Wow--what a shift from last month's wrist-slit-worthy update!

I got to see my family in Costa Rica over Thanksgiving break--that was well worth the 12 hours of traveling. I enjoyed hanging out with my two younger sisters: they are not only The Twins, they are the kind of people I like having as friends. They picked me up at the airport, took me out gay clubbing in town (imagine the family portraits for that one!), took me to the theater to see a play that I will make sure I catch when it makes its way to DC, and in general showed me that as much as there are a few thousand miles of distance between our homes, my parents did a pretty damn good job at raising us to be pretty decent people. I wish they lived here near our older brother and I.

This, of course, does not discount the hanging-out-with-mom aspect of the deal--I've missed her a whole darn lot. Nor does it take from the already famous debates with my dad over highly intellectual topics. In fact, as I perused my dad's library I found his textbooks interesting: as life would have it, the same books on mathematical models of interpersonal communication I would see on the shelves as I was a kid and grimace at the thought of ever enjoying were the ones I picked up and borrowed as material for a novel I'm working on.

What else? Well, I decided that grad school must loom in the future, so I'm planning on beginning a Master's in the fall. We'll see if it happens.

I went to a Barenaked Ladies concert upon my return from Costa Rica with a very pleasant gentleman I met one night at the Eagle. He approached as I was cruising some skinhead who turned out to be both German and mildly faaabulous, and once I noticed his lapel pin, emblazoned with his nickname, Bearenaked Joe, I said something off the cuff about Yoko Ono and within a few minutes I had managed to invite myself to the concert with his extra ticket. He very graciously ended up offering it to me (Thanks much!), and the fourth-row, front-and-center seats were possibly the best seats I'll ever get for an event like that. It was good to see that the band has managed to gain popularity and at the same time keep their generally geeky air to them. Amongst the highlights of the concert we can include the Teeny Bopper Pop medley (full with choreography à la Boy Band), and live minute-to-minute updates of the parliamentary elections in Canada.

I did notice that webvertisers of porn seem to have realized that there are plenty of Spanish-speaking wankers looking for machos hirsutos, which in turn has meant a significant decrease in traffic to my site by hunters of latin-friendly porn. I'm no longer hit #1 on Google for this niche market... and just when I was starting to enjoy it.

Other things I've done this month:

• Went to a Christmastime singalong at Wolf Trap with an old middle school friend and some of his very pleasant friends, where amongst other things a Colombian girl I met and I sang yuletide tunes from our childhoods;
• Helped my friend Anne move to Israel.
• Baked cookies with Beth, Bri and Steph.
• Registered for the GRE (I knew I should have taken it in College!).
• Attended a lecture at the National Bulding Museum on a proposed monument to be built in DC, across the river from Anacostia

Ok, so we're stuck with Dubya. Just as long as he knows he didn't win the actual vote, I'm cool with it. Sucks that he nominated Ashcroft as his Attorney General. I had the chance to meet the new head of DOJ a few years ago at an internship, and I felt a need to cleanse myself after he had left the office. The way he spoke to schoolchildren over CUSeeMe combined the didactic tone of Mr. Rogers with the kiss-of-death loving of a Moral Majority preacher. I guess we'll have to pay penance for our 8 years of Janet.