The lease on my current apartment is up at the beginning of May, so I’m starting the process of looking for a new place.  Brandon and I have decided to stick together since we don’t know anyone else moving at the same time, we’d both rather live with someone we know and it’s really hard to find a decent affordable one bedroom.  If you compare what you can get for a two bedroom at double the price of a one bedroom, the difference is huge.

Brandon wants to stay in the general area we are now, while I’d prefer to move to Cambridge.  As a compromise, we’re looking in the areas of Cambridge closer to Boston (East Cambridge and Central Square) and Coolidge Corner in Brookline.  Coolidge Corner is near where we are now but it’s a little further inbound and I can get on the 66 bus directly so the commute is 2 legs rather than 3 making it bearable.

I’ve done way too much moving around over the past few years and I’m looking forward to moving in somewhere and not immediately know when I’m moving out.  Hopefully we can pick out somewhere nice and stay there a few years.

We’ll start looking at apartments this week and an update will follow when we’ve found a place.

This is mostly addressed to the left leaning people out there who either assume this is Massachusetts so the Democrat is going to win, or who are disenchanted with the perceived lack of progress of the Obama administration.  Not that you shouldn’t if you’re going to vote for Scott Brown, but if you are, I probably don’t need to tell you to get the polls on election day.  I think you’re horribly, horribly wrong, but you should go do your civic duty too anyway.

For those of you feeling apathetic, special elections are hard to predict, polls are all over the place and some have Scott Brown up.  It’s a statistical toss up at this point. Every vote counts.

So why is it so close?  Well Coakley isn’t a very inspiring candidate and hasn’t run much of a campaign, assuming that she would win easily against her Republican opponent in the bluest state in the country.  Does that a character flaw in her?  Yes.  Do I wish Capuano beat her in the primary?  Yes.  Are we better off with her as our senator than Brown?  By a mile.

As far as I can tell, Coakley is going to be a rank and file Democrat and Brown is going to be a rank and file Republican.  He claims to be a centrist, he’s running on basically the standard Republican platform, lower taxes, smaller government, war on terror, etc.  Nothing you haven’t heard before.  As much as I wish we had two functioning political parties in this country, we don’t.  The Democratic super-majority is the only reason the little progress that is being made in Washington is happening.  The Republicans have decided to move in lock step, stop anything from getting done on the domestic agenda and then run next fall on the platform that the Democrats were in the majority and couldn’t get anything done.

The health care bill, which Brown has promised to vote against, certainly isn’t perfect.  There’s a lot wrong with it, but it’s a HUGE improvement over the status quo.  As things are I have a pre-existing condition and I need coverage.  I need to constantly have a job that offers it or I will be in major financial and medical trouble very quickly.  I’m extremely fortunate to have found a job during this downturn but I might not be so lucky next time and the thought is genuinely scary.  We need Coakley’s vote for this bill.

I guess it’s not really winter break since I’m not in school any more and just took vacation days between Christmas and New Year’s.  It still feels like it I guess.

One of the main advantages of taking the train home is that they get me to New Jersey and a bus, though much cheaper, only gets me to NYC.  Since on Christmas Eve every year my family goes into Chinatown and I was going home the same day I thought I’d save myself the money and take the bus.  I decided to try to BoltBus, which is only $18.50 and seems to be less of a shady operation that the Fung Wah (which somehow manages to run a bus from Boston to NYC for only $15.00).  It’s a little nicer of a bus that the Fung Wah but not as nice as the train.  The other big advantage is the bus has wifi, so it’s easier to kill time during the trip.

One complaint is that the route they took in NYC.  They took 5th avenue from way uptown all the way to midtown (they drop you off at the corner of 34th and 8th).  I’m no expert on driving in New York but that doesn’t seem like the best route.  We hit traffic (traffic in Manhattan, I know I’m shocked too) and ended up arriving about half an hour late.  We experienced a nice role reversal of the normal “are we there yet” situation, my Mom was constantly text messaging me to let her know what street I was on.  Finally when we hit 34th, she called me and we had the following conversation:

Mom:  That means your almost here!

Me: I know!

Mom: I know you know!

Me: Then why did you call to tell me?

Mom: I don’t know!

After I arrived we ate our traditional Chirstmas Eve dinner at Wo Hop (the downstairs one, the upstairs one next store isn’t as good, or so I’m told).

Since my brother is going to school in St. Louis and my sister is going to school in Phoenix we don’t all see each other very often, so we had from Christmas Eve to the following Sunday with all 3 of us in NJ.  On Sunday Ben had to fly to St. Louis to then get on a bus to Florida for his training trip for swimming.  Rebecca and I stayed until New Year’s Eve.  My other sister Sarah is still in high school so she’s still trapped in NJ with my parents.  It was good to have everyone together for a little while.

For Christmas my uncles visited.  In a stereotypical Jewish fashion we went out for Asian food (Malaysian since we had Chinese the night before) and a movie.  The movie was Sherlock Holmes, which was enjoyable.  A fun movie but not a great movie, basically a summer action movie but released in the winter.

I had insisted since I was taking vacation days now, and didn’t just get time off all the time, that we actually do things and not just sit around.  For Saturday Rebecca made mystery plans (and not knowing drove my Mom crazy).  We went to a restaurant in New York and then a comedy club to seen a improv show. On Wednesday we went to a Broadway Play “Next to Normal”, which was OK.

On New Year’s Eve I took the train back to Boston and went to an awesome party thrown by my friend Tom.

It was a really good break and I’m not looking forward to getting up for work tomorrow, but got to pay the bills, I guess.