cellio | Entries tagged with family

We are back from Toronto. (I haven't begun to catch up on my friends yet.) The trip was mostly pleasant; I always enjoy spending time with Dani's sister (Debby) and many of his other relatives. Debby is especially nice and considerate; she asked me up front about restrictions for Shabbat and Yom Tov (the holiday, Pesach day) and also about food during Pesach, and she made sure that she wasn't going to put me in any awkward positions. She even went out and bought special kosher-for-Pesach food that she wouldn't normally have bought. She remembered pretty much all of the details, which is pretty impressive for someone who is not herself observant. Extremely considerate and impressive, especially as my own husband, who lives with observance, seems unable to keep certain basics straight such as that I won't go out to a restaurant on Shabbat. (Yes, this came up while we were there. Sigh.)

The first seder was with Dani's father's family -- actually, this time, hosted by one of Dani's father's wife's kids (follow that?). Dani's father and wife are still in Florida; this is the first time they've not been in Toronto for Pesach since I started going there. The theme of this family's seder always seems to be "let's race through this and eat", which I find disappointing. (We don't even do the second half.)

The second seder was hosted by Dani's mother and was smaller (her, us, Debby's family, and two friends). Dani led the seder, though "leading" in this case is about herding cats, as we always go around the table reading the haggadah. I guess he got to pick which songs we sang. It was fun (and the aforementioned friends are neat people), though the family's home-brew haggadah leaves out a lot of parts that I probably would have inserted myself if I were leading (like all the brachot!).

I guess between the two I got one more-or-less complete seder. It's not ideal, but shalom bayit and all that...

The people from the first seder usually go off to watch hockey playoffs after dinner, but this year it's too early for that. They taped "West Wing" and we were there when the people still remaining decided to watch the show. I had never seen it before, but it was good! Cleverly written, and fun. I'll have to check it out. (I'd heard of the show, but somehow had the idea that it was a medical show -- west wing of a hospital. It's actually about the (ficticious) president of the US and his staff.)

Friday Debby wanted to go to a crafts festival, and I don't accept the second day of holidays [1], so we went along. Saw some neat stuff, though I didn't buy anything. I almost bought a very nifty stained-glass nightlight for the bathroom, and if I had remembered in time that Canadian dollars are much smaller than US dollars I actually would have bought it, but I spaced on the price and thought it was too high. Oh well.

Saturday night after Shabbat we went to see a new play called "Belle", about two ex-slaves in the Reconstructionist era. It was very episodic and somewhat lacking an overall plot. Debby and Tucker (who go to a lot of new plays) said that's the trend these days. I don't care for it, personally.

[1] One-day holidays are extended to two days outside of Israel because of calendar uncertainty. I hold (as do pretty much all Reform and many Conservative Jews) that now, in the 21st century when we know precisely when the new moon is, we do not have this uncertainty and thus do not need the extra day.

Saturday morning at Torah study we were talking about "peace offerings" again, so I asked how often this was done. Was this a special occasion, or did you do this any time you wanted to eat meat, or what? (The rabbi had said something in passing about how this was your chicken for Shabbat.) He said it's a good question and he's not sure; he believes that if you were in the "temple district", so to speak, then yes, you had to take it to the temple as a korban, and give the priests and God their shares, before you could eat it. If you were farther away, though, he's not sure; he said it didn't seem likely that people were expected to come from all across Canaan, let alone points farther away. (Of course, in the desert no one was that far from the mishkan, so this wouldn't have been such an issue.)

Perhaps ironically, my mishna study group, which is doing Tractate Pesachim, has just gotten to the practical details of how so many lambs can be slaughtered in such a short period of time. Every Jew was required to bring a lamb on erev Pesach, which would then be eaten at the seder. Obviously people could team up (you can't save leftovers), so that's one per large family or perhaps pair of families. But that's still an awful lot of lambs, and they only had a few hours in which to perform the ritual. I'm curious about how this will play out...

Friday night we had a guest speaker who is involved with the Holocaust Center in Pittsburgh. (I didn't know we had one.) Sadly, he was not a very engaging speaker; he kept talking about his opportunities to get to know survivors and so on, some of whom were there that night, and I found that I would have been much more interested in hearing them speak. Oh well. Sometimes the pulpit guests work out well, and sometimes they don't. It frustrates me when I realize that I've lost the opportunity for a good sermon from my rabbi to one of the ones who didn't work out. (Ooh, I feel like such a groupie! But it's true; I almost always find what my rabbi says to be very interesting, and I look forward to his talks.)

Saturday my parents stopped by shortly after I got home. They were in the neighborhood and wanted to drop something off (Dani's Christmas present, as it turned out), and I invited them in for lunch. (On Shabbat I try to make sure there's extra food in the crock pot, so I have the option to bring someone home from services.) This was the first time they'd heard kiddush and motzi and stuff, and my father ended up asking me a bunch of questions about Shabbat. I think it's pretty nifty that he wants to know about this stuff. Among things, we went partway down the "what is forbidden work?" path.

Saturday night Dani and I went out to Prince of India in Oakland. We'd never been there before, but we had a coupon from the entertainment book and I'd been craving Indian food, so we tried it. I thought the food was pretty good, though not as good as Sitar. The service was slow. And we ended up not using the buy-one-get-one-free coupon because when we got there we saw a sign in the window that said "dinners half off 7-10pm". It's kind of the reverse of the typical early-bird special, I guess. We asked if that applied on a Saturday night and they said yes, so we took it. (The coupon doesn't stack with other offers, in case you're wondering.)

The food in general was pretty good; the papadam was excellent. I want to learn how to make that, but I've never seen a recipe. (This is that thin wafer made out of lentils. It usually has a bit of a kick from pepper. This certainly did.)

We went to my parents' today for Christmas. (They're Christian; we're not. But they are pretty attached to the dinner and gift exchange, so we go.) We were having trouble figuring out what to get my parents, and ended up giving them a gift certificate for a vacation. They've gone on a bunch of bus tours -- a few days in Atlantic City, a weekend of shows in Toronto (Phantom twice, I think), and assorted things like that. So we contacted the company they buy these from, found out what one of these will cost this coming year, and bought them that. I always feel funny buying people gift certificates (or giving money), but in this case I think it was the right thing to do. They seemed to appreciate it.

They got me a digital camera. Woo hoo! It appears to be complicated enough that I couldn't just pop the batteries in right then and take some pictures; I should read the manual first, which I'll probably do tomorrow night. But I am so looking forward to being able to screen my shots immediately and retake them if they aren't good! Not to mention the instant gratification -- not having to use of the roll of film before getting use of the pictures will be a big win.

They got Dani a copy of Civ III, but Dani didn't understand the family ground rules about obvious gifts and proximity to Christmas, so he bought himelf a copy a few weeks ago. They're in the process of exchanging it for a different game that reviewers who like Civ III seem to also like. (Europa Universalis II, for those who are curious. I've never played it.)

The new machine is now on the network, sort of. (It can see the network but the other machines can't see it.) Dani named it "Hub2". Gee, how creative. :-) (Also inaccurate...)

Last night Dani and I went to a party to celebrate Larry's 60th birthday. (I had no idea he was 60 until we got the invitation; I was guessing mid-50s.) The party was very nice, and I got to see some people I haven't seen in a while (ex-Claritechers and SOs).

Alison was there and seems to be happy; the startup she joined (formed by two Claritech VPs) seems to be doing very well in the funding department. (They still need customers.) If David had actually let them do their jobs at Claritech, things probably would have turned out differently.

Mark was there. He seemed to be tired and worn down, but not nearly as bad as he was at the end of the Claritech thing. Things seem to be getting better for that group now, too. (Hi guys. :-) )

Services this morning were a lot smaller than usual because lots of people are off at a big UAHC convention in Boston. I've got to get to one of those someday; people always come back from them energized. (It's a mix of lectures, workshops, and services, with (among things) lots of singing. Oh, and reportedly one of the biggest collections of Judaica for sale in a single location.)

This afternoon I took a nap for a couple hours. At one point the "snoozons" were pretty heavy in the living room: Embla was sleeping on the couch, Baldur was sleeping on the other recliner, I was sleeping on a recliner, and Erik was sleeping on me. :-) But I felt a lot better after I woke up.

I have to figure out what to get my parents for Christmas. They are hard to buy for. In an unusual turn of events, I actually have some ideas for my father but not for my mother (usually it's the other way around). The only thing my mother has mentioned is something that would really be for both of them, and would also manifest as a gift certificate so they could pick out the item (they would have to). I don't like giving gift certificates, but maybe that's what I'll end up doing in this case. Dunno. At least my sister and her kids are still easy; the kids are still addicted to Nintendo-type games. (The new thing this year is something called a "game cube". I have no idea what makes it different from the previous generation of Nintendo machines.)

I also have to figure out -- soon, as it has to be mailed -- what to get my godparents. It's a frustrating situation: we have basically no contact, and I'd be happy to just end the gift-exchange thing entirely, but my parents think they would be hurt by that. But we don't really know each other, so every year we exchange generic gifts based on insufficient information. Sigh.

Tomorrow night is the first night of Chanukah. I'm going to make some latkes to take to Sunday dinner. Ralph and Lori get to figure out what goes with latkes. :-)

Thanksgiving dinner with my family was good. My nephew (Zachary) is still loud, self-centered, and generally obnoxious, but he has mellowed a bit. He is now merely an obnoxious pain in the ass, rather than an unbearable obnoxious pain in the ass. Kim (my neice) seemed to be more sociable than she has been the last few visits, which is good. I can't believe she's a junior in high school already.

My parents had a painting that Kim did not too long ago. She is a really good artist, at least when copying. She did an oil painting from a photo that looked *very* nice.

Dinner was quite tasty, as usual. There was some maternal angst because the turkey was taking "too long"; she thought the timer should have popped up an hour or so before it did. We checked with a meat thermometer and the timer was right; it just takes a while to cook a large bird.

D&D Tuesday night was fun. We didn't make much "plot progress", but we made "character progress" and it was fun to play through some of the interactions. I think I'm getting a better feel for how to play my character.

I'm headed out tomorrow morning for the con. On the Mark only has one performance this year (not our usual two), and it's Friday night. So we'll be able to relax the rest of the weekend. Clam Chowder will have its usual fabulous Saturday-night performance, I presume. Yaakov will be there this year (he wasn't last year), and I'm looking forward to chatting with him. He said we'd talk about the synagogue board thing; he's a past shul president, so he's familiar with the inner workings of at least one type of synagogue. (I had sent him mail and he suggested talking in person.) Maybe he can advise me.

Visiting family was nice. Party food was very good. Party music was way too loud. Border guard going up was bored and entertaining. More later. Yawn.

Monica

back from Toronto

Shabbat report

family visit

weekend misc

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back from Toronto

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