This Week/Next Week

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This Week...

I'm waking up in New York City, in my studio apartment, and walking the five steps from my bed to my office. Most of the time, this is where I spend my mornings, at least, in front of the computer, pecking out blog posts and columns, sipping coffee I made myself in my black Gevalia coffeemaker ("FREE! with purchase of really expensive coffee"). If I listen to morning news, it's from Galgalatz, so I know which neighborhoods in Israel are experiencing traffic. Very important.

I'm packing, both to vacate the apartment for a subletter and to make sure I have 2.5 months of clothes, Duane Reade supplies, and electric converters. I'm stocking up. I'm writer's blocked on my second to last column because I have so much work to do. The apartment floor, viewed from above, looks like Tetris; oddly shaped suitcases and boxes pushed together to save space as I organize (and apparently earn valuable points).

Next Week...

I'll wake up in Jerusalem, in a 2BR apartment I'll be sharing with a friend, and we'll pack up our computers and head to the German Colony, where we'll sit all day at cafes, letting the bustle and diversity of Jerusalem inspire our work. First we'll attend the President's Conference, even though the press release somehow forgot -- in apparent frenzied enthusiasm over people like Mark Zuckerberg (even if they do sometimes refer to him as Zuckerman), Sergey Brin, Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush -- to include our names. (Go figure.)

As the summer descends, with its searing Middle Eastern heat, we'll drink cafe hafooch and ice caffe and limonana to cool off, and enjoy giant Israeli breakfasts that keep you full all day. We'll meet 120 Jewish innovators from all over the world, and learn from them as we inspire each other with creativity and passion. We'll meet up with internet friends old and new, and cross the virtual boundary into reality. We'll add friends to our Facebook accounts, and post on their Walls before heading to the Old City, note in pocket, to post on God's Facebook wall.

We won't be the typical American tourists...we'll ask for Hebrew menus in restaurants and insist on ordering in their mother tongue rather than ours. We'll learn confidence in Hebrew, enough to curse or compliment in the holy language. We'll try to walk from the top of Ben Yehudah Street down to Kikar Zion without yelling "Oh, migawd! I can't believe you're here, isn't it AWESOME???" We'll criticize the pizza and the bagels, and wonder why there has to be olives on everything. And there will be shwarma.

We'll welcome the influx of friends and family members, the exiles being ingathered for summer celebration of Israel's 60th; we'll attend family celebrations, and we'll call them "smachot" instead of "simchas." At night we'll appreciate the cooling air that finds Jerusalem, and don light sweaters as we head out to participate in Jerusalem nightlife or head to Tel Aviv for a few days to join the collective heartbeat of that city, which is somehow simultaneously the MidEast sister to both New York and Los Angeles. Drinks and dancing by the Namal, breakfast networking with tech friends, beach days, book launch parties and concerts woo us, and friends and family succeed in luring us to other parts of the New Jersey-sized country, but we come home to Jerusalem.

It's gonna be a big summer.