9:59 PM:

I just upgraded to Opera 6, the non-beta version of which was released a few days ago.

The good news is that it's fixed a couple of the most annoying bugs in Opera 5.11, and added a feature I'd really wanted (specifically, new windows retain the settings applied to the window they're spawned from. The practical application being that I can read Beth's forum at a 110% zoom setting without having to hit "+" for every new thread). Nice.

The bad news is that I'm now having some serious trouble with Blogger, and I have a sneaking suspicion that there's a glitch in the way the browser handles cookies. I'm resorting to Netscape for this post, but I can see that quickly becoming annoying.

Well, we'll see what happens.

Today is the first day of December. In addition to being Phebe's birthday -- happy birthday, Phebe! -- it's the first day of the HoliDailies project, in which participants pledge to update their sites every day of the month. Or at least try to. In my case, I can pretty much rule out updates during the final weekend of the month, because I'm going to be visiting a friend in Chicago then... but I'm gonna do my best during the rest of the month.

For present purposes, I've decided to accept Blogger's system as the arbiter of which day a given post belongs to, making midnight the deadline between days. Which also means that I can theoretically get two days out of the way in the span of an hour, but I'll try not to take advantage of that very often.

On the other hand, one thing I can't do anything about is the fact that I can't post anything from sundown Friday through nightfall Saturday. So Saturday posts -- like this one -- will have to be posted after dark, while Friday posts will have to be posted in the morning, and that's all there is to it.

Actually, being a night person, it's most likely that I'll end up on either a late-night or very-early-morning pattern; I'm just not sure which.

But enough introductions. Let the month begin!

7:06 PM:

Time for yet another survey. Swiped from Erin, who in turn swiped it from others.

Name: Shmuel

Address: Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sigh.

Nike or Adidas: If the shoe fits, wear it. Well, if the shoe fits, and looks good, and so on. It's hard enough to find anything suitable without paying attention to brands.

Sneakers or boots: Sneakers.

Pull over or zipper up: Depends for what. Pull over, I guess.

Long or short: Long.

Black or white: Black.

Hot or cold: Hot.

Night or day: Night.

Alone or in a crowd: Alone.

Math or English: English.

Pen or pencil: Pen, preferably felt-tip.

Cursive or print: Print.

The book or the movie: The book, most of the time.

Live or on TV: It depends. TV, I guess.

Tape or CD: Oh, so definitely CD.

MTV or VH1: TV Land.

Cats or dogs: Cats!

Quiet or loud: Quiet.

Love or lust: Hmm. I don't really know what the former is. I do have experience with the latter, but it drives me bonkers that I can't understand it or do anything about it. So, umm, neither.

Up or down: Down.

Inside or outside: Literally, inside. Conceptually, outside.

Pepsi or Coke: Coke!

Soda or juice: Soda.

Fruits or vegetables: Artificial flavoring.

Apples or oranges: Apples.

Vanilla or chocolate: Vanilla.

Dandelions or daffodils: Dandelions.

Winter or summer: Summer. Definitely summer. Hate hate hate winter. Late spring may be the very best, though.

Sunday or Friday: Sunday.

4:36 AM:

I need to make a friend in Cleveland.

That's the big conclusion to be drawn from the recent trek to and from New York via Greyhound. Cleveland is the transfer point roughly midway through the trip, just before (or after) the longest uninterrupted stretch to (or from) New York If I had a friend in Cleveland, I could ride a few hours, hang around Cleveland for a day or so, and then go on to New York relatively unscathed.

Actually, the ride between Cleveland and New York was the best part of the trip. It no doubt helps that I got a window seat both times, and even (bliss!) had nobody sitting next to me on that leg of the return trip, so I was able to stretch out or curl up on both seats at will, but mostly it's because straight riding time is relatively painless. It's transferring between buses -- done in Cleveland and Detroit -- that's a pain in the posterior, easily the worst part of the whole experience, as you need to schlepp your luggage across the terminal and then wait on line for an hour or so. (Sure, there are chairs available if you're willing to get out of line, but who wants to lose their place, especially if they want a window seat?)

The other significant effect of the taking the bus is probably that I came down with a cold the night after I arrived in New York. I'm guessing that being short on food and sleep and then being cooped up in a bus with a lot of other people had something to do with that.

Otherwise, the trip back home wasn't bad. I got to have a good conversation with Elaine over Krispy Kreme donuts (kosher only in Manhattan, and one of two gastronomic fantasies I'd entertained before making the trip). I'd thought I'd miss her entirely, actually, but discovered at pretty close to the last minute that there'd be a slight overlap between my arrival in New York and her departure from it. I'm glad we managed it.

(Oh, the other gastronomic fantasy? A pastrami sandwich on a challah roll. Which I had, but it was unsatisfactory, as my family didn't get the pastrami from the good place in town. Oh, well.)

And I got to have a lovely long talk with Jen the following evening, over a nice cup of chai. (Well, I had chai, anyway. I don't recall what she had. And in the interest of strict accuracy, only part of the conversation was conducted over chai; much of the rest of it was over water, that being free. But I think it's okay to gloss over that sort of thing in the interest of readability, don't you?) I just hope I didn't pass my cold along to either of them; my throat first started feeling sore midway through the meeting with Jen, and I didn't think it was anything major at first. It wasn't until much later that night that it became obvious that, no, I was sick.

In the meantime, my younger brother got engaged.

Actually, it turns out that he probably would have done so the week before, but wanted to wait until I got in. He also wanted to break the news to me (and ask my permission) in person. Fortunately, my sister had been unaware of the classified status of the news and let me know, enabling me to make comical attempts at adjusting my schedule accordingly.

(For anybody keeping track, the brother in question is Sibling #4. I'm Sibling #1. Siblings #2, #3, and #5 are all already married with children. Siblings #6 - #15 are still single. Then again, Sibling #15 is four years old, so that's to be expected. The permission-asking thing is because older siblings of the same gender usually get married first, and my failure to do so might give people the impression that I'd been dating unsuccessfully, and that something must be wrong with me. Which is not to say that he probably couldn't go ahead and get married anyway if I objected, but, hey, it's nice to be asked.)

The actual engagement took place on Monday; I returned home from having doughnuts with Elaine just in time to meet the bride for about ten seconds before everybody left. Which was fine with me, really.

(What, with fourteen brothers and sisters you expect me to get to know all the in-laws also? I have limits, y'know...)

The engagement party was Wednesday night. By that time, I was deep in the throes of what was confirmed as being a cold, a throat culture taken a few hours earlier being negative, which only reinforced all my antisocial tendencies. I spent most of the night sitting in the corner, warding off people who wanted to shake my hand. (There's a fortune to be made for a manufacturer of "Sorry, I have a cold" lapel buttons.)

Otherwise... I'd been feeling homesick for weeks, and I felt better as soon as I saw the New York skyline from the bus. (Especially seeing the Empire State Building, which has always been the dominant feature for me, although it feels really weird, wrong, and creepy to think of it as being the tallest building in New York now.) And I felt much better once we pulled into the Port Authority, and even better than that as I walked through Penn Station. I was home. New York is home. I have a feeling that New York will always be home.

I had this epiphany somewhere in September when I realized (a) how deeply I feel this way, and (b) that this is the way I'm supposed to feel about Israel. But, well, nobody's perfect, least of all me.

Anyway, so I was reassured to find (experientially) that New York was still alive and well. Okay, military police in Penn Station and an awful lot of flags around, but otherwise not noticably very different from the place I'd left, at least based on the admittedly very limited amount of time I was around and about.

Of course, I never did get the chance to go down to the WTC site (or as close as one's allowed to go), so I don't know how that might have altered the above reassuring feelings. But I can't say I regret not having done so.

Let's see... what else happened, aside from using up a couple boxes of tissues? Well, I stopped by Queens College and talked to a couple of professors before running off to meet Jen. (Which reminds me. It turns out that Professor J has rather ludicrously been denied tenure, which would mean he'd have to leave after next semester. An appeal is in progress, along with a petition and a letter-writing campaign. I've got to finish my letter and get it in the mail to the president of the college already.) Oh, and I went bowling with another friend on Saturday night. (And lost, but that wasn't the point.) And talked to my sister (not the one mentioned above) an awful lot. And picked up my copy of my college yearbook, which turns out to have an appalling number of typos for a book that cost me $50, but let that pass for now. And... well, I guess that about covers all the highlights. This entry's already too long as it stands.

9:32 PM:

Oh, my.

I just saw my first Lord of the Rings film marketing tie-in: a Burger King commercial touting a set of light-up goblets featuring the images of Gandalf, Frodo, and so on.

Tolkien must be spinning in his grave.