Welcome to Wherever you Are

I'm going to start by taking a page from Alex and mention some Christmas music. I was motivated by his post today to share some of my favorite music also. As I write, I'm listening to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which is my most favorite Christmas song. I'll listen to all versions (with the exception of Michael Bolton's - I don't know what it is - but it's no good) and be happy just to hear the song. Rounding out the top five are:


2. White Christmas by Otis Redding
3. Baby It's Cold Outside by Dean Martin (none of that Dolly Parton stuff)
4. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Bare Naked Ladies and Sarah McLahlan
5. Do They Know it's Christmas by Band Aid


Honorable mentions go to Harry Connick Jr's What Are you Doing New Years Eve? and to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You.


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My friend Dominika is in India right now. A little background: Dominika and I are friends from college. She's wonderful and spirited and passionate and compassionate and supportive and in my whole life I won't meet anyone else like her. Dominika is always doing something extraordinary with her life - amazing trips that I am not brave enough to go on with her even though she almost always invites me. I was able to visit her last fall in NYC where she moved a couple years ago and I had a wonderful time with her.

That's a picture of us and Lenny from the Today Show. (If you don't know about Lenny, let me know.) I guarantee my visit with her was fairly tame compared to her travels. She has a story about traveling on the trans-siberian railroad where trading a kvelta fish for a train ticket is something that actually happened. And she tells this story with such matter-of-factness, "Well, I had to get on that train." Of course. I will most likely never use fish as currency. This is only one small difference between us. Recently Dominika was offered an amazing job, only she had already made plans to go to India for a month and work at the mission established by Mother Teresa. Sarah-of-the-less-brave-decisions would have taken the job and abandoned my travel plans. Not Dominika. So she is in India now and from her blog posts it sounds like a world of poverty and filth and swindling like I can not even imagine. On top of that she's devoting much of her time to disabled children and the elderly at this mission. She recently posted:

"I have changed as a traveler. I am no longer interested in having that same conversation of where I'm from, what I do and how long I'm staying. I am here for God, for myself, for my family and friends and in thanksgiving for the people in my life, for the opportunities and love my parents gave me, for my brother who surprises me constantly and my husband, my best friend and our future. I am here to sacrifice a bit of myself for their prayers and petitions. I am here to learn how to love more deeply and to understand a culture which requires me to completely step out of myself and throw away norms. I am here to find some private answers and here to give a little joy to disabled children and the dying elderly."

I took that right off her blog and hope that she doesn't mind that I share. I struggle every day to make very small decisions and most days I'm not brave enough to admit what I truly want. And here is Dominika, who has learned so much about herself and can stretch herself to be more than she was yesterday. I feel a bit like a coward. A coward who is always in awe of this great person I get to call a friend.

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Whew. That was a little heavy. I know that following that up with anything will seem like a letdown, so I'll try to end tonight with a laugh. I've become quite smitten with knitting and a few posts back talked about trying to make this knit hat that looks like R2D2. The pattern came from a website called Carissa Knits. I was a little over halfway done when I mis-read the pattern and incorrectly knitted two full rows. I thought I could just pull them out, re-insert the needles and go back to where I started goofing up. Sadly, that did not happen. So, I had to start from scratch all over again. Totally bummed. Bummed and smarter when it comes to this particular pattern. I've procured some West Wing episodes online and will go back to watching those as I knit.