i'm back

and more relaxed then before, but vacation is nice. i'm sure i can fill my life up nicely once i'm independently wealthy and have life as one long vacation. unfortunately that's not likely to happen for a very long while. maybe i'd settle for being dependently wealthy...

people i ran into: MJ's parents and brother in Geula; RG and fiance in the Katamon Co-op; AY--from university, at my friend's friend's b-day party; DB--from my Boston years, with his parents in Machane Yehuda on Friday afternoon. SM--my previous upstairs neighbor, who is temporarily living in Israel. A respectable amount of random meetings, but not too spectacular.

Found out that another friend from university, ES, was in the previous bus bombing (not the one last week), and had his knee totalled, but is otherwise fine. Very scary to have such a close call. A friend of M's had been on the 14 bus last week, but got off a couple of stops before the bombing. She came over that Sunday night and was still trying to figure out if it had been her bus or maybe the one afterward. It's always too close for comfort.

In spite of my attempts to travel around a bit, the furthest I got was to my aunt's in Rechovot. Apparently I'm just a very boring person. But I did make some really nice friends while I was there... maybe i'll even keep in touch with them.

It was good to get away, even though it wasn't for a tremendously long period of time. It gave me some perspective and breathing space. It's been very frustrating since I've been trying to keep people from affecting me negatively, but I just haven't been able to help it. Hopefully this will give me the necessary emotional distance.

Glad to have seen multiple friends already, and I haven't even been back for 24 hours.