Have A Happy New Year!

Ten years ago tonight, my thoughts were of Millennium and disaster. I knew the year 2000 neither began the 21^st century nor the 3^rd Millennium, but it always excites me to see the odometer slip into multiple zeros.

I had decided to see in 2000 alone, thoughtfully and quietly. I bought bottled water – my only acquiescence to Y2K fears that had people hording food and money and guns – and planned an evening of reflection and reserved celebration. Around 11:00 p.m., I turned off the tv and listened to music while my New Haven apartment was lit only by candle light.

For the last half hour of 1999, I blew out a candle every 5 minutes until only one remained to be blown out at midnight. Then I sat in my quiet dark apartment and heard the sound of the year 2000 beginning: cold quiet broken by the sound of some idiot firing a gun into the night off in the distance.

And thus began my own annus horribilis, the beginning of one of the worst periods in my life. More on that another time. I'm here to wish you well.

I wish you all, a Happy and Wonderful 2010. I am planning on having a great one too. It's on my "To Do" list.

Here. Some music to start your New Year:

("I'm still very obsessed with this song)

And a Magnetic Field's song by Tracey Thorn & Jens Lenkman

Have a Happy!

Merry Christmas

Two months without a word and you are probably thinking that I have been too busy to blog, and you’d be right.

After months of unemployment and even running out the twice extended unemployment benefits and not getting a nibble on the job market, I finally landed a new job with what seems to be so far a decent company. And while it’s not with books, it is with one of my other loves: food.

I was quite neurotic about getting the new position, fearing that my mouth would somehow jinx me until I walked in the front door for training, I told just my parents and one other person before descending into silent worry-and-don’t-sleep mode.

It’s been such a hard year for so many people including myself, hunkering down in the depths of the twin Depressions, Financial and Emotional. My new company is progressive and socially conscious and worked with the state Department of Labor to interview people who were out of work for ages. So many of my new coworkers also needed jobs too and it’s great that now they do.

I’m going to stop here before I tear up (like Frank McCourt my “bladder is in my eye”). I do promise to write more, but it’s been great having a very good reason not to be.

A very Merry Christmas to you all!