Day Thanksgiving: my favorite season begins

Virtual Me - because cyberspace is the only place
I'll ever wear skinny jeans

I love Christmas. I love the carols, the decorations, the parties - I even love the cold and snow. Granted, being from California, I mostly have loved the cold and snow from afar. But I'm convinced it will be wonderful. So now that Thanksgiving is here and the Christmas season has officially begun, I couldn't be happier. I can't wait to go shopping to the sounds of "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas," bake sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles, and curl up on the couch with hot chocolate and watch "Love, Actually" for the millionth time.

Which sort of segues nicely into the Boy Update.
Boy 1:
You may remember from last week's post that this boy was my assassin. Well, last week at the law school ice-skating trip (Short aside: ice skating in Central Park is so much fun! I was a bit disappointed though because forecasted snow never materialized. Oh well.) who should I run into but Boy#1. Had a lot of fun ice skating with him and my friend- let's call her Boy Crazy. Then we all hopped into a cab and went to this law/business/journalism school mixer. Yay! We talked for a while, sparks weren't exactly flying but I think it went well. (Another aside: I also made friends with a cute boy from the business school and an educational rap producer. Neither of whom ever called me.)
And this is the part where it truly gets Junior High School: a couple of days later, I talk to Boy Crazy, and turns out she's been trading messages back and forth with Boy 1!! Now, to be fair, I didn't ever come out and say. "I like this one, hands off!" But I thought it was obvious. It's ok though, frankly I'm cuter.

Boy 2:
Boy 2 is from California (as is Boy 1, actually,) and I invited him to our NYE party. Lest you think this sounds romatic/exciting, let me recreate our conversation:

Me: So what are you doing over break?
Boy 2: You know, relaxing, reading. I was thinking of going off into the Sierras.
Me: Like, Into the Wild style?
Boy 2: Sort of. And maybe to Tahoe. Are you going back to the Bay Area?
Me: Yeah. My friends and I are having a New Year's party. We're getting a hotel room. I gotta figure out what to wear.
Boy 2: Oh, so I'm not invited?
Me: But I thought you just said you'd be be up in the wilderness? Otherwise I would have invited you. You should come.

Yeah.

Meditation for Yuppies
In my attempt to stay sane and relatively stress-free, I've been trying to find a weekly meditation group. I had started going to the Zen Center when I was in San Francisco, and meditating somewhat regularly, and especially with all the high-strung Type As running around the law school, I thought I could really use it here. Except that the first place I went to turned out to have cancelled their service. And the second place I went to had a service, but it was in Amharic. Awkward.

Well, I finally found an ashram down in Chelsea that had a service, in English, and hadn't closed down. The branch of buddhism they pratice, Shambala, sounded really interesting- it's all about trying to pratice Buddhist principles while living out in the world.

I knew something was wrong though when I saw the teacher's bio, and it said he currently worked on Wall Street. Now, most Buddhist teachers are monks or people who have at least devoted some portion of their lives to intensive study. It'd be like having a priest who practiced corporate law on the side. And most of the people there were clearly yuppie Wall Street types - who the fuck wears Dolce and Gabbana to meditation? And they were all very Type A, asking lots of questions and even taking notes. People, it's meditation, not business school, you can't ace an exam to reach Enlightenment. Although I did really enjoy it, up until the question and answer period. And as much as I hate meditating with yuppies, i did see some cute boys in suits. And I love boys in suits.