I might never sleep again

This week was delightful.

This week was basically just a big built up to shabbat. But along the way some good things happened.

For one, work became really good. I've been given the tasks of compiling the evidence about church child pornography cases for the past 5 years. It's a huge amount of work. It's sad work but it's quite useful.

I'm also compiling the evidence on the Abu Ghraib torturers, their court martials, their convictions and sentences for another case, which is also great work.

Lastly and this is my favourite, I've been doing some interesting research into the constitutional right to freedom of religion and whether that gives churches immunity from litigation for negligently hiring or failing to supervise paedophile priests. You would think that they would be held accountable but there's a bunch of states (I'm look at you, Utah) that think that to hold churches accountable for that is to encroach on their right to free exercise of their religion. I think I might write up an academia article for this on behalf of the firm, which would be a nice experience. All in all, work has been getting interesting.

On Wednesday night I went to see "Sleep No More" which was an alternative theatre production gifted to me by my boyfriend's family (really just his sister...). It's a huge haunted house play, where you wanted around following various actors do spooky things, like die and come back to life. There was a grave yard in the house. It was amazing and scary. Highly recommended.

Shabbat dinner this week I had 7 friends over, including Erica who slept by me. It was really fun, a good mix of people, except for this one random guy who accosted me at shule and invited himself over. He was a strange character, but he certainly added flavour to the company and it reminded me of my Nachlaot shabbatot where you never know what will happen! Lunch was at a friend of mine's of the Rova. There were a bunch of other HaRova girls there. It was a really nice reunion, I was surprised at how cool and liberal they all were. Who knew?

Saturday night I went to a Channuka part in Brooklyn. It was great. Instead of wearing ugly Christmas jumpers people were wearing ugly channuka sweaters. It was heaps of fun. Though that did mean getting home at about 3.30am again....

Today I got up way too early considering how little i'd slept, but still too late to do anything productive with my morning. I did however run into my neighbour Tal Segal, who also happened to be my madrich in Bnei Akiva. Small world. I ran some errands (more on them later..) and then went out to dinner with my Aunt n Uncle on the upper west side. It was great fun and they are really lovely. After dinner I went to go visit an apartment which I think I will sublet. It's a gorgeous big 1 bedroom apt in Washington Heights.

Now on the the errands. I was quite busy today booking flights and organising visas n the like b/c MY BOYFRIEND IS COMING TO NY! Yay!

And that's all for this week.

First full week in NY

Hello world,

Just so you gauge your expectations appropriately, expect about a post per week while I'm hitting up the city that never sleeps.

So last Monday I returned to work and continued reading fun things such as case law on the Alien Torts Statute and the Palmer inquiry etc. Monday night I went with my friend Erica and two of her friends to Drag Queen Bingo. Surprisingly, I won the first round of bingo, I won myself a small yappy toy puppy. We named her Bertrude.

This week, though was quite quiet socially. I tried generally just to get my life together. I joined the gym near work, I managed to stock my pantry and fridge and to do laundry. But generally, I wasn't really social at all.

At work I've been spending my time going through different sources of evidence and collating them into tables/documents/memos so they can be easily categorized for submission to the court. I've been going through emails that were received as a result of a Free of Information case. The emails are from the state department, they include emails from staffers for significant political and military figures. I've also been going through and extracting evidence from the Abu Ghraib court martial transcripts  It's been really hard/heavy work. At the end of the day I'm quite exhausted from reading about torture and abuses. But at the beginning of the day it's a good feeling to be going to work to do something important and bad-ass.

Shabbat and this weekend, however, was just delightful. My friend Naomi, whose family I stayed with for Thanksgiving came to stay with me. Friday night we went to a new partnership minyan (Shira Chadasha style) in the Heights. That's a big deal for such a conservative community. I was then at dinner with friends of mine from Midreshet Harova. The girl who hosted in now married and has a baby (queue freak out). After that I went to collect Naomi from her meal. There were heaps of people there including a really cool couple, where she was studying to become a Rabbi at JTS. Naomi and I popped our heads into the Mount Sinai Oneg Shabbat on our way home at 11.30 and it was still raging. But, that singles scene seriously intimidates me.

Shabbat morning we went to shule and hung around for shmoozing afterwards. I ran into a bunch of people I know from various travels and adventures. But basically, there were lot's of single religious Jews in their mid-20s. There was a buzz and a tension in the room that was pretty fierce. Lunch was delightful and delicious. There was a potluck lunch at Naomi's friend, Yael's fiance's place (if you can follow that). there were about 8 married couples and 4 unmarrieds there. It was seriously super intense. But there were some interesting people there and a couple of really good sheitels/rings/pregnancy clothes to discuss (err...).

Saturday night I went to Hummous Place on 73rd and Amsterdam with Naomi and her friend. Delicious. I then met up with from friends of mine from sem and we went to a midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was great fun. They had a cast who dressed up and acted out the show, there were games and dancing. It was awesome. And getting home after 3am was less hard than expected!

Today I got up earlier than I would have liked and I went to visit family friends of ours in NJ. We went out for lunch and then frozen yogurt (I got salted caramel pretzel and cheesecake yogurt = amazing!). It was really nice catching up with them and meeting their kids for the first time! Seriously fat baby (and therefore cute). Tonight I went to a friend's regular movie night. We watched Psycho. It was actually scarier than I expected. But also funny in it's 1960's quaintness.

I'm not sure what to expect this week. I need to sort out my next sublet and confirm where I'm going to be living for the following 2 months. I would like to do more work on the Catholic sex abuse case, though these Iraqi torture cases are also very interesting.

But who knows what this week may bring!?