a bar the size of a shoebox there was: (1) glittery drag queens, (2) amy winehouse factory girls, (3) joe frat boys, (4) shaggy rock'n'rollas, (5) me. After we went to a house party where they lit paper lanterns into the sky and alarmed the neighbors.

Snow day = magazines. Today is a Rockwellian version of winter, tiny light snowflakes slowly weighing down all the evergreens.

While ignoring the stack of trade magazines I hauled here, I've considered what I do/don't like about work. I don't like being alone for most of the day and would prefer to work in an area with at least the presence of people. I do like thinking, working at a job where you get paid to think is way more fun than working at a job where you get paid to clean up after people and/or enter data and/or fill out forms. Conservative dress can be kind of a drag but is so functionally get-up-and-go. I would sign up for another limited-term contract somewhere else, if offered, because the option to leave without consequence every twelve months is a sweet deal and works well with plans to work 12 on/3 off for the next five or so. We watched Into the Wild last night and R warned me "that's what happens when you give up everything you own and go live in a bus." Point.