Purim and Shabbat (road trip)

[cellio]

Thursday night Dani and I drove to Silver Spring to spend Purim and Shabbat with friends. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad Dani decided to go with me. (And not just because that meant he drove through the foggy mountains at night. :-) )

We stayed with estherchaya and sethcohen, who we haven't seen in a few years. They have a nice new house since last I visited, and also a new child and a new kitten. Dani's better with children and I'm better with kittens, so we each had someone to play with. :-)

We got there later than intended -- how can it take a non-busy restaurant more than an hour to cough up focaccia and a couple of salads?! -- but, fortunately, our hosts were still up when we arrived. Seth went to the morning megillah reading (I think): I slept past the start. Seth and Karen hosted "seudah part one" -- dairy breakfast with sangria -- after folks got back. I finally got to meet psu_jedi and caryabend, who live a few miles away; chatting with them in person was fun. There were several people there (I assume folks from shul) whose names I didn't learn, but these things happen. We also met nrivkis (I think she was there and not just at part two). To add to the LJ-name-dropping, later -- between the seudah and Shabbat -- beaniekins called Karen and we waved hi at each other (so to speak). Pity we didn't get to meet her.

After a couple hours we all walked a block to beckyfeld's and Harold's house, where part two commenced with even more people and with much meat and drink. I remembered from last time that Harold had made a kiddush that the Hebrew-literate in the crowd found funny, but that no one could translate for me later (after alcohol), so I asked Dani to listen and fill me in. Either I've gotten better or Harold changed what he does; this time it seemed to consist in large part of snippets from other liturgy, often sung, which I recognized and could sing along on. (Um, right. Someone's going to ask, and I don't really remember now other than the "aneinu" bits from Simchat Torah. There were others. Sorry.)

This year Harold and Becky estimated the food better, so instead of having humongous heaping piles of food they just had lots of food. The "vam" (fake ham) made an appearance and while I still haven't scored a recipe, I've learned that an essential component is a smoker. Ha -- no wonder my attempts to replicate it all failed; I was focusing on the brine and then assuming you baked it. Hmm... who do I know who has a smoker? (Other than the friend who has definitely cooked pork in his. Can you kasher a smoker?)

There was also, as expected, a vast quantity of alcohol. Dani admitted that the sample someone gave him was in fact the best rum he's ever tasted; however, that's not as meaningful a statement as it might first appear. :-) There was a blended scotch that people were raving about (even though it's a blend) that was too peaty for me, but I found a nice bourbon and a very nice muscato (sweet white wine; must get some of this). There weren't as many "girly drinks" this time as last time, but there were some. I only got a couple drops of the Israeli honey cordial but it seemed very nice; the accompanying pear was definitely nice, and the kiwi was, um, an experience. I don't know if the wine we contributed to the table got opened; I felt incompetent to contribute appropriate hard liquors. (Though I should remember that cordials are a welcome option too.)

There was some "Purim torah" (parody), mostly readings from a "Purim haggadah" that were very funny but I don't remember now other than that we found a way to sing Dayeinu as part of it. :-) Harold pointed out that there are as many verses of Maoz Tzur (a Channukah song) about Purim as about Channukah, so it's obviously a Purim song too, and we sang that. He was using an electric chanukiyah to track where we were in the haggadah; I think the intention was that there be eight shots of alcohol (rather than Pesach's four cups of wine), but toward the end they started combining sections, whether due to time crunch or inebriation I can't say.

Somewhere in there it came time to pray mincha and there were exactly ten men present, so Dani got drafted to stand there. He took that reasonably well; while he doesn't pray and has told me there are some things in liturgy that offend him, he was willing to help others. I appreciated that even if I didn't get to participate myself. (There weren't enough siddurim, so I didn't join them, but I later noticed another woman who had joined the group (with her own siddur), so I took note of where she stood. (The men were on an enclosed porch and she stood just inside the house.))

When Purim is right before Shabbat you have to cut the festivities short; we're required to feast and drink on Purim but are supposed to enter Shabbat hungry and (approximately) sober. So the party wound down around 3:00 and Seth, Karen, Dani, and I went back to Seth and Karen's.

Seth, Dani, and I played a couple of games of Carcassonne. These were, I believe, the only two times I have ever actually won that game, and I even got some benefit from farmers. Woo. (I suck at using farmers correctly.) I don't know the various expansions of this game well; we played with the river, with commodities on city tiles, and with builders and pigs, but without the double-or-nothing tiles. I like the combination of expansions that we played; I'm not sure how much the commodities end up adding, but the builder and pig are neat and I already liked the river to spread out the initial layout. If I recall what Seth said correctly, the particular combination that we played is now sold as the base game (or a packaged version).

The builder does lead to some pathologies, though. In the second game, Dani had a builder in what was shaping up to be a large city, and since you get an extra play if you add to a city in which you have a builder, he had no reason to complete the city early. Well, aside from tying up his pieces, of course. That city ended up scoring 64 points; I managed to encroach on it about three turns before it finished, so I got those points too without having my piece tied up half the game. It's nice when that works. :-) (I wasn't actually able to play the completing piece though.)

Shabbat dinner was back at Harold and Becky's, starting with praying ma'ariv. This time there were enough siddurim (a neighbor had fetched more), so I was able to join in -- but all that was left by the time all the men had siddurim was a machzor (high-holy-day prayerbook), so I ended up using that (it contains the service for the intermediate Shabbat, and I know how to adapt from there). I later commented to Dani that it was ironic that he had a proper siddur but didn't care, while I cared but had to fake it. On the other hand, I have the skill to fake it and Dani's not familiar enough with the service to do that, so in a sense we got the right books after all. It worked out, anyway.

(Service-anthropology note: aurally, this was like being in the women's section of some shuls I've visited: the man leading services wasn't projecting enough to be heard in the women's section but I wasn't allowed to step into the room where I could hear, thus severely curtailing my participation. I considered giving up but didn't want to cause embarrassment, so I stayed. But this is my journal, so I'm not so concerned about writing about it now.)

The dinner festivities went on for a few hours, and we got to spend time talking with Cary and Jo, Becky's parents (who at one point mentioned gnomi and mabfan, so I said "I know them"), and some other folks. Not, so much, the hosts; they were pretty busy. We also didn't see much of a house guest we know from the SCA; it's been ten years or so since we've had much contact. But we exchanged email addresses, at least. I had a good time. I feel bad for the trashing of Harold and Becky's house, but I guess that happens when you have that many people over. :-)

(Dang. I just remembered that I forgot to say hi to Harold from schulman. Oops. I knew there was someone else in the "you know Harold too?" bucket.)

Shabbat morning I meant to get to shul earlier than I did, but had a misunderstanding of sorts. I still managed to get to some; Karen nicely walked me over. (The shul is called Woodside. I don't know if that's a neighborhood, a street name, or something else.) This shul was better set up for women than many -- side-by-side sections (rather than the women being stuck in the back), and it was possible to see the rabbi during his sermon. Not only that, but he made a point of looking at the women and not just the men as he spoke. He gave a very interesting talk on Purim, and he struck me as both knowledgable and accessible. Based on this one experience, I like him. (I don't know his name, but that could be fixed.)

Karen and Seth hosted lunch; we were joined by Harold and Becky, their six-year-old son, and her mother. It was nice to have a low-key non-noisy meal when we could actually talk after the crowds of the previous day. Karen made several yummy quiches, two salads (spinach and fruit), and a bunch of other stuff. It was a really nice meal.

Eventually the other guests went back home and we brought out some more games. We broke open the Chrononauts deck that ralphmelton had sent down for Seth and played a couple games of that. I think Seth won both of them. I did horribly but had fun trying to cause World War III (go cockroaches!) and assemble the right artifacts and stuff. Ironically, presenting him with the gift set caused his original set to materialize -- but it was missing at least one important card, so the new set was still relevant.

Karen joined us for Settlers of Catan. This was her first time playing, but she did well and ultimately won. (Having two cities on a stone tile that kept coming up, and the stone port, helped. :-) ) Their set was new, raising the halachic question of whether popping out the few special cards was a Shabbat problem (tearing?), but we ultimately decided to do it in a non-standard way and not worry about it. I half-expected Dani to impatiently take the pieces from us and pop them out while we were discussing it. :-) (No, I was not counting on that...)

We drove back last night instead of this morning, which meant we didn't do a post-Shabbat schmooze, but everyone seemed to be tired from the previous two days' festivities and we knew our hosts would be busy the next day. We had thought to take folks out for food after Shabbat, but apparently the kosher restaurants don't open motzei Shabbat. (I mean, they do in the winter and definitely don't after daylight savings time starts, but this week seemed like a possibility.) In the end we just drove back, so we owe our hosts. :-)

Short takes:

I think their kitten, Nibbler, is really just one giant spring. He slept with us part of the night each night, and he bounced from one side of the bed to the other. :-) (He also seems to have no bones, in that usual floppy-kitten way.)

As we went through Breezewood on the way back we saw a warning sign that said "fog alert - turnpike". We assumed they meant in the mountains a few exits away, not a tenth of a mile down the entrance ramp. We were, what, ten feet higher than Breezewood at that point? The fog was quite sudden. (Fortunately, it did not plague us all the way to Pittsburgh.)

I put out enough dry cat food to easily last the gang three days in case we didn't come back until today. It was all gone last night. Little piggies. And when we got home they acted as if we'd been gone for weeks, rather than 54 hours. Embla even slept on my pillow for a while last night, which she almost never does.

Thursday evening we thought we'd make a quick dinner stop at Anna's Ravioli in Edgewood. That location seems destined to host Italian restaurants that last only a few years. The food was ok but nothing special, and waiting for them to harvest the wheat to make the bread was kind of a turn-off. At least the manager had the decency to not charge us for our entrees, without us having to bring it up directly.

ralphmelton and lorimelton, we have presents for you.

According to their rabbi, in Jerusalem Purim was celebrated for three days this year. Purim is a day later there than here, but you can't read the megillah or have the festive meal on Shabbat, so the megillah reading goes early and the meal late. Interesting. So, to my friends over there, purim sameach!

Comments

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Silver Spring is a large unencorporated area in Maryland, just outside the DC border. It has a number of different neighborhoods, including Woodside and Kemp Mill (which I may be misspelling). Someone from that area could probably explain it better; this is my understanding, however.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

What you said. (I live a block from your sister)

Silver Spring is actually the largest unincorprated town in, um, maybe the US, but definitely in Maryland in that it has a population of approximately 70,000.

It includes several other unincorporated towns, such as Wheaton, Colesville and um, others.

But within Silver Spring "proper" there are a number of neighborhoods. The three Jewish neighborhoods (all within a 5 mile radius of one another) are Woodside (obviously the best of the bunch!), Kemp Mill (the largest of the bunch), and White Oak (where Harold and Becky used to live).