So, a few things…

Have I ever mentioned my coffee mugs before?  I have five mugs that have travelled from place to place.  My oldest mug is from my elementary school – the name spelled out in building blocks with a letter on each face.  I have one from camp (I love it mostly for the old school logo of a whale with a menorah coming out of his head like water coming out of the blow hole.  It also says Malibu in a cheesy 80s font).  I have a mug that I brought back from one of my trips to Israel – it’s clear, green glass and from the moment I had it in my possession I deemed it only to be worthy of fancy teas – so I don’t use it very often.  And I have a mug that one of my students made for me when I moved from new york to boston – he wrote shalom Shabbat in perfect, child-like, Hebrew letters – I still laugh to myself every time I look at it, perched prominently on my desk.  The last mug is actually the mug that I get the most use out of – although that wasn’t always the case – it’s a mug from the private all girls’ school I attended back in LA – the BIG M.

It’s a fairly sophisticated mug (not a surprise) with white lettering on the white ceramic.  In the dead center, in lavender, is the school logo, which after all these years, I am just realizing is a girl’s profile coming out of a flower.  You would think that with my feelings towards my BIG M experience I would have shattered that mug long ago – or at least left it buried deep in my parents perpetually flooded basement.  But instead I continue to take it with me from place to place and now, sip from it daily.  I get this weird satisfaction out of it – I’m gluten for punishment.

In other news…it’s storming here.  And it’s as if the world is ending.  People have lost their freaking minds and ABN and I are leading the pack!  We woke up this morning, looked at each other and were sorta dumbfounded.  Sure, when we lived in boston the weather was miserable 3 out of days, and don’t even get me started on the snow, and we totally survived.  But here, we’re out of practice.  There was serious debate about how we would get from point A to point B.  I ended up driving ABN to work (and it was treacherous, in addition to people losing their minds they also forget how to drive, and the hills produce strange flood patterns) largely because I feared for his safety if he biked/took the bus/walked.  This weather is supposed to continue through tomorrow – you can imagine how great my hair looks.