see you in two weeks.

In about an hour I'll be heading to lovely JFK International Airport to begin my international tour through Israel and Prague.

This will be my first Christmas/New Year's Eve out of New York in five years.  I've been ambivalent about New Year's in New York since the year I tried to go to Times Square for New Year's Eve in high school and made it all the way to 58th Street. So, yeah. I'm ok with missing that one.

Predictably, Christmas in New York warms my little pop-culture-over-saturated heart, not to mention my...whatever my relationship to Judaism is.  Especially since I just found out Santa is real.

But most of all, as much as I pretend that I am planning on leaving NY imminently, and even though it is not healthy to live in a city where I need a break every three months to maintain my sanity, I am always a little sad to leave a city that gives gifts like these:

Roast beef and what appears to be a matzah ball, neatly wrapped, on top of the stairs at the East Broadway F station (not my best photo...the train was coming.)