Number 26

Today I crossed off a pretty big item off my 30 by 30 list. I bought my very first brand-new car. No financial help from my family and I did a ridiculous amount of research all on my own. Luckily, I had some good moral support and a great shopping companion. After three hours and very little haggling, I left with my new wheels.

What I did not get to take with me was my old car. I bought my 1998 Mazda Protege in 2002, just a few months after I moved to Baltimore. My roommate at the time spotted the ad in the City Paper and I paid for it with $4000 cash (my grandparents helped significantly). It wasn't perfect and it had a little cosmetic damage, but it was all mine. Clean title, no payments, passed inspection.

That car saw me through some of the biggest transitions of my life. Adjusting to the East Coast, starting and completing graduate school, making new sets of friends both in Maryland and New Jersey, going through several relationships, health drama for my grandmother, various jobs and internships. For the past 6 1/2 years, often the only constant has been my car. It never had an official nickname, but sometimes I called the car Lambert after my MD plates which started with the letters LAM.

Anthropomorphism aside, you can understand the tinge of sadness I felt in harvesting all the detritus from my old car. The Google Maps printouts to destinations foreign and familiar, the receipts from umpteen repairs and oil changes, the ice scraper I thought I'd lost, the EZ Pass and so much more were neatly tucked into a Ziploc bag for easy transport into my new car. Yesterday before work, I took pictures of all the bumper stickers I've collected and used to decorate the Mazda and to help it stand out in a crowded parking lot. Some, like the University of Arizona sticker will be easy to replace, while others, like my Hungarian EU sticker might be a bit harder to source.

My friend blames my separation anxiety on all those cartoons we watched as kids. The Brave Little Toaster effect she called it. Snicker if you want, but you know you've felt badly at times when you throw away your old coffee grinder or post your ancient digital camera on Craigslist or toss a once-loved sweater in the Goodwill pile.

And who gets that attached to a coffee mill?! This was a car and that poignant sense of loss and guilt at destroying an inanimate object really got to me today. But as tough as it was to say goodbye, I know that every time I turn on my new car and the check engine light doesn't glow, I'll feel a little better. And every time I take it in for a free oil change, a bit of the guilt will dissolve. And every time I can open the trunk without having to turn the car off, I'll feel pretty damn good.

Kosher Cooking Carnival

This week marks the first time I've submitted to the Kosher Cooking Carnival. And by some awesome bit of luck, I got top billing.

Whether you keep kosher or not, check out all the great articles here!

All in the Family

While the rest of the blogosphere is all atwitter with musings on Oscar nominations, dress choices and speculations about Ryan Seacrest's sexual orientation, I've decided to write about something completely different this evening. Honestly, I have only seen 2-3 of the nominated films and the rest are waiting release on my Netflix queue (or a free Saturday night). Also, I have a wonderful friend living in Tempe, Ariz. who dishes with me about the terrible outfits across the time zones. Coincidentally, Sean Penn is the shit in Milk and Robert Downey Jr. is the most underrated actor in the universe.

Earlier this week, I got an email via my professional Facebook account from someone whose name sounded vaguely familiar. The man, in his early 60s, introduced himself as my father's cousin Barry, the son of my great aunt, who I have no recollection of ever meeting. After my zayde (dad's father) died in 1989, our family stopped visiting Massachusetts on our regular summer vacations to the East Coast. Aside from seeing my bubbie (dad's mother), aunt and uncle at our bar/bat mitzvahs and at Bubbie's funeral, I've had virtually no contact with that side of my family, lo these 20 years.

Certainly, I've heard nothing of Cousin Barry, his brother and their daughters who were about the same age as me. It always felt a little unfortunate, but luckily I have a great family on my mom's side and I was always content with that. Besides, people on my dad's side had weird nicknames and were diehard Boston sports fans - and I'm a Giants (and Cardinals) fan.

Now, this whole new family dimension has opened and it's left me wondering why. Why now? Why me? And it's not just Cousin Barry. During the past few months and years, I have connected with myriad cousins, from David, the Oregon rancher to Pesha Rachel, the Orthodox mother of seven. Some of them like Cathi in Toronto, I knew about but had no way of contacting and others, like Hadassah Blima, I never knew existed. For someone who grew up with a small family and no Jewish first cousins, it came as quite a shock to find out I'm related to half of Lakewood, New Jersey (a well-known Orthodox Jewish enclave).

Still, why connect through me? Why not my brother or sister? They are outgoing and personable and have the same uncommon last name. The best explanation I've rationalized is that as the oldest child in my family, I'm predisposed to be the connector and filial beacon. And various researchers can back me up. Eldest children are known to be more conscientious and socially dominant than their younger siblings, so maybe it's in the genes. My Cousin Philip (aka our U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia), similarly keeps track of all the family relations and can explain what a second cousin, once removed, actually means. He's also an oldest child.

Whatever the reason, I'm thankful for all the new and rediscovered family connections that have come my way since I moved to the Northeast. Even if it means embracing a few Patriots fans.

And I Knew Him When...

File this in the "I Knew Him When" category wherein I rarely get to stash items, except for the guy from ninth grade algebra/senior year English who now plays in the NFL. What makes this instance even better is that unlike Todd Heap, George Polk Award-winning journalist Ryan Gabrielson will actually take my calls (plus, I have mildly embarrassing photos of him from college).

For those who don't know him, Ryan is a reporter for The East Valley Tribune (my hometown paper), who wrote an expose of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, titled "Reasonable Doubt." You can read the story in its entirety here and you can learn all about the Polk Awards from an article in Monday's New York Times.

Ryan shares the award with 13 other reporters (or teams) from around the country, and he won in the category of justice reporting. I remember talking to Ryan nearly a year ago about the article and his passion, devotion and determination was clearly evident.

Who knew the nervous blond guy wandering the Arizona Daily Wildcat newsroom circa 2000, with a notebook permanently lodged in his back pocket would go on to become the award-winning journalist (and fantastic husband and father) he is today? I'm sure it helps that his wife Rachel is incredibly supportive and that his daughter Olivia is super cool (plus she freakin loves me).

We've had a lot of adventures together, and over all the years, I've never been more proud of Ryan and his enviable dedication to bringing people the truth. Congratulations Toughguy!!!

Waste Not...

I generally don't post about events that happen to me, in order to preserve some modicum of anonymity and privacy. But every once in a while, something happens to me that is so ridiculous, I feel there is a benefit to the rest of world in sharing the story.

Recently, I started making coffee at home. Raised on instant decaf, I had little coffee making experience from which to draw, but I also knew that it was a skill I should probably master. So strong was my belief in the importance of coffee dexterity, that I included it on my 3o By 30 list. I had a French press taking up kitchen counter space, so I bought some beans, wantonly ground them in the grocery store, and took them home.

Anyone who has used a French press will know that while it's an incredibly easy method for brewing, not using a filter means you have all these coffee grounds just sitting there in the bottom of the pot. You can never adequately get them all into the trash can without the use of a spatula and they tend to shoot out all over the place when you go to rinse them out.

Every time I wanted coffee, I had to deal with the unpleasant task of trashing the grounds. And in these troubled economic times, I hesitated to thoughtlessly throw anything away (here are 10 much better ideas). So I decided that the best thing to do with yesterday's used coffee grounds would be to cool them off in a Tupperware, mix them with some baking soda and use them to exfoliate in the shower.

Once dripping wet and naked, I squirted a liberal amount of shower gel into the container and proceeded to spread the concoction onto my body.

Now, a logical person like yourself may have thought of the potential mess such an idea would engender much earlier in the execution process. But then you wouldn't be me. It took me about one thigh and most of my stomach before I realized that the grounds might be too coarse to fit down the drain... and that it might stain my tub... and that it kinda smelled weird to combine coffee and sea minerals shower gel.

Never one to let a little mess get in my way of what I thought was a good idea at the time, I finished exfoliating before embarking on the imperative task of cleaning the shower. Whatever environmentally-pious intentions I had were completely obliterated by the amount of water I needed to clean the curtain, the soap dish, the tile and the space between my toes.

Maybe not everything should be recycled.