Jan 4, 2010

Happy New Year!

As you can probably appreciate, December was not a good month for blog entries. My usual birthday-blues dovetailed nicely into holiday madness, with additional fellowship-related stress. Argh! Anyway, things have settled down a bit (or am I just resigned to my fate?), so here I am to ring in the new decade with a recap of 2009. Hold on to your keyboards, this ought to be good.

I started the year working in the same job I got right out of grad school. It had it's ups (my colleague FV and my awesome patients) and it's downs (pretty much everything else). I was definitely ready for a change, so I applied for and got my current fellowship in DC.

This has been a dream of mine since grad school, so I was super excited. But I was also nervous about the big transition. Happily, Gilda and I managed our move to DC with only a few minor disasters - going from a two-bedroom condo to a studio apartment took some serious downsizing. My family was amazing, helping me pack and taking a lot of my crap back to Castle Sri with them. Thanks Mom, Dad, and Monster - I couldn't have done it without you!

The fellowship so far has been good. I got to go to Hawaii for a work conference, so already it's been well worth the effort ;-) Right now I'm still working in public policy at an institute within the NIH, but my next move is to find a spot on Capitol Hill. Easier said than done, I assure you! But I am determined remain optimistic (because the alternative is curling up into a little ball under my desk and refusing to come out). Pray for me, friends!

On a more personal note, I love living in DC. So many of my friends from undergrad live in DC or NoVA, it's like being back at W&M again. I've gone native, exchanging my beloved Corolla, Sheldon, for a metro SmarTrip pass. This makes visiting home a bit more difficult, but my family has been great about visiting me in DC. We spent Xmas here - went to a museum, saw a movie, did some shopping, etc.

Those are the broad strokes, as I see them. It's been a good year - I'm definitely happier! Here's a little preview of what (I hope) will go down in 2010:
1. Finding a spot on Capitol Hill
2. Going to Atlantic City for Maggie's birthday
3. Finishing up my certificate program in NY
4. Refinancing my condo in C'ville
5. World peace (hey, a girl can dream)

2 comments:

liz kinkydork said...

hey! i will call you sometime this week, but i didn't know if you had any time off for martin luther king weekend, and would be interested in me taking a jaunt up there! i have the potential to have up to a 4-day weekend (but hell, even a regular weekend would be cool), and i got a gps for christmas, so i might not have my traditional getting lost in dc experience!

Monkey Sri said...

Thanks for the comment! Let's talk soon re: plans for MLK weekend :D