Never a dull moment

So I awoke this morning to see the city covered in white...snow, that is, for the very first time this year. Compare this season to winter 2006, which lasted well into late May as far as I'm concerned. Even though I will always prefer warm weather to cold, I certainly appreciate changing seasons, and I'd been finding the unseasonably mild temperature of the past few weeks increasingly and increasingly disturbing. This is unlike most of my students who were happy to have mild weather. Of course it would've been nice to have seen a little bit of the white stuff when there were still Christmas decorations up all over the city.

Is it just a cruel coincidence that we get an unseasonably warm winter the same year that global warming is riding high on the political agendas? Of course you can't attribute it all to global warming. Unlike most everyone I know, who seem to actually enjoy the creepily mild weather, I actually want snow this year. I'm not in the mood for the world to end JUST yet. Of course it would've been nice to have seen a little bit of the stuff when there were still Christmas decorations up all over the city.

Of course I was bad today...I've been completely red meat-free since well before the start of the new year, but my student took me to lunch today and I ordered the roast pork and dumplings. Nothing quite says "winter" to me like heavy Czech comfort food.

With winter well underway, my usual "where-the-hell-am-I-going-to" dilemma returns, like clockwork. I've decided that this is a uniquely American phenomenon. Case in point: a friend of mine recently celebrated her birthday and invited a palm reader to come and entertain her party guests. When it got to my turn, the palm reader started off with some crap about soulmates or something like that, and I quickly shut her up with: "I don't care about my love life! I want to know about my career! What will I be doing in 10 years?" After which she chuckled and said, "So you want to know about your career -- typical American!"

I've decided that 27 is a strange age. It's too late to claim that all liberal arts majors can't find fulfilling jobs, that you are just out of college, need more experience and so on. It's frightening -- I feel like I've gone through this debate time and time again -- although I know that it's bulls**t, it's hard to not to succumb to it sometimes.

At 27, you're supposed to be a person who knows what your entire career will entail, what your future financial goals are, what your relationship and/or future family planning strategy is. You're supposed to have a clean-and-cut idea of what lies ahead for you and be well on your way to be doing so. As for me, I still feel like I have to fight an uphill battle to be taken seriously sometimes -- at work, at home and so on. I still get stressed out at the prospect of balancing my checkbook. And the thing is: I know that I feel I could be completely happy being married to my career if I could find a job that I enjoy. I weigh every financial and personal decision as if it's some kind of life-or-death thing. Why is there all of this insanity in my brain??

Apparently plans for my ten high school reunion are underway. The big question looms: to attend or not to attend? Is it worth it to arrive in roughly the same weight-height proportion as high school, with nothing in the realm of material wealth or significant other to show for it? Egad -- I need more time! I was supposed to be living some glamourous life, wearing a Dolce and Gabbana tailored suit and bragging about how I won my Pulitzer on the piece I wrote for Vanity Fair or National Geographic! Sheesh!