The other day I was sitting in the train across the aisle from a couple of young female students. They were talking about high school life and the attendant traumas. The gossip. The backstabbing. The malice. And I tried to hide my smiles, but they saw me and said "Oh, we were just talking about school." I said "Yeah. How sad that you could just as easily have been talking about where I work. It never changes." That got them a little saddened, I think. Contemplating that pettiness continuing until retirement or death. It certainly saddens me.

One of them was telling the other how she hated her nickname: Crazy Natalie. I gave them my card with this website address on it. I don't know if they've ever come to read the blog, but this is for Natalie.

That's always been my nickname too. Not Natalie, just crazy. People are afraid of things and people who are different, and they will always label you in an effort to make themselves feel better. You told me you are a design student. Well, then, embrace the label of crazy, because no true change, no true art has ever been created by people who are safe and think the same as the rest of the sheep.

It doesn't make it easier to hear. It doesn't make you feel better, either. But just know, that crazy isn't bad, necessarily. It is just different. I sit on a board of directors where I am valued for my ability to see outside the box. In fact, they tease me that I don't even see the box. What box. That's a kind way of calling me crazy. But a valued crazy.

Don't give up the crazy to be the same. It will only hurt you worse, in the long run, than the names people call you.

Crazy? But that's how it goes.

OK. This entry was not going to be about hell, really, but then I read Mimi Smartypants and her new vision of existentialist hell. Laughed out loud, right here in the office. Just too damn funny. And that reminded me of the scene on the Sopranos when Christopher was shot and had a near death vision of hell, which he described as : An Irish bar where every day is St. Patrick's day. And that one always struck me as being close to true. But Mimi Smartypants has it all over Christopher.

What's your idea of a personal hell? I think mine would contain elements of a Paul McCartney concert where he and Linda were doing a duet of "Silly Love Songs" while my ex-husband kept kicking me in the ankle telling me to enjoy myself. My ex-assistant, the heinous Chihuahua, would have to be somewhere nearby, too.

I'll write what I meant to write later.

Alright ladies, gentlemen, drag queens and transgendered persons it's that time of the year again. Just a friendly reminder!!

Please raise your big toes and repeat after me:

MY SISTERS, BROTHERS, DRAG QUEENS & TRANSGENDERED PERSONS: (The Open Toed Shoe Pledge) As a member of the Cute Girl Sisterhood, I pledge to follow the Rules when I wear sandals and other open-toe shoes:

1. I promise to always wear sandals that fit. My toes will not hang over and touch the ground, nor will my heels spill over the backs. And the sides and tops of my feet will not pudge out between the straps.

2. I will go polish-free or vow to keep the polish fresh, intact and chip-free.

3 I will not cheat and just touch up my big toe. I will sand down any mounds of skin before they turn hard and yellow.

4. I will shave the hairs off my big toe.

5. I won't wear pantyhose even if my misinformed girlfriend, coworker, mother, sister tells me the toe seam really will stay under my toes if I tuck it there.

6. If a strap breaks, I won't duct-tape, pin, glue or tuck it back into place hoping it will stay put. I will get my shoe fixed or toss it.

7. I will not live in corn denial; rather I will lean on my good friend Dr. Scholl's if my feet need him.

8. I will resist the urge to buy jelly shoes at Payless for the low, low price of $4.99 even if my feet are small enough to fit into the kids' sizes. They're tacky.

9. I will take my toe ring off toward the end of the day if my toes swell and begin to look like Vienna sausages.

10. If I have been privy to the magic that is Foot Soap, I will share that knowledge and experience with the non-initiated.

11. I will be brutally honest with my girlfriend/sister/coworker when she asks me if her feet are too ugly to wear sandals. Someone has to tell her that her toes are as long as my fingers and no sandal makes creepy feet look good.

12. I will promise if I wear flip flops that I will ensure that they actually flip and flop, making the correct noise while walking and I will swear NOT to slide or drag my feet while wearing them.

13. I will promise to throw away any white/off-white sandals that show signs of wear...nothing is tackier than dirty white sandals...

In my house we do the first night of Passover on the second night because of familial scheduling conflicts. On the second night, my sister-girl, her daughters, my husband, his brother and his brother's family and whatever other strays we can rope in come to my house for the seder. Marc has a box of plagues that he adds to every year. We have fake blood, rubber frogs, plastic ants, ping pong balls to stand in for hail, and way too much fun. I have a matzoh cover that my paternal grandmother made by hand and that my father remembers from his childhood eighty-odd years ago. We eat a mixed menu of sephardic and ashkenazik dishes, except for gefilte fish which I personally loathe and refuse to have in my house. And we tell the story of the Passover, using various and sundry haggadahs, because we can't find one we all agree on. My husband swears by the old Maxwell House give away. I prefer the one written by the former rabbi of the local Reconstructionist synagogue. Astrid prefers a more traditional book. The kids just love Marc's box of plagues. We eat and drink and sit at the table long after the littlest ones have found the afikomen.

And I love Passover. This is my favorite holiday of the year. For me it isn't so much about the story as it is about being part of something larger. I have photos of my family's seders from my childhood. Marc has the same. Every year I think about friends far away, and have a sense of comfort in knowing that we are doing the same thing, at the same time. Partaking separately in the same rituals. And my family, far flung and half estranged. And 80 years ago, my father was the youngest at his family's table, asking the four questions. For as far back as Jews can record history (well, since the event itself) there have been seders and children asking the questions. And in my mind's eye, I see the same thing going forward.

Passover, to me, transcends time and space and weaves all Jews in a web of connectedness. This, more than anything is what makes this holiday so dear to me. I never feel more at home in my skin than at the seder, never feel more of a Jew and what that means.

This year, may there be peace. Next year, in Jerusalem.

Think about this. You are with a couple hundred of your computing peers. At a conference about a single product. In this instance, Adobe Acrobat. This is two full days of all about PDFs. There are many men in shorts and sandals. And t-shirts. There are presenters talking in depth about form fields. There are more computer nerds from schools and government agencies than any other conference I've ever been to. At the opening night mixer there was more beer drunk than wine. People hung out at the nosh bar and didn't mingle. Of course they didn't mingle. They are computer nerds.

And so am I. I must be, I'm here, aren't I? And scarily enough, learning things that will be useful at my job.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Fortunately we are at a Disney resort hotel and they have a wonderful theme bar. The resort is the "Coronado Springs" so the swimming pool has a forced perspective Mayan temple (with water slide). The theme is "Mexican Fiesta" so they have terrific frozen margaritas. And that's where this little conference attendee is headed right now. To the bar. Arriba! Vamanos!

I picked mulberries on Sunday and made jelly tonight. Last year someone dropped about three garbage bags of carambolas on my doorstep and I tried two different jelly recipes and both refused to set. This led to my husband teasing me for a whole year about my inability to make a proper jelly.

Which is, of course, utter crap. I make great strawberry jelly when they're in season. I've done orange marmalade, pickled green tomatoes, dill pickles and several varieties of chutney. My work in the kitchen (presentation aside) is usually specially delicious. I've only had two batches of jelly fail, and that was the two batches of carambola. Both recipes came from the same county extension office pamphlet, too. And I didn't like the mango bread recipe out of it, either.

Tonight I was able to recapture the crown. Eight little jars of clear, brilliant purple mulberry jelly. And when I washed the pot, there was a tasty residue of JELLY, not juice on the sides and bottom.

So there. I am so the queen of the kitchen. You may touch the hem of my apron. Thank you.