dinner++

[cellio]

Tonight we went to Sitar (which does not seem to have a web site; tsk) with friends. It's an Indian restaurant with a nice variety of tasty dishes. Definitely recommended. Alas, they did not have the goat that Dani was seeking, so he had to settle for lamb. I got tandoori fish (I'd never heard of non-chicken tandoori). On reflection, that probably wasn't smart kashrut-wise; I failed to remember that a tandoori oven is clay, not metal. Oops. A couple other people got vegetarian dishes, so we were able to share.

The descriptions of dishes, while being passed, suffered some signal degradation: "one of the lamb dishes", "vegetarian something-or-other", "meat, um chicken?, with spinach", and so on. Fortunately, we were all somewhat aware of what had been ordered, so we only needed to disambiguate, not fully specify.

Later my mother called to try to figure out when we can get together. (Her birthday is Saturday.) This turned out to be challenging:

Her: Saturday?
Me: It's Rosh Hashana. Sunday?
Her: Your father has [schedule conflict]. Next Sunday?
Me: Well, Yom Kippur is that night, but we could do lunch.
Her: If that's a problem, what about Saturday the 11th?
Me to self: Do I want to explain to them about eating in the sukkah?
Me to her: Um, that's Sukkot. Let's go back to that previous Sunday...
Her: What's Sukkot?
Me: One of several holidays that are going to complicate this exercise for the next few weeks. :-)

Later I ended up explaining Sukkot to her anyway (quickie version) and she said it sounded neat, so if we decide that next Sunday doesn't work, they'll come out for Sukkot lunch or something.

Comments

Re: Shmini Atzeret?

[jducoeur]

Ah yes -- Shmini Atzerit.

You have to understand, I went to college at Brandeis, which is secular, yet Jewish. That is, there's nothing unusually religious about the school, but it was founded by Jews, and the considerable majority of the student body is Jewish. That said, I'm not unusual in having gone there because it's a good liberal-arts school, rather than due to its religious/ethnic background. (While I'm Jewish by heritage, my family has been pretty secular for a couple of generations.)

It shouldn't surprise one that Brandeis' holiday schedule is built around the Jewish holidays. Which leads to the following conversation among the freshmen, hundreds of times each September:

Student 1: Shmini Atzeret? What the heck is Shmini Atzeret?
Student 2: It's apparently some sort of Jewish holiday.
Student 1: I've never heard of it.
Student 2: Are you going to complain about getting the day off?
Student 1: Oh, no, no, no. Shmini Atzeret, that's a terribly important holiday in my family...

Re: Shmini Atzeret?

[cellio]

:-) It's important for the students to get their priorities straight!