Tomorrow will officially be my first day as a Development Associate at American Jewish World Service. It has been great working there over the past three years. In addition to having wonderful professional experience, meeting amazing people, and doing good work in the world, I have began to develop a sense of social justice. I am in large part ignorant to the complexities of the world we live in, but each day my eyes open a little bit more. The sights before me invite a rush of thoughts and feelings. Can we really be doing all of this to one another? Why don't we do more for each other? I have not chosen the most lucrative path in this new endeavor, but the opportunity for growth may very well be unavailable eslewhere. Regardless, I'm happy with what I have, and that's a really wonderful feeling.

Tonight Bella and I had our first game on the Deluxe Scrabble board I received from Merle. It's no surprise that she kicked my ass, again. She beat me a couple times before on her old set, by 70 points or so, then again by 40. This time was a real walloping though weighing in at a monsterous 90+ points. Reading Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis has gotten me back into my old competitive game mode. While traveling I thought about taking up chess again as I have on several other occasions. However, now, I want to follow through on this desire. I have on my desk a posting for the 7th Annual Foxwoods Open, which will take place towards the end of March. If I can commit to training enough, I will eventually register for the event. This is a huge event that I would like to compete in, so I'm contemplating. But back to Scrabble for a moment, I need to learn some new words, yea. Bella has a significantly larger vocabulary and wields it accutely crossing triple word scores and racking up huge points. I'm going to narrow my margins with the hopes of one day surpassing her. I'm not counting on lucky tiles, I need to do some work...