Good Friends Going Home :-)

Last night I had to go to a 'going away' party. I guess it was supposed to be sad, and it was for the people that are staying. My friends are making Aliya. I could not be happier for them. I think they are making a great move and the right decision for their family. This party for me anyhow, was a great opportunity to spend a little bit of time with my friends that I won't see for a while. Really, that is the only reason that I came in to come to this.
However, I am not one little bit upset that they are going home to Israel. I support them 150% and I think they are strong good people that will only be good for the land of Israel.
On the other hand, I'm really going to miss the convenience of just calling up my girl friend and saying: "hey, this Shabbat my husband and I are coming in for a friends wedding, can I stay at your house?" I'm going to miss the fact that in 5 hours ride I can be at her house playing with her kids. Yes it really does suck.... FOR ME!
I'm not saying that they won't miss everyone; in fact I know they will. I am sure that for the first while before new memories are starting to be made the old ones are going to be all they have and it will make them sad. Yet, I hope that while it will be sad for a little while, that they will persevere in their wishes, and dreams to come true.

The speech that I should have said last night, but was too much of a wimp (Cause as I right this I have tears in my eyes, and I know I would not be able to contain them last night)...

To my darling (my friends names),
My bracha to you is that you may be blessed with everything that is good. I pray that your new home will be welcoming, inviting and full of happy new memories. I hope that you will never forget us, and I hope that you will not be sad by us. I know that everything that we have been through, our lives together have made a difference and that will raise the bar to your expectation of friends. In your new home, you will find people that will make you comfortable to call at 3 in the morning, that your kids can call their friends and that you will be ale to call your friends. I hope you will smile, laugh and have great times as we had here. I hope that you will live your dreams and make us proud, make us proud that we let you leave us in order for you to fulfill your destiny (and the destiny of all Jewish people).
Trust me I know how hard it is to leave. Even though I didn't go every 1/2 of a 1/2 of a 1/2 of a distance that you went. I have faith that even though for the first little while, it will be hard for you, that you will make friends and that you will look back on this day and think...'man that was a hard time, but I'm so glad we did it, I can't imagine what it would have been like if we would have stayed'.
I wish for you, the best health, happiness, success, and peace at knowing that you did the right thing.
I love you both very much.
That would have been my speech.

On that note, here are some pictures to follow all this gushy stuff:

Being Home

I love being home. Nothing else beats it. My parents live about 300 miles away and it is quite hard for me to be this far apart from them. We try to come as much as possible which equates to about once a month in the summer and once every two months in the winter. With all that said...nothing beats coming home, and being at home.
Once upon a time I used to hate 'home'. I dreamed, schemed and planned to move from 'home' and the time that I did move couldn't have happened fast enough. I moved out I was 24 years old, almost 2 1/2 years ago. For some that age maybe one that is quite old to still be living at home, for others I was so young daring to do so much at such a young age. I was not moving to a couple blocks away I was moving to a big city (which I had dreamed off for 12 years). I was getting an apartment all by myself and starting a spectacular new job in my field. It was quite a lot all at once. Yet I welcomed it all! I was excited to be finally rid of this little city where I grew up. I was excited to be moving onto a different chapter in life, I was excited to be on my own!
Now 21/2 years later, I love the big city that I live in. I love my new friends, my new family, my new life. Yet, in the pit of my throat there is this little knot that starts to tighten when I come home. I get all weepy eyed looking at the places where people knew my name. I see how things have changed so much in such a short amount of time. And of course, I miss my house.
This is the same house that I used to hate. It was always to small, to jewish, to far away from everything I wanted to do. The bathroom was always too cramped, the kitchen with not enough room and the t.v's that were too old. Now, with so little time past yet so much experienced gained, so much more seen in the world, and so much more understanding and shall I say 'wisdom' that has come I see my parents house for what it truly is, HOME.
I now come in to what was my room and love it. There is something to be said with the familiar smells of my room. It is so very good. Something that I have missed. I now see the bathroom and think "I can throw a party in here for at least 10 people, how is it that I used to think that it was so small?" Ahhh yes, wisdom and experience, the cure for teenage years and under appreciating your parents. Now, I think I get it. Though I think that if I write another blog entry in 21/2 more years it may be full of other wisdom that I have gathered, I guess only time will tell that.
With all that, here are some pictures of something that I've missed and love so very much. These veiews are so much different then those of my youth. This house was branned new when my parents bought it in 1995. It had no grass, no life. Here in 2008 it stands so mightly with so much grass, and life :-)

Job Searching, self exploration.

Well I haven’t written in a while really because I’ve been concentrating on my own feelings and my own family.
Don’t get me wrong I really did want to get the severance package I really did want to get laid off; I know it sounds bad but I did. The truth is I didn’t think how it would feel to come into work for the next three months knowing that I have no job afterwards. I also don’t think I put in to much thought as to how it would feel not to have any projects assigned to be me, and the projects that were to be assigned to me would be interesting tasks such as scanning in Certificates of Analysis and then having to put them on the shared drive…wow there is something exciting.
After hearing of my task to be shared with another chemist (who has 30 years experience) I couldn’t help but think and then say out loud with no tone of sarcasm…”this is why I went to school? This is why I have a chemistry degree?” I’m not saying I’m a superstar by any stretch of the imagination. I got decent grades at school, definitely not a straight A student, and definitely not my mom who is a genius, but, decent none the less. Yet, here I am scanning papers and logging them in, like an intern at a first job.
Am I being ungrateful, I don’t think so. I think that I am just being human. I have no ambition to come to work. I come to work 3 hours late and leave early and nobody says anything to me. I guess that is the only way I can really show the company my true feelings of not only being laid off, but being demoted to a position that interns hold. I am however, grateful to have worked in a big corporate mess, now I know what it is, and now I know how to deal with it.
Since I have been pretty miserable here at my position for the last 2 and half years I’ve decided not only to find a job that I will love but also that I no longer want to be a chemist. I’m not sure what I really want to be (when I grow up) but at this point it is not a chemist. I want to get into the business sector and see if my personality is a better match there. I feel that it will be. The other thing I have found out about myself is I refuse to drive as long and as hard as I have been to get to work. I am not looking for a 70 mile daily commute. I want something close to home and preferably downtown. Those are the things that I know. Everything else I want to explore. This is a good opportunity to really do what I want to do…the only problem is trying to figure out what it is that I want to do.
At this stage in my career I know I don’t want to work in a lab. I want to be a boss, a manager, someone that actually gets to make decisions and execute plans. I want to climb the latter and I want to do it now.
I wish I had a guidance counselor around to ask advice. You know the kind we had in high school and absolutely hated. I remember the kind sweet old lady that was my counselor. I couldn't stand her. She was so clam it was inevitable that she was a bad person, because good people aren’t that sweet and calm…I saw her blow once…not pretty, like I said not a good lady. Yet I wish that something like this existed for people out of high school. I could just walk down to the first floor office and brows through books of professions that I would like to do when I grew up. I guess when I go visit my parents in t-1 hour I can see if the old high school is open and see if I can step inside for some nostalgia and a book or two on professions.

Job

I’m sorry I’ve been gone.
I’ll be back hopefully soon, currently trying to find a job since I’ve been laid off.
G-d willing see you all soon.

Egypt, We Thank you.

A great Thank you goes out to Egypt for keeping illegal immigrants out of Israel. It appears that Israel’s neighbors to the South are doing the country a favor. In the news today , Egyptian guards kill illegal Sudanese migrant.

Now if America would have neighbors like that then there wouldn't need to be any illegal immigration offices at all!

Egypt protects its borders!

Yet another fantastic reason that Palestinians are bad for the world. It is good that Egypt, where Palestinian land should be, have found out that they are the retched snakes that do not belong in their country and maintain their border to make sure none of them come across and take up residence there. It is perfect when Palestinians can stay in Israel and fight the Jews…that way all the other Arab countries can continue to be busy trying to take over the world, building nuclear war heads, and in general hating on the western nations that live in a democratic society.
Nope I’m not a racist, I’m just being real.

Eating FISH!!!

On the topic of, dieting, eating right and eating better.

MSN in their health section has the following headline:

Eating fatty fish lowers risk of dementia

So now we know that Fish is not only good tasting but it is also good for you.
What interests me is the fact that scientists actually research these topics and come up with thesis papers to explain phenomenon the cavemen used to know when nobody could read, or write. This is yet, another excellent example of better living through chemistry.

Beijing

This is really cool!
If anybody was worried that on their next trip to Beijing they would not have any kosher food. Put your worries aside, Chabbad to the rescue. In this news article Rabbi Shimon explains, his Chabbad and his situation is very different to most others. He has to work hand in had with Reform Jews in order to achieve a unified Jewish community. His task is exceptional and his success will be legacy.

Interesting.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1007998.html

Arab Terrorism awareness

I found this site on another blog site.

http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/

Hat tip to SaraK