i left my heaaaaaart...

In San Francisco.

Yowtch! But now I have a shot at getting it back, as I sit presently at my folks' house in Sonora, Calif.

Let's hear it for 50° and sunny! I'm here for a week. I almost kissed the ground at Oakland airport, but then it was gross. So I didn't. I had a sort of mission-impossible moment where I picked up my friend's car. There I am, x-mas eve, crawling on the ground searching for a hide-a-key and hoping to get somewhere to crash, because the San Joaquin valley had fog so thick that there was 1/4-mile visability for 60 miles of the trip.

Anyhow, all for now.

thirty-seven degrees.

The good news is that I'm staying put in DC for a bit, until students get back to school and stuff.

The bad news is that the East Coast winter is actally upon us. It was 37° F in DC today, but with wind chill it felt like 27°. This now means something to me before, whereas in my halcyon winters of yore, these were numbers on the Weather Channel screen.

As much as I love it here, I can't wait for my California winter break...and my pals!

very special guest star

D.C. is so weird. I'm really still adjusting to things like this.

This morning I come into work (somewhat sickly, I might add) to find lots of bustling in the entryway.

Upon greeting my co-worker, she informs me that the conservative thinktank a few floors above us is hosting none other than Dick Cheney. We all think of terribly subversive things, like posting flyers in the elevators that say "Dick Cheney is a war criminal" and whatnot (nothing more than that, actually) but decide that none of us were planning on risking tangles with the secret service for something so minor. Ah, well. We were threatened with being frisked upon re-entering our workplace. In practice, it meant that the building and a two-block radius around it were crawling with cops, who promptly motorcaded all around when I left to meet up with Elly. As I exited the elevator, it was clear that the presence of my nose-ring gave pause to many security personnel nearby. I could see them asking themselves, "How did HE get in here?" So I sneered and left, and got a vegan empanada, and watched the cops frustrate pedestrians and commuters alike.

I swear someone was assigned to simply hang out in the men's bathroom for several hours. It's never been so busy in there.

What a strange place indeed.

I heart n.c.

I've split my time between Brooke's place in Chapel Hill and this awesome, awesome place in Durham - House of Mango. It's an activist/organizer collective living place near downtown, and instead of writing blog posts before bedtime, I've been up engaging in all manner of conversation with the folks who live here.

Since it's finals-time, it's been like pulling teeth to get meetings with students. This is a difficulty for a student organizer, but it's enabled me to spend time making connections with various community organizers, which is a good thing. I had lunch today wiht Tema Okun, long-time trainer with changework, now an adjunct professor at Guilford, and a general anti-racist Big Deal. It was really awesome to sit down and have a conversation with her about post-elections analysis and movement building, seeing as I'm a whopping 3-year veteran and she's been doing this her whole life. She also happens to have an amazingly fluffy cat named Pete.

Afterwards, off to Winston-Salem to meet with another organizer-type person, and back again to meet with a student. At least as we near the end of the week, students have turned their papers in and find a hour here or there. I do appreciate it, since it's not like there aren't other things going on for them. But we ate at a lovely Kenyan food restaurant mere blocks from where I began my day.

I'm darn sleepy, so this is not my most engaging post. Perhaps I'll quit while I'm behind. :)