Happy Holidays!

Greetings! I hope that you all had a wonderful, warm, and merry Christmas and a happy Hanukkah. We have been having a lovely time here, although we have definitely missed our friends and family back home.

DC has been an absolute ghost town these past few days. The office was open but deserted, parking was plentiful, traffic was tolerable, lines were short, lunches were long, the blackberry was not buzzing... in other words, it has been entirely pleasant! When everyone clears out to go home for the holidays, it becomes even more apparent that no one is actually *from* DC, and that home is somewhere else entirely.

In a strange fit of ambition and nostalgia, I cooked my first ever holiday feast--turkey, gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, grandmother's secret macaroni and cheese recipe, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top, and pumpkin pie (with healthy doses of cool whip of course). In a small Christmas miracle, everything actually turned out properly. Rachel and Oz and Jeanne, you can stop snickering now.

Other than eating far more than I thought was humanly possible, we have been enjoying spending time with Ankur's sister, who is up visiting for 10 days. Ankur has been showing her around DC, and on Saturday we all took a day trip back in time to Williamsburg, VA.



May your days be merry and bright!

It's started...

For those of you who are concerned about my complete lack of posting since Thanksgiving, I have only one word to say to you:

Crackberry.

It's been busy. I have decided that no matter how sexy the work you are doing is, it is still work, and too much of it is still too much.

But I had to take a break from my self-imposed exile to comment on the latest bizarre news out of Washington.

Rick Warren will give the inaugural prayer.

Rick Warren? Seriously? The guy who compares abortion to the Holocaust (not that I'm defending abortion, but the Holocaust is not even close to the range of appropriate comparisons here), who thinks that my entire family of Jews and Catholics and Hindus are going to burn in hell (and seems somewhat gleeful about it), who thinks that gay marriage is on par with beastiality, who thinks that women should submit to their husbands--that Rick Warren?

I'm all for Democrats separating themselves from the image that we are the party of godless commies. I thought that Obama's election was a step in the right direction there. But this seems like a slap in the face to all of those people who believe that religion does not have to be a code word for bigotry and close-mindedness.

Maybe there's another Rick Warren out there.