cellio | Saturday

Turnout for services Saturday was a little lower than usual. This was probably helpful, as we were kicked out of our usual room and into one that's much smaller. (Today and tomorrow is Sinai's Jewish food festival, and our usual room was full of equipment and food that didn't require refrigeration.) At the later service the son of the CEO of my company was becoming bar mitzvah, and if we hadn't had people coming for lunch I would have gone to that. Oh well. Lunch was somewhat tightly scheduled for some people, and I couldn't.

I saw a lot of storm damage on the walk home from services. One of our neighbors now seems to have as many tree branches on his lawn as on his remaining trees; I pity him. And some traffic lights were still out. (We found later that at least one street in Squirrel Hill was blocked to vehicles. Presumably that's either a tree or live power lines in the street.)

Dani's father and his wife were in town for a bat mitzvah at Beth Shalom. The actual bat mitzvah was happening Saturday at mincha (late-afternoon service), which I had not known until Saturday. The impression I'd been given was that this was happening Friday night. Beth Shalom is pretty far to the right ("Conservodox"), so I assumed that they would not allow a woman to read Torah. (There are still things a girl could do at the Friday-night service that wouldn't cause problems for a congregation like that.) Bob and Faye still had to be there Friday night, and then had to go back Saturday evening for the service and then a party. That meant they could spend some of Saturday afternoon with us.

They showed up around 11:30, and my parents got there around noon. We had a nice lunch, and Faye handled the cats a little better this time than the last time she visited. She did worry that any cat within five feet might pounce on her at any moment, and she was not reassured when we told her not to worry. (Heck, much of her concern was directed toward Baldur, who is not likely to jump anywhere without an invitation. He's the hefty, lazy one.)

My parents and Bob & Faye seem to enjoy talking with each other, which is handy. They all enjoy taking cruises, for instance (though my parents have only done so twice), so they talked about that. Visits with Faye can be a little stressful for me, so I'm glad that this one worked out well and I didn't even have to do much work to make that happen.

Eventually Bob and Faye needed to leave to go get ready for the service, and my parents needed to leave because my father was going to be the cantor that night at his church, so I got to spend some of the afternoon reading and relaxing.

"Sunday dinner" was actually Saturday this week, so later Dani and I headed over to Ralph and Lori's for a pleasant evening. Ralph was excited because he's been trying to use their grill for Sunday dinner for a few weeks but the weather has been uncooperative. Last night it was clear and warm, so he finally got his chance. The burgers were tasty. I had never thought to grill onions on the grill, but that added a lot. Lori was feeling under the weather, but she did join us for dinner.

After dinner we played a new game (or at least new to Ralph) called (I think) "Gouda Gouda"; it's pretty mindless but not completely random or stupid. I enjoyed it. It's not a very long game, either, so it would be a good thing to have on hand to play between longer games at all-day gaming sessions.