This is a bit of a catch-up post…

The Sabra is back, living in the same state, and indeed, the same house as yours truly. She received official word that she was laid off a few weeks ago, and after an unfortunate series of events, she finally accepted the severance package her office offered: 2 more paychecks, relocation money, and 10 days’ worth of COBRA while we waited for my insurance to pick her up. I flew up on July 2, and we drove back on the fifth, car loaded with all her worldly possessions.

Now that she is unemployed and almost without a status, we have submitted the paperwork for her Green Card…and what an experience that has been. It was actually easier than we thought to get all the papers together, and I got my bonus at work at just the right time—for it ain’t cheap to get permanent residence status. She also had to get a physical from a US Citizenship and Immigration Services recognized doctor. This physical included a TB test, which, due to her being immunized as a child, she promptly failed. So, she had to go to another place to get a chest x-ray to verify that she is TB free. But, since we live in the District, we had to take an extra step.

I took yesterday off thinking that I would get some well-deserved rest and get some things done around the apartment. Instead, I spent the better part of the morning at DC General Hospital at the TB clinic where the Sabra had to get clearance from the DC Department of Health. It was a bit creepy hanging out with so many consumptives in one room. I will definitely need to get a TB test at my next physical!

With clearance in hand, we returned to the CIS approved clinic and had all the paperwork finalized. We put the papers, applications, and checks (yes, there were 3 of them) in the mail this morning.

Now we wait for the next step in the process, which I believe is the interview…stay tuned!

I like to read. I like to write. I like to travel. So, when I called National Geographic Magazine a few months back to start my subscription, I decided to accept the offer the operator made me: for an extra $5, I could also receive National Geographic Traveler. To be honest, I'm still not sure I really like the magazine, I do very much like one of the regular contributors, however: Daisann McLane. It's her easy-going writing, with just enough quirk to it that I long to throw it all away and gallivant across the globe. For instance, in this month's issue, she talks about how wonderful it is to have your laundry done (or to do it yourself) in foreign countries. I'm used to stuffing my dirty undies in the plastic bag the hotels give you for laundry service so they don't touch the clean clothes in my bag. Since I travel to FL so much and may be stuck there for longer than I anticipate, I have come to regularly pack more than I need...it never occurred to me to actually let strangers do my laundry. I think I might have to try it the next time I'm away! Thanks, Daisann!

(By the way, for those who would like to keep regular tabs on her writing, I have added her sites, Daisann McLane's Real Travel and Daisann to my links list.)

I bumped into an old friend today. Well, I didn’t really bump into him as much as type his name into Google and found him. I’m not alone, of course. This is how many people reconnect. Since I got an internet connection in the late '90s, I’ve been typing lost friends in to see if I can find them. And I have. I found some folks who I lost touch with when we left school or moved to other countries. I found others I just sort of drifted away from. Sadly, thanks to Facebook, I’ve even found some I would have preferred I hadn’t. It’s a blessing and a curse to find old friends. It makes you think about who you were, who you wanted to be, and who you are.

So, I found an old friend from my High Seas days. I emailed him and asked if he was the same person who I used to work with on Big Blue. He was, and I recognized his sense of humor immediately when he said that he was going to report me as a stalker. I chuckled at this, but then I realized that he is in fact right. I am a stalker. I’ve spent countless hours on the internet typing lost friends’ names into Google and Facebook. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve sent saying things like “Hi, aren’t you the same John Doe I went to high school with?” or “Jane? Jane Smith? Is that you?” Some are hits, and some aren’t. Each and every hit has added a “friend” on Facebook or a contact on LinkedIn. I have successfully found hundreds of old friends and acquaintances. I’ve even reconnected with some who I didn’t even really know. It’s funny how 19 years later, the mere fact that you shared an 11th grade English class is enough to warrant being friends on Facebook.

To be honest, this is how I got into the whole social networking scene to begin with. There are a group of guys I used to hang out with years ago. They were the first ones that I lost touch with who I desperately wanted to find. I remember being at the computer lab in college and typing their names into long-gone search engines. Finally, about 3 years ago, after typing one of their names into Google, I finally got a hit…on MySpace. Of course, I couldn’t see anything about him, so I had to join. I emailed him, and sure enough, he was the very same person who I used to go to school with. From there, I looked into his friends list and found his cousin. Then, I stumbled onto Facebook and found his brother. Now, we are all friends again (and I even met up with 2 of the 3 of them in February).

Just yesterday, not only did I find my old friend who accused me of being a stalker, but I found another old friend from that same point in life. I was scrolling through the friends list of a mutual friend (who I also found using Google) and there she was…sure, her name had changed, but it was still her. We are now friends on Facebook.

I’ve always considered this “research,” trying to find old friends who slipped away. But I think he was right, and I think I need to accept this about myself. When you have spent almost 20 years typing the same names over and over into Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., you need to recognize and accept that perhaps the desire to reconnect is more of an obsession than mild curiosity about what happened to lost friends.

So, I admit it, I am a stalker of sorts. I’m not proud, nor am I ashamed. It is what it is, and I’m OK with it. I like to think that these people meant something special to me, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time, and there’s a part of me that misses them, misses what I was, what I wanted to be, and by reconnecting with them, I might be able to capture a little piece of that. So, as long as the intent is to find people and say, “how are you after all this time? How’s life treated you? What adventures have you had since the last time we talked?” I think it’s OK to be a bit of a stalker. I’m not out to hurt anyone, and I really am interested in what’s happened to these people.

Yea, so, it's been yonks since I've written anything, so I decided to start writing and see where it takes me. I'm not really sure what I'm planning to write in this post, but we'll see what comes out.

I've been worrying lately that I've completely lost what little shred of talent I have for writing and being creative. I've been saying it for years now that NASA has been making me dumber, and now I'm completely convinced. I've not written anything since last year, and I've had nothing to write about. I've tried; oh, believe me, I've tried. I sit on the Metro and look at the goings-on around me and think, "What is going on here that I can write about?" I thought about blogging about the wedding and preparation and all that, but nothing (not to mention that the Sabra didn't want me to write anything personal on the blog). I just didn't have the ambition.

Now that we're separated, you'd think I've got loads of time to write...but again, what do I write about? I could blog about me trying to find a job in Beantown, but who wants to read that crap?

I finally got around to buying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so I decided to start back at the beginning and read straight through. I thought that that would be cool to write about...my feelings after reading each of the books--not my opinions of what's going on or anything like that, but the beauty of reading entertaining books, of the feelings, emotions, and memories that J.K. Rowling is able to evoke from me. But, nope, nada, nothing doing. Oh, that's not to say that I'm not experiencing emotions and feelings and memories from reading the books again, but I'm not writing about them...can't be bothered.

I'm going out tonight...maybe something exciting will occur to me to write about them.

Well, wish me luck!

I know that I haven't posted anything in forever, so I thought that I should at least get 1 post in before 2009.

What have I been doing instead of blogging? Well, I'm actively looking for a new job, so if you know of any in Boston, please let me know.

I've been working on some other websites that I have.

I've been planning the wedding...just a little over a month now!

And I've been doing some extra work in the evenings (and at work, but don't tell anyone that I've been double-dipping).

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannuka, Peaceful Kwanzaa, and here's wishing you my annual blessing....that 2009 will be better, brighter, and funner than 2008!

Peace.

After a lot of stressing, the Sabra and I finally decided on a date: 29 January 2009, we will tie the knot.

So there you go.

We've started telling folks.

Since my sister lives in Portland, OR, and she feels like she's not with the family on special days, we decided to tell her before anyone else. We called her last night, and I led with "can you keep a secret?" She immediately guessed that I was calling to tell her that I was engaged.

This afternoon, we called the Sabra's parents to tell them officially. They already knew it was coming since I talked to them the other day for their permission (actually for their blessing because I don't know how to say "permission" in Hebrew), but we still wanted them to know that the deed had been done.

I am hosting Rosh Hashana this year, and my parents and oldest sister came here for dinner. Before we started making dinner, and before my sister got here, we told my parents. I said, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that it might take you a little longer to get to Japan, but the good news is that you are still going to get to go to Asia." When my sister arrived, we told her as well.

I guess it's becoming official now that the family knows.

I subscribe to Smithsonian Magazine. I love it. I think it's one the best written mags I've come across, and the breadth of topics is wonderful.

This month's issue had a cover on it that was nothing more than an advertisement to buy a subscription of Smithsonian Magazine for a Christmas gift. If you bought a subscription, you would receive a gift yourself. Said gift is a bear that resembles the ones created in the early twentieth century that were named after President Teddy Roosevelt--thus the "Teddy" Bear.

The advert announced that you would receive an "authentic replica."

I had the ring in the car when I picked up the Sabra last night, but the moment just wasn't right to do it.

Tonight was the night.

One of our first "dates" involved a rather long walk down Wisconsin Ave. At one point, we stopped at a church to sit on the step and rest for a bit. Before I knew it, we were talking about weddings and what we liked and didn't like in the weddings we'd been to, and what we would want and wouldn't want in our own weddings. Since then, we'd always joked that we should get engaged on those steps.

As fate would have it, the church lies just south of the Metro station we use to get to the gym. So, I'd been trying to see how I could manage it to walk past the church on our way back to the Metro, but we always seemed to switch sides before we'd get to the church.

Tonight, however, was different.

After our workouts, we took showers and changed clothes. Before I left the men's dressing room, I took the ring out of the box and put it in my pocket. These are relatively new pants, but I was convinced that I would suddenly and spontaneously get a hole in the pocket and lose the ring before we got to the church.

As we headed to the Metro, I kept us on the correct side of the street (the lights were also on our side and they were green most of the way so we didn't need to switch sides). When we got to the church, I asked the Sabra if she wanted to sit for a minute "for fun and old-time's sake." She said sure, and we sat.

I tried to steer the conversation toward the topic of marriage, but it just wasn't working too well. I was nervous, and I think she knew what was coming and was nervous too. I had already made a big deal that I wanted to go out to dinner, so after my stuttering to try to start the conversation, the Sabra said she was cold and hungry and wanted to get moving (she did have goose-bumps).

We went to Neisha, a Thai place in Tenley Town. I broached the subject again. This time I said, "what do you think? Can you see yourself with a ring?" and I took my ring off, and put it on her finger with the shank up so it looked like a wedding band. She said she didn't know. I pulled out the real ring and said, "well, what about with this one?" and put it on her finger.

She was a bit dumbfounded for a minute and then realized that this was it, I was really proposing. She was so happy, she almost cried. She didn't, but she did get up and hug and kiss me.

I think it was a very nice way to propose, but it wasn't the way I had it in my head. That's fine. We're both happy. Also, since it wasn't the official engagement ring, I still have a second opportunity to "officially" propose.

I played hookie from work today, and I went out to lunch with Shining Starr9. We talked about how the Sabra and I are seriously talking about getting married in January. I told her that I didn't have a ring yet, so I couldn't propose because I don't want to do it without a ring.

She suggested that I buy a "promise ring." I wasn't so sure, but I thought I'd give it a try. So, we dropped her car off and headed over to the mall. It was PG Plaza (or the Mall at Prince Georges as they prefer to be called now). We looked at some nice stuff, but it was more than I wanted to spend. Please don't misunderstand, I'm happy to spend as much as I need to, but since this isn't the engagement ring, I just wanted something nice to do what needs to be done.

So, after excluding anything out of my price range, I didn't find anything nice. We ended up at Macy's, and I did a panic purchase. I bought a ring that looked really nice at the moment, but as I looked at it and looked at it, I came to realize that I didn't like it at all.

I headed over to Montgomery Mall, which has a different class of clientele. I went into Helzberg and found a really nice ring that had the Sabra written all over it. I returned the ring to Macy's without even thinking about it, and bought the one at Helzberg.

Now I need to give it to her...