The more I think about it, the more this seems like a horrifically bad decision on Mccain's part. For someone who is 72 and whose skin cancer has reoccurred 4 times, this shows a remarkable lack of judgment. This move is so clearly pandering to disappointed Hillary supporters. But what if Mccain won office, died in office, and she became President? Dear Lord! She has NO foreign policy experience, although I bet she has a strong opinion of Iraq. She was a mayor of a city of 9000 residents for a few years, and a governor for two years. Say what you want about Obama's inexperience, but at least he picked a very experienced VP who can give him advice and definitely step up if something happens to Obama. Palin's experience, even in comparison with Obama's, is laughable. Having her step up as president would be a nightmare.
Speaking of things that are laughable, the Daily Kos is reporting that Palin's latest baby might not have been hers at all, but might have in fact been her teenage daughter's. Evidence? Everyone was shocked to find out she was (supposedly) pregnant at 7 months and she took a plane flight supposedly the day before she gave birth- and no one on the flight noticed she was pregnant either. At the same time, her 16 year old daughter mysteriously missed several months of school due to "mono." And Palin supposedly returned to work 3 days after giving birth- to a premie downs syndrome baby no less! I guess that's what happens when you are pro-life and pro-abstinence, and you refuse to teach your daughter about birth control- and then refuse to let her have an abortion. But oh noes! You must claim the baby as your own, because clearly having a baby at 16 is super shameful as evidence of how stupid your policies are, and should be hidden!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Interview with Abandoning Eden
Commenter Moshe emailed me a bunch of questions for a sociology project he is working on which looks at blog comments. So I figured I would repost my reply here. :)
Can you share with me your personal experiences with commenters on your blog? How do their backgrounds inform their comments?
I'm not sure what you mean by "personal experiences" Like personal experiences on the blog? The only thing that sticks out is Jacob Stein- that guy is insane! Around last thanksgiving he spent a whole bunch of time telling me how I'm going to go to hell, and how I must believe in god, otherwise "Who am I thanking on thanksgiving!!1!!!." Otherwise, I definitely feel an affinity to certain bloggers more so than others; people who are more similar to me, and who talk about personal experience rather than argue about the minutia of religion are commenters I like the most.
I don't know most of my commenters in real life, I do know a few in real life, and they tend to post a lot more regularly. I also don't know what commentors backgrounds are; there are only 3 regular commenters who I know in real life who post comments on my blog regularly. I think the commenters are mostly split- about half are fellow skeptics, maybe 1/4th are still orthodox jews and are coming to tell me I'm going to hell or something, and about 1/4th are people whose blogs I read and comment on, but have nothing to do with Judaism. Their comments are of course very different- most skeptics are very supportive, while the people who are still orthodox tend to be very critical of me and my relationship with my parents (understandably).
What subjects do people respond to in the highest volume? Are they antagonistic or do they listen intently to what you have to say and then offer constructive comments?
The most comments I have gotten have been on posts dealing with my parents, and especially posts where I cut and paste emails to or from my father. I'd say they are about split 70-30; 70% people being supportive, giving advice, being constructive. Roughly 30% are people telling me I'm going to hell, that I'm ruining my family, that I am a terrible person, etc. Also included in that 30% are a bunch of people who seem confused that I would go off the derech, and ask questions about why what I'm doing- usually with the intention of telling me how wrong I am. Once in a while I get a Jacob Stein type, who is completely insane and rants about how atheists all have a ton of abortions or something. :)
From your point of view, why do you talk about these subjects?
I started my blog shortly after my grandmother's funeral. During the funeral, my dad used around half the Eulogy to talk about how he has to honor his mother's memory by making sure his children were religious. He knew at the time that I had not been religious for years, and that I had been dating my then-boyfriend/now-fiance, who is not jewish for several months. I was pretty upset by this whole experience, especially since I had to change vacation plans and tickets to get to the funeral, which my fiance had really helped me out with, and I had spent a lot of the day before making sure my brothers were getting on planes and that the rabbi knew everyone's names, etc...basically I felt that I had done a lot more than my siblings and cousins to make sure the funeral and travel went smoothly, and I was really hurt when my dad turned around and used the Eulogy to try and shame me about not being religious.
When I got back home I went searching on the internet for some kind of former-religious-person's support group. I didn't find one, but what I did fine was Jewish Atheist's Blog. I spent almost an entire day reading his back entries and commenting on them. A few days later I decided that the best way I could find support, and also talk about jewish-related things that were bothering me, was to start a new blog.
Prior to starting this blog, I had (and still have) another blog over at livejournal.com, which I started in 2001. That blog has identifying information, and is not open to the public. I felt like for a while all my posts over there were bitching about my parents, and that I had a lot to say on the subject- and that I also wanted the blog to be public so that random people on the internet looking for someone like them (like I had been) could access it. Hence my blog began. :)
What goals do you seek to accomplish by maintaining this blog? Are they personal goals, or do you seek to promote change and understanding?
Well mostly I want a place where I can complain about the way my parents are reacting to my relationship and non-religiousness, talk about the ridiculousness of religion, and have a supportive group of people who will be sympathetic to what I am going through, and also who understand exactly what I'm going through. My fiance is very sympathetic of course, and has had similar experiences, but did not grow up orthodox jewish, so doesn't understand the minutia of religious insanity.
I was not anticipating that a lot of crazy orthodox fundementalists would come over to my blog and tell me I'm going to hell, but they don't really bother me (I usually just don't respond). I think I have achieved that community goal; many skeptic bloggers have told me they are starting blogs because of me, and I get comments all the time that say things like "I'm so happy to see there is someone else out there like me, my story is so similar to yours!" Those comments always make me smile, and I like to feel like I am helping people who were like me a few years back, or who are like me now, but don't have a sense of community with other skeptics that I have. I don't really want to change people who are religious (except maybe my parents and their reactions to me), and I don't have some mission to go changing a bunch of religious people into atheists. Rather, I want to establish and continue a community of former-orthodox-jews who have already become skeptical, and are looking for other people going through the same experiences. Kind of like footsteps, but online.
Why do you personally feel your family reacts to you the way they do (specifically your parents)?
Well, they live their entire lives based on certain premises- that the orthodox jewish religion is correct, that there is a god, that god cares that they do things the orthodox jewish way, etc. At least once every few minues they do something differently than most people because of these premises, whether it is my mom covering her hair, my dad wearing a kippa, eating certain food, praying at certain times, not doing certain things on certain days of the week, etc. My parents don't even really have non-orthodox friends that I know of, and all their lives are about judaism.
And then I go living my life under an entirely different paradigm; that I can do whatever I want, as long as it doesn't hurt other people, that there is no god, and that if there is a god, ze probably doesn't care what I'm doing on a day to day basis as long as I'm not hurting other people. That's my paradigm. And even though in my view my paradigm is perfectly normal and moral and ethical, just by living my life the way I want to I am directly challenging the foundation of all their actions. There's no way that they can accept that what I'm doing is correct, without accepting that the entire basis for the way they live their life is wrong. And that's a scary prospect. So of course they have to stick to their guns.
Apart from that, my dad is the child of holocaust survivors and my mom is the child of someone who faught for the US in world war 2. They both are very concerned about passing on jewish traditions and their way of life to their children, and feel that if they don't pass on their traditions they are a failure. I also think there is a very high amount of community pressure about religion. Me marrying someone not jewish is very embarrassing to them- in the town I grew up in, people talk in whispers about people going off the derech and marrying someone not jewish, and do not talk kindly about them. Unfortunately, even if it is not my parents fault (and I don't think it is), my parents will be blamed and looked down upon because of my actions. Which is sad.
Finally, when I was *just* not religious, they could comfort themselves by telling themselves that it was a teenage rebellious phase, and that I was going to grow out of it. But getting married has a kind of finality and permanency that *merely* not following religion for a time; I think at this point they are having to accept that I will never again be religious.
Why do you think you chose a different lifestyle?
Well, I think it's a combination of a few things-
The first is that I was always skeptical about the existance of god, and if there is a god, that judaism as a religion had it right. It seemed to me that every religion was claiming to be right, so what made Judaism more right than those other religions? I had a lot of questions as a child, and not a lot of answers; and the more questions I asked that there were no logical answers to, the more skeptical I became. I don't know if I ever really believed in god; I remember in first grade just moving my mouth during davening instead of actually davening, so the teacher wouldn't bother me about it. If I had actually believed in god, wouldn't I have actually prayed? Actually now that I think about it, there have been times I have prayed to someone- but it was never in an organized setting like the jewish community, and it was never using the words of davening. I instead used to pray by basically asking god for things I would need or things to go well in a certain situation. I think there was definitely a time period when I believed in god, but didn't believe in the jewish religion.
Ok so that was the first part. The second part is that I never really felt like I fit in with the jewish community. Part of that might have just been my personality, and that I was kind of a misfit of a child. Part was that I was pretty intelligent (I know that sounds super arrogant, but now that I'm almost done with a PhD at an Ivy League University I feel it is partially justified)- I remember getting made fun of a lot on the schoolbus for reading books when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Maybe it was partially due to my skeptism; other orthodox jewish young women could sense that I wasn't really one of them, in that I didn't quite drink the koolaid to the extent they did. In any case, I never felt like I fit in to the jewish community.
There was one part of the jewish community I did fit into - there was a bunch of other kids at NCSY who were like the "bad kids." Most of them were actually kind of geeky in retrospect, and not 'bad' at all (but maybe they seemed bad to naive sheltered people?) And most of those "bad kids" ended up breaking the rules of religion. I think being in that community definitely made me feel more normal when I was breaking those same rules.
Another part was maybe that I didn't like people telling me what I could or couldn't do. As a woman, it seemed the only career options to me were to be a housewife, or to be a teacher. Nowadays there are a lot of young jewish women working in PT and OT and all that, but I don't think those jobs were really popular when I was in high school. Meanwhile, in my high school we were taught all about how to be a good housewife and mother. My dad also has pretty sexist views in general- for instance when I started grad school he kept telling me how I would never go on to be a professor or even finish my program, since my 'biological clock' would turn on and I would want to have kids. And then if I had kids, how could i also have a career? He didn't seem to think that was possible. In college, when I started learning about women's studies, and feminism, I started questioning my own experiences. It seemed to me that women in orthodox judaism were kept down, and were told they could only have certain types of jobs and lifecourses because of their gender. And being someone who didn't like people telling me what I could do, it really bothered that people were telling me I would act a certain way in the future because I happened to be born in one gender instead of the other. I think it was around then that I truly stopped following religion- up until then I kind of half-assidly kept kosher (like I didn't eat non kosher meat), even though I hadn't kept shabbas for years- during college I stopped keeping everything religions, and stopped keeping kosher and holidays, etc.
And here's a bonus question from an anonymous commenter: Did you stop following the religion because you stopped believing in G-d or did you stop believing in G-d because you stopped following the religion?
Ah, the chicken or the egg question. Well I think I stopped following the religion because I didn't believe that if there was a god, that god made that religion. And then once I stopped following the religion, I was able to critically examine my own notions of god, at which point I started feeling a little silly. It seems to me that god is a concept that is very comforting to people, and that religion definitely has a purpose, in that it helps organize society and people's morality. As Karl Marx said, "Religion is the Opiate of the People." So yeah, back to the god thing...once I began to really think about it, the concept of god seemed ridiculous to me. Like believing in invisible pink unicorns or flying spaghetti monsters. So yeah in sum, yes? :) I stopped following the religion because I stopped believe in the jewish conception of god, and then once I had stopped following the religion and examined many more conceptions of god (and in college i did go through a period where I studies a whole bunch of different religions), I gradually stopped believing in god entirely.
I was about to write that I think there is a possibility of god that no religion got right, but once I wrote it down I realized I don't believe in that at all. I believe in random chance, and that I better live this life the best possible way I can, cause I won't get another opportunity.
Can you share with me your personal experiences with commenters on your blog? How do their backgrounds inform their comments?
I'm not sure what you mean by "personal experiences" Like personal experiences on the blog? The only thing that sticks out is Jacob Stein- that guy is insane! Around last thanksgiving he spent a whole bunch of time telling me how I'm going to go to hell, and how I must believe in god, otherwise "Who am I thanking on thanksgiving!!1!!!." Otherwise, I definitely feel an affinity to certain bloggers more so than others; people who are more similar to me, and who talk about personal experience rather than argue about the minutia of religion are commenters I like the most.
I don't know most of my commenters in real life, I do know a few in real life, and they tend to post a lot more regularly. I also don't know what commentors backgrounds are; there are only 3 regular commenters who I know in real life who post comments on my blog regularly. I think the commenters are mostly split- about half are fellow skeptics, maybe 1/4th are still orthodox jews and are coming to tell me I'm going to hell or something, and about 1/4th are people whose blogs I read and comment on, but have nothing to do with Judaism. Their comments are of course very different- most skeptics are very supportive, while the people who are still orthodox tend to be very critical of me and my relationship with my parents (understandably).
What subjects do people respond to in the highest volume? Are they antagonistic or do they listen intently to what you have to say and then offer constructive comments?
The most comments I have gotten have been on posts dealing with my parents, and especially posts where I cut and paste emails to or from my father. I'd say they are about split 70-30; 70% people being supportive, giving advice, being constructive. Roughly 30% are people telling me I'm going to hell, that I'm ruining my family, that I am a terrible person, etc. Also included in that 30% are a bunch of people who seem confused that I would go off the derech, and ask questions about why what I'm doing- usually with the intention of telling me how wrong I am. Once in a while I get a Jacob Stein type, who is completely insane and rants about how atheists all have a ton of abortions or something. :)
From your point of view, why do you talk about these subjects?
I started my blog shortly after my grandmother's funeral. During the funeral, my dad used around half the Eulogy to talk about how he has to honor his mother's memory by making sure his children were religious. He knew at the time that I had not been religious for years, and that I had been dating my then-boyfriend/now-fiance, who is not jewish for several months. I was pretty upset by this whole experience, especially since I had to change vacation plans and tickets to get to the funeral, which my fiance had really helped me out with, and I had spent a lot of the day before making sure my brothers were getting on planes and that the rabbi knew everyone's names, etc...basically I felt that I had done a lot more than my siblings and cousins to make sure the funeral and travel went smoothly, and I was really hurt when my dad turned around and used the Eulogy to try and shame me about not being religious.
When I got back home I went searching on the internet for some kind of former-religious-person's support group. I didn't find one, but what I did fine was Jewish Atheist's Blog. I spent almost an entire day reading his back entries and commenting on them. A few days later I decided that the best way I could find support, and also talk about jewish-related things that were bothering me, was to start a new blog.
Prior to starting this blog, I had (and still have) another blog over at livejournal.com, which I started in 2001. That blog has identifying information, and is not open to the public. I felt like for a while all my posts over there were bitching about my parents, and that I had a lot to say on the subject- and that I also wanted the blog to be public so that random people on the internet looking for someone like them (like I had been) could access it. Hence my blog began. :)
What goals do you seek to accomplish by maintaining this blog? Are they personal goals, or do you seek to promote change and understanding?
Well mostly I want a place where I can complain about the way my parents are reacting to my relationship and non-religiousness, talk about the ridiculousness of religion, and have a supportive group of people who will be sympathetic to what I am going through, and also who understand exactly what I'm going through. My fiance is very sympathetic of course, and has had similar experiences, but did not grow up orthodox jewish, so doesn't understand the minutia of religious insanity.
I was not anticipating that a lot of crazy orthodox fundementalists would come over to my blog and tell me I'm going to hell, but they don't really bother me (I usually just don't respond). I think I have achieved that community goal; many skeptic bloggers have told me they are starting blogs because of me, and I get comments all the time that say things like "I'm so happy to see there is someone else out there like me, my story is so similar to yours!" Those comments always make me smile, and I like to feel like I am helping people who were like me a few years back, or who are like me now, but don't have a sense of community with other skeptics that I have. I don't really want to change people who are religious (except maybe my parents and their reactions to me), and I don't have some mission to go changing a bunch of religious people into atheists. Rather, I want to establish and continue a community of former-orthodox-jews who have already become skeptical, and are looking for other people going through the same experiences. Kind of like footsteps, but online.
Why do you personally feel your family reacts to you the way they do (specifically your parents)?
Well, they live their entire lives based on certain premises- that the orthodox jewish religion is correct, that there is a god, that god cares that they do things the orthodox jewish way, etc. At least once every few minues they do something differently than most people because of these premises, whether it is my mom covering her hair, my dad wearing a kippa, eating certain food, praying at certain times, not doing certain things on certain days of the week, etc. My parents don't even really have non-orthodox friends that I know of, and all their lives are about judaism.
And then I go living my life under an entirely different paradigm; that I can do whatever I want, as long as it doesn't hurt other people, that there is no god, and that if there is a god, ze probably doesn't care what I'm doing on a day to day basis as long as I'm not hurting other people. That's my paradigm. And even though in my view my paradigm is perfectly normal and moral and ethical, just by living my life the way I want to I am directly challenging the foundation of all their actions. There's no way that they can accept that what I'm doing is correct, without accepting that the entire basis for the way they live their life is wrong. And that's a scary prospect. So of course they have to stick to their guns.
Apart from that, my dad is the child of holocaust survivors and my mom is the child of someone who faught for the US in world war 2. They both are very concerned about passing on jewish traditions and their way of life to their children, and feel that if they don't pass on their traditions they are a failure. I also think there is a very high amount of community pressure about religion. Me marrying someone not jewish is very embarrassing to them- in the town I grew up in, people talk in whispers about people going off the derech and marrying someone not jewish, and do not talk kindly about them. Unfortunately, even if it is not my parents fault (and I don't think it is), my parents will be blamed and looked down upon because of my actions. Which is sad.
Finally, when I was *just* not religious, they could comfort themselves by telling themselves that it was a teenage rebellious phase, and that I was going to grow out of it. But getting married has a kind of finality and permanency that *merely* not following religion for a time; I think at this point they are having to accept that I will never again be religious.
Why do you think you chose a different lifestyle?
Well, I think it's a combination of a few things-
The first is that I was always skeptical about the existance of god, and if there is a god, that judaism as a religion had it right. It seemed to me that every religion was claiming to be right, so what made Judaism more right than those other religions? I had a lot of questions as a child, and not a lot of answers; and the more questions I asked that there were no logical answers to, the more skeptical I became. I don't know if I ever really believed in god; I remember in first grade just moving my mouth during davening instead of actually davening, so the teacher wouldn't bother me about it. If I had actually believed in god, wouldn't I have actually prayed? Actually now that I think about it, there have been times I have prayed to someone- but it was never in an organized setting like the jewish community, and it was never using the words of davening. I instead used to pray by basically asking god for things I would need or things to go well in a certain situation. I think there was definitely a time period when I believed in god, but didn't believe in the jewish religion.
Ok so that was the first part. The second part is that I never really felt like I fit in with the jewish community. Part of that might have just been my personality, and that I was kind of a misfit of a child. Part was that I was pretty intelligent (I know that sounds super arrogant, but now that I'm almost done with a PhD at an Ivy League University I feel it is partially justified)- I remember getting made fun of a lot on the schoolbus for reading books when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Maybe it was partially due to my skeptism; other orthodox jewish young women could sense that I wasn't really one of them, in that I didn't quite drink the koolaid to the extent they did. In any case, I never felt like I fit in to the jewish community.
There was one part of the jewish community I did fit into - there was a bunch of other kids at NCSY who were like the "bad kids." Most of them were actually kind of geeky in retrospect, and not 'bad' at all (but maybe they seemed bad to naive sheltered people?) And most of those "bad kids" ended up breaking the rules of religion. I think being in that community definitely made me feel more normal when I was breaking those same rules.
Another part was maybe that I didn't like people telling me what I could or couldn't do. As a woman, it seemed the only career options to me were to be a housewife, or to be a teacher. Nowadays there are a lot of young jewish women working in PT and OT and all that, but I don't think those jobs were really popular when I was in high school. Meanwhile, in my high school we were taught all about how to be a good housewife and mother. My dad also has pretty sexist views in general- for instance when I started grad school he kept telling me how I would never go on to be a professor or even finish my program, since my 'biological clock' would turn on and I would want to have kids. And then if I had kids, how could i also have a career? He didn't seem to think that was possible. In college, when I started learning about women's studies, and feminism, I started questioning my own experiences. It seemed to me that women in orthodox judaism were kept down, and were told they could only have certain types of jobs and lifecourses because of their gender. And being someone who didn't like people telling me what I could do, it really bothered that people were telling me I would act a certain way in the future because I happened to be born in one gender instead of the other. I think it was around then that I truly stopped following religion- up until then I kind of half-assidly kept kosher (like I didn't eat non kosher meat), even though I hadn't kept shabbas for years- during college I stopped keeping everything religions, and stopped keeping kosher and holidays, etc.
And here's a bonus question from an anonymous commenter: Did you stop following the religion because you stopped believing in G-d or did you stop believing in G-d because you stopped following the religion?
Ah, the chicken or the egg question. Well I think I stopped following the religion because I didn't believe that if there was a god, that god made that religion. And then once I stopped following the religion, I was able to critically examine my own notions of god, at which point I started feeling a little silly. It seems to me that god is a concept that is very comforting to people, and that religion definitely has a purpose, in that it helps organize society and people's morality. As Karl Marx said, "Religion is the Opiate of the People." So yeah, back to the god thing...once I began to really think about it, the concept of god seemed ridiculous to me. Like believing in invisible pink unicorns or flying spaghetti monsters. So yeah in sum, yes? :) I stopped following the religion because I stopped believe in the jewish conception of god, and then once I had stopped following the religion and examined many more conceptions of god (and in college i did go through a period where I studies a whole bunch of different religions), I gradually stopped believing in god entirely.
I was about to write that I think there is a possibility of god that no religion got right, but once I wrote it down I realized I don't believe in that at all. I believe in random chance, and that I better live this life the best possible way I can, cause I won't get another opportunity.
Monday, August 25, 2008
This weekend
was awesome! Completely cut off from internet, phone and television for 3 days meant that I found out Joe Biden was the VP nomination when one of the bands dedicated a song to him on Saturday night. We ended up camping in the vending area, with our good friends who were vending (the dude is an artist and was selling his paintings and prints; he's dating my very good friend and former roommate, who 2 months ago moved 5 hours away to live with him; before that she lived 2 blocks over).
Much catching up and good hanging out time was to be had. The music was great, and the stages had covered pavilions which were totally awesome in the heat of day. B came back with a terribly awful sunburn over all his face and knees and arms; this was after reassuring me repeatedly that he "Never burns, he only tans." Oy. I made liberal use of the sunscreen and managed to come home with only a lovely tan.
I also came home with new jewelry!
Two new glass pendants I bought myself (a clover and a terrapin) bringing me up to 5 glass pendants total (I think I'm starting a collection):
And B bought me an engagement ring! (that I picked out) It's amber with silver wire.
Much catching up and good hanging out time was to be had. The music was great, and the stages had covered pavilions which were totally awesome in the heat of day. B came back with a terribly awful sunburn over all his face and knees and arms; this was after reassuring me repeatedly that he "Never burns, he only tans." Oy. I made liberal use of the sunscreen and managed to come home with only a lovely tan.
I also came home with new jewelry!
Two new glass pendants I bought myself (a clover and a terrapin) bringing me up to 5 glass pendants total (I think I'm starting a collection):
And B bought me an engagement ring! (that I picked out) It's amber with silver wire.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Well I'm off
To a music festival for the weekend. Judah, if you're reading this, you should totally come dude...it's only like an hour and a half drive from where you live, and it's the last fest I'll be at all summer.
Everyone else, feel free to continue debating how I should or should not write emails to my parents in my absence. And how they will or will not react to said emails. I don't think I even have to be around for those debates anyways. :)
Oh and on that note- my dad wrote back to that last email, and apologized for mentioning stuff about marriage, saying he didn't mean to hurt me, etc. So maybe, just possibly, I know how my parents react to things better than other people do? Even people who may know them in person, but don't REALLY know them that well? (since my parents always acted all weird and different in front of my friends anyways?)
Also: I mailed out 3 of 6 job applications yesterday. It cost me $20 just for 3 applications! (1 of which had a big heavy teaching portfolio, so cost like $11 for just that application). When I get back next week maybe I'll send out the other 3 so I don't have that hanging over my head anymore.
Everyone else, feel free to continue debating how I should or should not write emails to my parents in my absence. And how they will or will not react to said emails. I don't think I even have to be around for those debates anyways. :)
Oh and on that note- my dad wrote back to that last email, and apologized for mentioning stuff about marriage, saying he didn't mean to hurt me, etc. So maybe, just possibly, I know how my parents react to things better than other people do? Even people who may know them in person, but don't REALLY know them that well? (since my parents always acted all weird and different in front of my friends anyways?)
Also: I mailed out 3 of 6 job applications yesterday. It cost me $20 just for 3 applications! (1 of which had a big heavy teaching portfolio, so cost like $11 for just that application). When I get back next week maybe I'll send out the other 3 so I don't have that hanging over my head anymore.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Contact re-established.
Well i never wrote back to that email a week or two ago, cause I was so pissed that my dad was telling me about weddings of people he barely knows that he is going to.
But then this morning he sent me another email asking if I had gotten the genetic tests back yet, so I figured it couldn't hurt.
Unfortunately I totally forgot to save a copy of the email, and my email account doesn't automatically save sent emails. But I'll try to recreate it from memory:
I don't have the BRCA1 mutation. B came with me to get the results, and they had us wait a very nerve-racking hour before they came in and told us everything is fine. The health insurance people said I would have to pay $285, but I haven't gotten a bill from the hospital yet
Otherwise stuff is going well. Me and B "redid" our bathroom this week by getting a new shower curtain, new bathroom rug, and one of those shower cleaner things they always have commercials for. [NOTE: This thing is AWESOME and I love how clean my shower is right now, especially with a new mildew-free shower curtain!] Me and B are going to a music festival this weekend- after a year of refusing to go to any because he "hated camping" he went to one with me in June, and now wants to go to all the festivals I go to.
I'm going on the job market, [lots of stuff about job market- not going to recreate all that], I'm applying to [list of schools] this year on a limited job search, which are in areas me and B want to live- we are targeting new england and the northwest. I have another year of funding if I don't get a job this year, which I don't expect to, but might as well try for all those dream jobs. I had an interview for [school near parents] but me and B aren't exactly thrilled about the prospect of living in the [NYC area] because we want to buy a house once I get a job, and the housing market there is ridiculous.
Anyways hope you had fun at the weddings of all those people that you barely know. In the future, no need to tell me about weddings you are going to that aren't mine, as it makes me filled with rage (which is why I didn't write back to your previous email)
~Abandoning Eden
So I think I like how this email went. I managed to fill him in on important details of my life, while mentioning B in pretty much every paragraph, which I think makes clear that even though my parents refuse to mention B ever, I'm not going to stop and pretend he doesn't exist. Plus I got my snark in, in that last paragraph, and made clear that his mention of other people's weddings pissed me off. And before all you guys go jumping down my back about my snarkiness-first of all, my family communicates almost exclusively in snark anyways, and second of all, I'm freaking tired of always taking the high road when things are seriously pissing me off. I need my snarkiness once in a while!
But then this morning he sent me another email asking if I had gotten the genetic tests back yet, so I figured it couldn't hurt.
Unfortunately I totally forgot to save a copy of the email, and my email account doesn't automatically save sent emails. But I'll try to recreate it from memory:
I don't have the BRCA1 mutation. B came with me to get the results, and they had us wait a very nerve-racking hour before they came in and told us everything is fine. The health insurance people said I would have to pay $285, but I haven't gotten a bill from the hospital yet
Otherwise stuff is going well. Me and B "redid" our bathroom this week by getting a new shower curtain, new bathroom rug, and one of those shower cleaner things they always have commercials for. [NOTE: This thing is AWESOME and I love how clean my shower is right now, especially with a new mildew-free shower curtain!] Me and B are going to a music festival this weekend- after a year of refusing to go to any because he "hated camping" he went to one with me in June, and now wants to go to all the festivals I go to.
I'm going on the job market, [lots of stuff about job market- not going to recreate all that], I'm applying to [list of schools] this year on a limited job search, which are in areas me and B want to live- we are targeting new england and the northwest. I have another year of funding if I don't get a job this year, which I don't expect to, but might as well try for all those dream jobs. I had an interview for [school near parents] but me and B aren't exactly thrilled about the prospect of living in the [NYC area] because we want to buy a house once I get a job, and the housing market there is ridiculous.
Anyways hope you had fun at the weddings of all those people that you barely know. In the future, no need to tell me about weddings you are going to that aren't mine, as it makes me filled with rage (which is why I didn't write back to your previous email)
~Abandoning Eden
So I think I like how this email went. I managed to fill him in on important details of my life, while mentioning B in pretty much every paragraph, which I think makes clear that even though my parents refuse to mention B ever, I'm not going to stop and pretend he doesn't exist. Plus I got my snark in, in that last paragraph, and made clear that his mention of other people's weddings pissed me off. And before all you guys go jumping down my back about my snarkiness-first of all, my family communicates almost exclusively in snark anyways, and second of all, I'm freaking tired of always taking the high road when things are seriously pissing me off. I need my snarkiness once in a while!
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