Monica

Shabbat services were good. My rabbi seems to be mostly recovered from his surgery, so things are back to normal. He's moving around more easily and has more of his energy back. Friday night he gave an excellent sermon (that doesn't summarize well).

Saturday morning we had an interesting discussion at torah study that started off with the observation that we all reflect on the people as a whole. This somehow morphed into the question of how a congregation handles notorious members (or attendees). If a Jew who's accused -- but not yet convicted -- of heinous crimes shows up at services and asks for an aliya (saying the torah blessings -- an honor), do you give it to him? ( Read more... )

I'll be chanting torah in a few weeks, so I spent some of Saturday afternoon working on the portion. Let me just say that the third aliya of Sh'mini looks like it could be the poster child for weird trope combinations. I had to consult Trope Trainer for some of them; the book and class weren't enough. I'm just sayin'.

Saturday night was Ralph and Lori's annual St. Patrick's Day party. This was fun, and it looks like the hosts got to spend more time enjoying the party this time. (I believe they expressed a desire to have "only" too much food, as opposed to the vast quantities of food they've had in the past. This worked.) Several of the Claritech gang were there, though some past regulars were missing. We met some of Ralph's coworkers and didn't scare them away. There were people playing music, but not much gaming this time. (Well, we left around midnight and I think some gaming started later.)

We hosted Sunday dinner to allow Ralph and Lori to recover. As sometimes happens, I had a dessert I wanted to make and worked backwards from that. The dairy dessert dictated a non-meat meal, so I opted for spinach lasagna to prove I can make things other than fish. :-) (Note to future self: the recipe in Easy Kosher Cooking works well, and much much better than the one on the side of the noodle box.) As long as you're making lasagna anyway you may as well make extra, so I now have a pan in the freezer to donate to the synagogue food stash. Dessert was a gingerbread pineapple-upside-down cake, so I made a tossed salad with fruit (including pineapple) for foreshadowing. Ok, ok -- I had leftover pineapple. I wasn't sure how much garlic bread to make, but seem to have made exactly enough. It was a nice relaxing evening of pleasant conversation, and a good wind-down from the weekend.

This week is the final session of the trope class. Our numbers have dwindled and I don't know what's going on there. David (the teacher) told me to bring the torah portion I'm working on and we'll go over it. Sounds good to me.

Purim is in a bit under two weeks. estherchaya and sethcohen and beckyfeld and Harold invited Dani and me down for Purim and Shabbat, and I'm glad that Dani decided to go with me. It's been a while since I've seen most of these folks; it'll be nice to spend a weekend visiting. And, well, eating and drinking, 'cause you have to on Purim. :-)

Tonight I met with the pianist at our synagogue to go over music for next Friday's service. We had already talked about which pieces, but we hadn't worked out keys. Unfortunately, he's having to transpose for almost everything; fortunately, he's very good at that, and is able to spend a little time polishing. As I predicted, on average I'm comfortable about a fourth below our cantorial soloist. If it were just a step or two I'd fake it. Paul (the pianist) was really nice about it, though.

Tonight I made whitefish (it was sole this time) poached in beer, a trusty favorite. Note to future self: stout doesn't work as well as ale, but is passable. (You want a beer with some umpf for this; pilsners et al need not apply. That's ok; they're good to drink instead.)

Last night's D&D game went well, though I attribute everyone's survival to GM benevolence. We had some fun role-playing that I suspect the GM was forced to wing, and he did a good job with it. Many members of our group believe that taverns are inherently dangerous places to go, but we visited one anyway because, in character, we'd been wandering around in the wilderness for a while, there were dangerous things out there, and Turok was out of beer. :-) This gave opportunities for some very funny role-playing. (While Larissa was trying to be innocuous, Turok was fire-breathing to light his drinks before consuming them. Stuff like that.)

2. Both the reform and the reconstructionist movements hold that religious observance of halacha is nonbinding and voluntary -- what I find troubling is that lay reform and reconstructionist Jews often don't have enough of background to make meaningful choices. Do you see this as a problem? ( Read more... )

3. How did you get involved in gaming? What do you enjoy most about it? (I've tried, Lord knows, I've tried and my character is currently riding around in someone's sack.) ( Read more... )

4. Describe your favorite childhood comfort food. ( Read more... )

5. If you were given a year long all expense scholarship for Jewish study, where would you go? ( Read more... )

In the "people with too much time on their hands" department, Lego Rubik's Cube Solver (link from dyanearden).

What's with all the spam lately about cleaning one's colon? I didn't realize that our punctuation had become dirty. It's probably a secret plot by the commas.

"Take one pill every six hours". Right -- whom are they kidding? Try "take one pill when you get up and one at bedtime, and space the other two as proportionally as you can". I've got to believe that that level of flexibility exists for most things.

Now that it's cold, Erik has taken to sleeping on top of the bedroom radiator. I understand the appeal of direct heat, but I would have thought it would be more comfortable with a radiator cover. Less lumpy, for one thing. But he shuns the covered radiators, which make up the majority in the house, for that one -- even in the daytime, when there's no argument based on proximity of his people. (Well, person. They are unambiguously my cats, not our cats.) Embla, on the other hand, prefers the cushioned window seats over the radiators in the living room, and Baldur is probably too fat and lazy to try any of them.

The talmud says the Almighty wears t'fillin -- obviously metaphorically, though the discussion doesn't actually bring that out. The bulk of the discussion concerns the texts that are within them. The question of regular t'fillin vs. Rabbeinu Tam is not addressed. :-)

Giant Eagle normally uses blue plastic bags, which is helpful because the city mandates blue plastic bags for recycling and they're hard to find otherwise. During most of October Giant Eagle was using orange Halloween bags instead, and I depleted my stash of blue bags at the time. Now I find that they have switched to white "winter" bags, presumably for at least all of December. I have enough blue bags saved up, but I wish Giant Eagle hadn't abdicated its responsibility to the community. :-)

I've never tried soy milk before (is it supposed to be completely non-dairy?), but was attracted to the "Silk Nog" -- particularly by the implication of "eggnog", one of my vices, and the nutrition information (90 cal/serving vs 200-300 for the real thing). Verdict: inspired by eggnog, clearly different, will drink.

Current (baked) salmon optimization for simplicity times taste: put salmon filet on large piece of foil; mix equal parts sour cream and spicy brown mustard (the type of mustard is important) and spread over; seal salmon in foil and bake until done.

More food bits: matar paneer tonight because it's been too long; my turn to bake for the kiddush on Saturday (ginger cookies, maybe?); broccoli with garlic sauce for the choir dinner Monday. Maybe the veal-cranberry stew for Shabbat lunch? Don't know about Shabbat dinner yet; inspiration is invited to strike before tomorrow's trip to Kosher Mart.

I invited a friend back for lunch on Saturday. (I had actually invited her Thursday night, so I knew to make some extra chili.) She brought along some salad and pita, and we had a good time. She and Dani hit it off.

Saturday afternoon our friends (and my former coworkers) Erik and Bridget appeared from DC. A surprise party was being planned for a mutual friend, ( Read more... )

The lunar eclipse was during the party. It was cold outside, but there was a nice garden (well, nice in different weather), so lots of people were outside watching it. I tended to pop in and out, using the windows to track progress. Watching the moon turn red was neat; I'm glad we didn't have cloud cover. And the party had hot chocolate, so being out in the cold wasn't too burdensome. :-)

We had On the Mark practice this afternoon, and then Sunday dinner this evening. I must now gush about dinner. It was a turkey-stuffing casserole (with veggies) from a recent cooking magazine that Ralph clued me in about, and it was wonderfully tasty. I had missed this one in my browse through that issue of the magazine, but I have now marked it for future use. Only one ingredient substitution is needed to make it kosher, and I think I even have some turkey breast in the freezer at the moment. (I'll have to check. I had some before the freezer thawed, and I think I've replaced it.)

Cooking for my party is going reasonably well. This afternoon (after practice) I made the salmon gefilte fish. (The store doesn't usually have the salmon variety, so when I saw it I grabbed it.) I also bought more tart shells for the cheese/onion tarts; I made a bunch last week, but not enough. The spinach balls are done. The pantry is populated with pop, beer, juice, and assorted non-perishables. Lori has offered me much cake goodness. One more shopping trip and a bit more cooking and I should be set.

lefkowitzga

I wasn't going to post the detailed menu, but I realized that when other people on my friends list post things like this I read them, so what the heck. We had: ( menu )

It has been my custom to include starfruit with Rosh Hashana -- and only Rosh Hashana -- meals, but I couldn't find any this year. Oops.

( what's with the starfruit? )

Anyway, lunch was very pleasant and the conversation was good. Fran has one arm in a sling due to some recent surgery, meaning that cooking is a challenge for her, so I was glad that we were able to give her a good meal. Unfortunately, the injury and the sling are uncomfortable, and the pain medication she took at the end of the meal interacted suboptimally with the bit of wine she'd had earlier, so they ended up leaving soon thereafter. That's unfortunate, but we'll just have to visit some other time when she's feeling better.

Sunday dinner featured a small grilled turkey with rosemary and apricot coating. (Ralph says there was also garlic, though I didn't detect it.) This worked really well! I wonder if I can simulate this in an oven, perhaps with chicken. (Though this turkey was small enough that it wouldn't produce ridiculous amounts of leftovers.)

After dinner we played a variant of Carcessan (which I've probably misspelled) called, I think, Hunters and Gatherers. I've only played the original game once, so while I recognized the game system, I didn't really know how to play. I wasn't doing a very good job with long-term strategy, though I was doing ok with short-term tactics.

Sunday afternoon we went shopping to replace the wall-to-wall carpet in the basement guest room that destroyed by the rain invasion a couple weeks ago. First we went to Home Depot, who advertised installation services, but it turns out they don't install indoor-outdoor carpet, only the regular kind. So we ended up at a carpet place, where we ordered the carpet and someone to make it all fit, which is supposed to happen sometime next week. It's an L-shaped room with some cabinets and stuff to work around, so there was no way we were going to do this ourselves. They have a fixed price for carpet plus installation, based on square footage of the piece of carpet you have to buy (which is larger than the space it goes into, especially in this case). Charging for installation for the part of the space they don't install into seems wrong, but they didn't ask about complications like cabinets so it probably works out in the end.

Saturday night we went to a party hosted by friends who had recently returned from a trip through wine country with, shall we say, excess potables. I had a red that I actually liked and that wasn't ridiculously sweet, though I failed to record what it was. (I can find out, though.) There was much good food, including several very nice cheeses. I'm going to have to go in search of good cheese locally. And, of course, much good conversation as well.

I spent some of Saturday afternoon continuing to work through the Torah portion. I'm pretty comfortable with about two thirds of it. I hope to get the rest soon. The rabbi wants to hear me chant it before he leaves for camp and I have an appointment with him next week for study anyway, so that would be an obvious time.

I'm not fluent in Hebrew, but I know some words and of course I read through the portion in English. As it turns out, the trope often provides additional clues for emphasis, significant words, and so on. It's pretty nifty. Not surprising, of course, but this is the clearest example I've seen so far. This is an action sequence, which works better for that sort of thing than the laws of the sabbatical year. :-)

Friday night was the first service with our new cantorial intern. She's good, and very friendly. It sounded like she was a little nervous; I assume that will pass. At the oneg Phyllis (the administrator) introduced us and she recognized my name; fortunately, that was only because she'd been told I was the chair of the worship committee, and not because of some nefarious reason. :-) (We'll be working together on two upcoming services.)

The fireworks were on Friday, but on Shabbat I have other places to be. I would have liked to go to Ray and Jenn's party, but the logistics just didn't work out. Some other time.

I got an auto-response from my representative yesterday saying, basically, thanks for the email and expect a paper letter in several weeks. He voted for it, so I'll probably get some patronizing piece of drivel about how in these tough times we all need to unite and do God's will or some such. Sadly, an elected Democrat from Pittsburgh need not fear reprisal at the polls. (How did your rep vote?)

Speaking of government, I should really get around to ordering a copy of my birth certificate. Maybe even getting a passport, just so I'll have it. I can probably make off with my parents' copy of the former to help with the Pesach trip to Canada in a few weeks. I've never had my ID challenged at the border, but times are different now and I'm travelling with a non-citizen who was born in the middle east.

Speaking of Pesach (sort of), frozen gefilte fish is much better than the stuff that comes in jars. I'm never going back.

Speaking of religion (ok, the transitions are getting weak): For those who were interested in the "conversion reruns" journal, see shira_reruns. It'll get off to a slow start (I didn't write as much at the beginning), with the pace picking up in June.

Apropos of nothing (hey, I can tell when transitions are a lost cause), I had a very pleasnt lunch with a friend and past co-worker yesterday. It's way too easy to lose track of people when you no longer see them on a daily basis. He also found this journal, which intrigues me because it's not googlable. Not that I mind, of course; I was just surprised.

I've advanced another hole on my belt, and many of my pants now require a belt. Woo hoo. But Pesach is going to be bad for this, isn't it? I guess I should work on keeping matzah consumption down; being dense, it's probably even worse than pita for calorie/benefit tradeoffs.