Monica

Dani's car died (again) Saturday morning. This is not the ideal weekend for finding open service places, so he ended up having it towed to a place that came recommended, and is within walking distance. They were closed, but he left a note and his key. With luck, they will call on Monday. (All of this happened before I got home from Shabbat services.)

This meant that for one outing this weekend he drove my car. Ouch, my poor clutch. I think he took off a chunk of its remaining lifetime. Today I did the driving, even the night-time driving that I'd rather not have done, because it beat the alternative.

For those who are keeping track, he's not sure if the current problem is related to the last mysterious car failure. That time, he took it to the Saturn dealership and they said they couldn't find anything wrong with it. They had no explanation for why it wouldn't start for him; worked for them, they said. My opinion of Saturn is dropping. They weren't likely contenders for my next car anyway; they don't make a hatchback as far as I know. But even if they did, I'm losing confidence in the local dealer.

( Saturday: games )

( Sunday: family visit )

Oh, and I'm behind on LJ. I'll try to catch up soon.

This was a low-key Shabbat for me, because Dani went off to an SCA event on Saturday but I didn't. After the hustle and bustle of travelling last weekend, it was a pleasant change. Didn't get very far on the torah portion I'm learning, but that's ok as there's time yet. (I need to remember to check one bit of weird pronunciation with Dani. I've never seen a kametz on a nun sofit; I assume it behaves the same way as on a chaf or chet.)

The SCA event was originally advertised as an event about children, Christmas, and shopping. The first two I don't do and the last I don't do on Shabbat, so I started off inclined against. And, of course, the event charged the corporate tax, which is a point against. A very deserving friend was being elevated to the peerage, which I wanted to see, but ultimately I decided that the combination of event activities, high price ($15+), and Shabbat complications argued against. (I wasn't willing to miss Shabbat services for a third event this fall, and stuff was happening before we would have gotten there.) I regret missing the elevation but I don't regret missing the event.

This afternoon I helped cook latkes for my synagogue's ("first annual") latke sale. That was fun, though I wasn't paying enough attention to repetitive motion early enough so one wrist is a little sore. I noticed it early enough that things should be fine tomorrow, though. And I learned a useful technique: form the patties by taking a slotted spoon, scooping up potato mixture, and squeezing with your other hand to send the excess moisture out through the slots while forming a spoon-shaped patty. That's much easier than pressing 'em between your hands, which is what I've done in the past.

I asked the coordinator if this fund-raiser was effective, and she said she wasn't sure yet. It replaces, in part, the annual "Jewish Food Festival", which I feel was way too much effort for too little money. And some board members fixated on it too much, and hounded other board members for not volunteering tons of time and effort to make it work. I remember one board meeting where I almost said, "Look, you're planning on tons of work to bring in $X. We have Y members. Here's $10, more than my share. You can keep the change but you have to stop pestering me." But I didn't, and we were finally able to kill it.

So this year we're doing a latke sale that probably won't raise that much money, but it's also not as much work. And they were able to graft a raffle onto it for basically no cost, so that might end up making a difference. We'll see.

There seems to be this mentality that working on fund-raising events is inherently fun and good, so even if they don't produce a lot of money you should do it. I take a more businesslike approach: if you aren't going to make a reasonable amount of money from it, you shouldn't abuse your volunteers, whose time is valuable. I would have been happy to pay an extra $10 a year in dues to never hear from the food festival again. This year I was willing to spend a few hours making latkes, but if I learn that it was basically a wash, I might not be willing to do so next year.

No one explained this aspect of the Jewish community to me, and I find it a little peculiar. When I was a kid involved in various organizations that needed to raise money, we did our best to optimize the payoff:effort ratio. I don't see that happening in my synagogue, and I get the impression it doesn't happen in others either.

Sunday dinner was fun. ralphmelton passed around a new game he picked up, My Life With Master, which looks like it could be neat. It's not a genre I'm generally fond of -- Victorian horror -- but it's almost pure role-playing, which has a lot of appeal. I'm looking forward to reading the rules. (He's written about it in his journal.)

Dessert tonight was a yummy concoction involving gingerbread cake, peaches, cranberries, whipped cream, and probably other stuff. Very pretty to look at (it was in layers in a colorless glass dish) and quite tasty.

Yesterday we went to the bar mitzvah of the son of friends. Dani went with me, which was very nice of him (he doesn't really do religion). I noticed that he was comparing the English and Hebrew in the siddur; Gates of Prayer is pretty bad about that, and this seemed to provide him with some amusement.

During the Torah reading, when we got to the part about Chava telling the snake that not only was she not permitted to eat the fruit but she wasn't even permitted to touch it, I leaned over to him and said "this may be the oldest g'zeirah" (fence around the Torah), and he had to stifle a laugh. Oops. :-) (A fence around the Torah is when the rabbis rule that you can't take some otherwise-permitted action because it might lead you to a forbidden one. For example, on Shabbat you are not to handle matches; the actual forbidden act is kindling fire. That sort of thing. In this case, God told them not to eat but didn't say anything -- at least that got recorded -- about touching.)

Dani asked me where the tradition that the fruit is an apple comes from. I don't know; I do know that there are Jewish sources that argue for other fruits. (I've heard pomogranate and I think date.) Dani argues for chestnuts on the theory that Mark Twain can't be wrong.

The luncheon was very nice, and several people made a point of thanking Dani for coming (including my rabbi). I was able to steer us toward people he would enjoy talking with, and we lucked into a couple more at the table we sat down at, so I think it went well.

Last night we went to a gaming session. While this wasn't planned, the theme turned out to be robots. When we arrived there was a game of Ricochet Robot in progress, so we joined in. (It's adaptable that way.) I'm not fast enough with that kind of visual reasoning, it appears. Then we played a long game of Robo Rally. I started off doing poorly with navigation -- combination of bad cards and not wrapping my brain around some of the hazards on the board (conveyer belts, gears, pools of slime, that sort of thing). But I recovered and at one point was in the lead, though another player who had been close behind me managed to slip past and win. The last flag was in a really hard spot to reach, and he had a gadget that allowed him to tag it from nearby rather than having to land on it. It was a fun game, though not one I'd play often.

We had exactly seven people, so before we settled on Robo Rally someone proposed Diplomacy. I felt bad about vetoing it under near-optimal conditions (you want exactly seven people), but I really hate that style of game. Sorry, guys. I hope they'll find a seventh and play some other time, because Dani enjoys it and hasn't played in a long time.

(My objection to Diplomacy is all about the politics and not at all about the world conquest, by the way.)

That's refreshing. On Sunday I ordered a couple of books from Amazon third-party sellers (neither urgent), and B5 second season from Amazon directly. Monday morning I received mail from one of the marketplace sellers telling me my book had shipped, and I got similar mail from the other Monday evening. (Both of these are books that I came out of the tikkun with recommendations for.)

Sunday afternoon we went to my niece's graduation party. The balance of guests was not what I expected. I was assuming there would be a flock of 17-year-olds and a smattering of folks our age, mostly relatives. As it turned out, the kids were all migrating among many parties, so at any given time the adults outnumbered the kids by, oh, 5 to 1 or so. (Graduation was Friday night, so this was probably the prime party weekend.)

Many of the adults were from the church choir (my father and Kim both sing in it). I noticed that most of the choir members were wearing red, so I asked my father about it. Sunday was Penticost, which I suppose I could have worked out on my own if I'd thought about it, and there is a tradition of wearing red for the holiday. (I think the reason had something to do with an association between the holy spirit and fire, but I didn't quite catch it. Education welcome.) I'm glad that the red shirt I pulled out of the drawer that morning had a spot of something on it (so it went to the laundry pile). I would have given an incorrect impression without meaning to. I much prefer that my incorrect impressions be planned. :-)

I found myself in the uncomfortable position of balancing kashrut concerns against being kind to my family. They went out of their way to make sure none of the side dishes contained dairy so I could eat the meat, when I would have preferred to stick to the dairy/veggie dishes instead. (They also made sure to put meat and cheese cold cuts on different platters, segregate the ham from the turkey, and so on.) I could see that I was going to upset my mother if I didn't eat the meat, though, so I did.

(I'll eat meat meals in my parents' home, and for that matter in my friends' homes, so long as the basics are observed (species, no dairy, etc). I want to be able to eat with my family and friends. In a situation where there's a variety of food, both meat and non-, however, I'll avoid the meat. Most parties are like that, for example.)

Sunday evening we had a lovely dinner with Ralph and Lori (mmm, brownies!) and then played a new-to-us card game that I've forgotten the name of. It was entertaining, whatever it was. It involves cards in rows and columns where you rotate cards to try to make edge patterns line up; if you do that you get to remove cards, which have point values. (The object is to maximize points.) There are enough unusual conditions to make the game interesting while not being so many to be hard to track. Most card games with individualized cards fall down on the latter point for me -- Magic, Illuminati, Chez whatever, etc.

Sometime during the evening it rained, which I didn't think much of at the time. I was surprised to come home to a dark house. Fortunately, we knew where the flashlights, candles, and mechanical alarm clock were, so this was not as inconvenient as it might have been. Pity I can't read by candlelight, though, but it was late enough that this wasn't a real hardship.

Panasonic scores points for at least one model of VCR. I'd noticed before that after brief power outages I had to reset the clock but the programming wasn't lost. A five-hour outage is more than the backup can handle, apparently, so this time the programming was lost -- and the VCR told me that in big letters on the screen. Definite UI points there for warning me that they'd violated an expectation I might have had. (Mind, I was going to check anyway, but still...)

The snow on the dafodils yesterday morning was very pretty. I should have gone inside for the camera, but I didn't -- and it was gone when we got back later.

Sunday dinner was pleasant. We had corned beef and cabbage (delayed from St. Patrick's day). Also some very tasty potatoes and (later) wonderful if misspelled creme bruille. Yum!

After dinner some of us played Cosmic Wimpout. I'd heard of the game but never seen it before. I'd always assumed that it was some sort of knock-off or spoof of Cosmic Encounters, but it's unrelated. It's a dice game with a gambling element.

Dani took an early lead with a 180-point turn (most of us were getting about 30 points a turn, if we scored at all). When he topped 500 and we all got one final chance to beat him, I had a good turn and beat him by about 30 points. So then he got a final chance to go against me, but he didn't score. That was not how I expected that to turn out at all.

(The black die has a wild spot on it that isn't on the other dice. Belatedly I realized that I don't know which face it replaces. That would seem to matter to the odds.)

In other news... the Trib printed my letter on Sunday. The Sunday edition has higher circulation than any weekday, so that's nice.

This Shabbat I was once again reminded of how most people at my synagogue seem to assume that all liberal Jews are politically very liberal. It drives me nuts. I wonder if some of my fellow congregants would say some of the hateful things they say if they realized that there's someone in the room who actually holds the opinions they're deriding. (I see little interest in actual debate/discussion.) I have no problem with disagreement; my problem is with unnecessary snideness and rudeness in denegrating the other side of any conflict. In my experience, the ultra-liberals seem to be somewhat more prone to this sort of thing than are the ultra-conservatives, with the exception (from the latter camp) of the anti-abortionists.

On Saturday I received a past-due tax bill -- for a house I no longer own. I didn't own it last year either, so this really shouldn't have happened. So today I tried to straighten it out, and it turned out that the bureaucrats in Swissvale had no clue that the ownership of the house changed (in 2001). The person I spoke with on the phone did not sound very clueful, and she ended by saying that she would leave a message for the correct person (who wasn't in today). She was not able to tell me whether this is still in any way my problem. (Obviously it's not my debt, but it can still be my problem.) I decided not to ask who has been paying the other taxes for the last two years.

I guess I'll call back tomorrow and see if I can talk with the correct bureaucrat. Meanwhile, I'm curious about whether this was yet more incompetence on the part of the realtors involved, or clueless bureaucrats not processing the notice of sale, or what.

Yesterday we had folks over for a game of Advanced Civilization (the board game, not the computer game). I played Crete for the first time. I thought I was doing well on the board (well, until the civil war two-thirds of the way through, from which I eventually recovered), but I got creamed in points. I don't know whether I'm bad at trading, or bad at optimizing purchases of civilization advances, or what. I still had a lot of fun, but I expected to do better.

Unfortunately, we couldn't do this on Saturday, so this collided with Sunday dinner. Oops. (The entire plan only hatched a few days ago.)

The mums the previous previous owners of our house brought us a couple weeks back are starting to open up. (It's a large pot with a bunch of flowers in it.) I like mums. I'd especially like to have them outside in the garden, instead of on a windowsill with only so-so sun. I wonder if this is an appropriate time of year to do something about that, or if I need to wait until spring. (Mums are perenials, right?)

( Shabbat )

Saturday night was lefkowitzga's birthday party. It was a lot of fun (and it looked like she was having fun too). She (or her parents, whose house this was at) made a smart move: they hired someone whose job was to make sure food flowed at appropriate rates and the dishes got washed. Sort of like hiring a caterer, but without hiring out the food prep. I like this, and if I ever host a large party I think I will do this. It's worth it to not have to worry about that aspect of hosting.

Last night we hosted Sunday dinner. I planned the dinner backwards: there was a cheesecake recipe I wanted to try, which meant dinner had to be dairy or parve, which made fish a good candidate, which meant I needed a good hearty veggie to complement, which caused me to think of matar paneer, which meant I really needed rice... It all worked out. (Note to self: if you use the "soft" (fresh) mozzerella cheese in the matar paneer, hold it until very late or it'll get gooey.)

After dinner we played Hack!, a card game based on (if I have this right) the "knights of the dinner table" comic. This was either the second or third time I'd played, and I ended up playing the GM for the first time. Even managed to win, though I thought Mike was going to win with all the loot he was accumulating. (The GM wins by killing player characters, which is the antithesis of every decent RPG I've ever played in.)

While the cheesecake was baking I watched the latest episode of Andromeda. Am I getting more picky, or has this season sucked so far?

Shabbat: pleasant and undemanding.

Sunday we visited a high school friend and her husband. This is someone with whom I was close 25 years ago -- but we basically have nothing in common now. I am not especially interested in a relationship with them, but she is with me so I've been going along with it. And this time they did not try to convert me to Christianity by mis-quoting the bible like they did last time, so that was a success. We chatted mostly about things that do not matter, showed them how to put their computer into power-saver mode and how to hang up their modem without rebooting (!), and left a few hours later. (They have gotten onto the net, which means they are now believing and forwarding all the folklore and hoaxes that have been going around for years, but there didn't appear to be any way to really teach them there. Another time, perhaps.)

Sunday dinner was very nice. The secret of the chili was apparently cumin; I must remember this. (It was a turkey -- well, chicken in this case -- chili with beans and without tomatoes.) Yum!

After dinner we played "Beyond Balderdash". It appears that both my BS-detection and my BS-generation skills are only so-so; I finished in the middle of the pack. I thought my definition of "omphaloskepsis" as "medical name for an 'innie'" would trick more than one person. My explanation of "(somebody) Hodgson" as "discovered the form of lymphoma known as Hodgson's Disease" might have tricked some people if Dani hadn't had a very similar idea. Oops. It's a fun game.

Yesterday we went shopping for a small couch (loveseat, I guess) for the new TV room. After sitting in every offering at the first store and having reactions ranging from "no" to "this is ok", we walked down a final aisle that had mostly chairs. On a whim we sat in some "rocking chairs" that rock on a stationary base. (These are not the old-fashioned rocking chairs that trap cat tails and scuff floors.) They have matching "ottomans" (sized for a single chair) that also rock; thwy would have to. These chairs are comfortable! We ended up getting a pair of them instead of the loveseat; the cost wasn't all that different. We pick them up later this week.

I asked Dani if we should get several of these for the living room (we've been trying to figure out how to improve seating options; I want smaller, more flexible pieces of furniture than what we currently have). He said he thought it would make him seasick if we have guests over and everyone is rocking. :-)

Later in the afternoon Robert and Kathy came over so the three of us could practice music for that wedding next weekend. I got some insight into how Kathy approaches music for the group. When I'm picking out background music to play, I first eliminate unsuitable pieces and then take the easiest ones from the remainder (so long as they fit together). It's background music, not a concert. (I handle concerts differently.) Kathy, who is in charge of this one, was trying to pick pieces such that everyone gets to play different parts on different pieces, everyone's arrangements are represented (rather than it being, e.g., all Robert's stuff), and stuff like that. She thinks that's more "fair". I don't see why that kind of fairness matters. I can't help thinking that it's part of a broader difference in individual egos or something.

In the evening we had dinner with friends who've been trying to get together with us for a while. I had an odd allergy problem. We'd been there for a few hours when I started sneezing, a lot. (In retrospect, I missed a Detect Obvious roll when, before that, my eyes started itching and watering and I thought it was random fluke. This is not a usual allergy symptom for me, at least with my usual allergens like dust and pollen.) Our hosts were speculating that it was tied to their (window) AC, which they hadn't run for a while; they thought maybe there was some mold or something in it. That AC was running the entire time we were there, though; would something like that really take a few hours to kick in? I couldn't figure out what in the environment might be causing the reaction, but it stopped as soon as we left so it must have been a reaction to something. (No, I don't think it was the food, though Dani speculated about a garlic allergy. :-) )

We played a game that Dani picked up at Origins called "Hack". It's based on the "Knights of the Dinner Table" comic, which I have never read. The game is sort of a cross between Munchkin and Fluxx. We played two games. The first went fairly quickly and was fun; the second was longer and was getting tedius. I think this had to do with the way the map got laid out and one event that forced everyone back to the beginning. It's a fun game, though, and I would happily play again. We shouls remember to take it to Ralph and Lori's sometime.

Pump-it-up dreams

As you might conclude from the above, the choir crowd went to Dave & Busters last night instead of Gullifty's. The food was decent. There aren't that many places that can satisfy all our constraints: serves food after 10, not smoky or noisy, and provides options for a vegetarian and someone (else) who's lactose-intolerant. This seemed to work, though I didn't look closely at the meat options to see if there were sufficient non-dairy ones among them.

After we ate, Chris demonstrated Pump It Up and got Gail to play one round with him. It looks like it would be fun; maybe next time I'll try it. Or maybe I'll try to sneak over to Chris' or Deanna's house, ask the occupant to set up the game and then leave, and try it out in private. :-) (At my current level of exposure, Pump It Up and DDR are basically interchangable.)

They're donig something new at Friday-night services: all the board members have name tags now, to make it easier to give new folks (or anyone else) people to go talk to. It's a good idea, though it did feel a bit like we had been tagged and released. :-) I spent a chunk of the oneg talking to someone who was there for the first time (he approached me because of the name tag). He's a gentile who's either dating or married to a Jew (couldn't tell which), and this was his first time in a synagogue. He said he found it fascinating and he asked me for recommendations for books about the basics of Judaism. I'd say he picked the right board member. :-) I gave him a few recommendations off the top of my head, and promised to compile a list for him and invite him and his SO over for dinner or something. He seemed to be agreeable to this. (Ok, when exactly did I start doing kiruv (outreach)?)

Saturday was a local SCA event, and a friend from New York was crashing at our house. He was aiming to get here around 10pm. At 10:25 we got a phone call; he'd been forced onto a detour around some construction I'd forgotten about, and wanted to know where he was and how to fix it. So we gave him directions and told him we'd see him in about 20 minutes. At 11:15 we got another phone call; he was in a completely unexpected part of town. We gave him directions and he repeated them back to us. Then at 11:55 we got another call, this time from an employee at a McDonald's that he had found (again, in an unexpected part of town). So Dani went and got him. Over the course of the weekend we determined by observation that he is "dyslexic" (not the right word as he doesn't have reading problems, but he gets left and right mixed up). I wish I'd known that earlier.

The event was lots of fun. Fianna did a good job with running it. Two local people received writs of summons for peerages (one Pelican and one Laurel), both to be given at Ice Dragon in March, and Dani received the grant-level arts award. (Yeah, other people got stuff too... :-) ) The feast was quite tasty and vegetarian-friendly, though the lack of a posted menu made it hard for me to pace myself. (I didn't know what else was coming, so didn't know whether to fill up on noodles and spinach or wait for more food. My fault for not asking.) We went to the post-revel at Robert and Kathy's and I had my first encounter with a fabulous honey liqueur that I don't know the name of. I will have to go hunting for it. We got home much later than we had planned and crashed.

This morning after our guest left Dani and I went to Ralph and Lori's to play a game called "Tribes". You are playing a group of primitives; each player can be a hunter, a gatherer, or a crafter (crafters make tools that enhance hunting and gathering). The individual object is to have the largest number of children surviving to adulthood (different competitions for men and women); there are incentives to work together as a tribe. I ended up playing a male hunter; next time we play I'd like to try a female gatherer to get the other perspective. We also ended up playing a fairly communistic game, though it started out as more market-driven and I was slow to pick up on the change. This meant that I was playing "greedily" forlonger than other people were; I had hoarded enough food early on (mostly through smart play, I think) to feed my kids through one bad season, but we ended up with a single pool and I felt a little bad about the hoarding after the fact. Then we had a really bad streak of luck and used up all of our food, and most of the kids died. We didn't play quite to the end because someone had to leave, but we had a mostly-good game and I'd definitely like to try again.

Sunday dinner was the usual tasty and enjoyable experience.