• Ah, the cheerful bullet point, ready at a moment's notice to turn morbid, rambling digressions into bouncy agenda items!
• It's grey and cold outside and I can't believe it's not snowing. The air looks edible, as though I could bite into it like firm, dense snow.
• I am living for the weekends now, racing through the weekdays in order to effect my escape as soon as Friday afternoon rolls around. When I think about people dying young (Heath Ledger), being diagnosed with incurable diseases (entire panel on NPR last night), or losing their ability to enjoy life as old age takes over (my roommate), I imagine that I should be suffused with a new sense of the NOW and how to live it. Not so. I am still mired in the curiously stagnant present.
• The second season of Weeds was fantastic. I can't wait for the third to become available!
• I got blindsided by the New Yorker recently. Absorbed in the tale of Sergio Vieira de Mello's doomed attempt to put Iraq to rights, I forgot that this was a true story, with a known ending. His death in the 2004 UN bombing took me cruelly by surprise, as if it were just happening for the first time. I was shocked and saddened in a way I hadn't been when hearing about the bombing in the news. Though I was reading the article as research for my internship study of SRSGs and their qualifications, I was unexpectedly most touched by the very attributes that made his leadership of the UN Peacekeeping Mission a failure. He was clearly ready to move on from his professional life into something more personal. He didn't get off on the danger anymore.
  
• I finally called the Boston Psychotherapy Institute to find a therapist. I realized that I am feeling exactly the way I felt 10 years ago when I first started therapy - like I am stuck in a rut and I can't find my way out of it alone. My intelligence, self-awareness, empathy, and emotional experience are not the only tools required. I am waiting for the intake person to call me back so I can get the ball rolling.
  
• Helen listens to romance novels on tape. Recently, she asked me to order some of my favorites for her. It has been embarrassing and awkward to hear these stories read aloud! I am alternately blase and defensive about sharing something that feels unexpectedly personal and almost shameful. For a long time, I have only shared romance novel recommendations with my mom.