While some people go back home for a favorite meal, I go for my favorite run.

Tired of winter sweaters? Strip down to your skivvies for a good cause at the 20th annual Polar Bear Plunge to benefit Special Olympics New Jersey on Saturday, February 23 at Pier Village in Long Branch.

Her enthusiasm is boundless—and contagious. “I lost my voice from screaming so much,” Bernardsville native Katie Meyler told us after her foundation, More Than Me, won $1 million during Chase Bank’s American Giving Awards, televised on NBC Saturday night. She said More Than Me will use the money to build a boarding school for impoverished girls in Liberia.

Sometimes it takes a hurricane—or “Frankenstorm”—to remind us that cell phones and Wi-Fi and even cable TV are luxuries.

The morning before Hurricane Sandy, my husband and I debated staying home in Hoboken. We had evacuated for Tropical Storm Irene last year, but that proved unnecessary. This time around, we didn’t want to panic.

If all the bars and restaurants in Hoboken were a family, Helmers’ would be the patriarch. The German restaurant has been part of the local fabric for more than 70 years, surviving the city’s ups and downs. It is also part of my family’s history, and without it, I am not sure we would have made it in this country.

While there are plenty of bars with great food and brew in Hoboken, they don’t have what Pier 13, the city’s newest watering hole, has—lawn chairs, crab-crate tables and drinks in plastic cups.

Having grown up in New Jersey, a state that’s home to immigrants from just about everywhere in the world, it was no surprise when I married outside my race and culture. In effect, I have been Indian by marriage for almost five years, and with that comes certain obligations, like, when you live in New Jersey, shopping in Edison.

After I discovered that I was going to be a parent and the initial panic subsided, my thoughts turned to all the fun my husband and I would have with our little one. I had visions of Christmas mornings around the tree, family vacations down the Shore, sunny afternoons at Van Saun Park, where I’d gone as a kid growing up in Bergen County, and, of course, visits to the zoo.