This past week marked the first anniversary of my coming out as gay (by the reckoning of the Hebrew calendar, that is). I celebrated on Tuesday by taking a really long, enjoyable hike, and maybe I'll write about it a bit later. I'd just like to take the opportunity to look back and take stock of how good this past year has been for me. It's felt like the process of recovering from a long bitter illness. After the fever finally breaks, it takes a little while before you're strong enough to get up out of bed and roaming around, and there's still a period after that in which you're still gaining back your original strength. And after that, you can even learn how to live more healthfully than ever before.

So I'm sitting around in the downtown Tel Aviv apartment of the guy I'm dating, hacking on the computer while he's away at work, when suddenly amid the traffic noises outside the window I hear the sound of high-pitched male voices melodically chanting "Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me'uman" to the accompaniment of electronic, heavy-beat, dance club music. Blasted out of automobile speakers. At top volume. I laughed not because this could be considered a strange occurrence in my life, but because I realized that events such as this have become part of my version of normalcy. Baruch habah la'aretz.

I've been quite negligent in my writing duties lately, gentle reader. So let me quickly scribe for you the latest news in my life. First of all, my brother Seth proposed to his girlfriend, Rachel Siegel, on the night of Valentine's day, and she accepted. Requisite link to OnlySimchas. Huge mazal tov! My own love life has been creeping forward lately too. Through JDate.com, I met a nice guy named Moshe who's living in Tel Aviv. Due to recent end-of-winter illnesses and general busyness, we've only seen each other a few times in the past month, but we've been phoning and emailing frequently. I hope to see more of Moshe in the near future. And that's about all that's newsworthy lately.