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magidI'm still tired; this is likely more disjointed than it should be... And I've likely forgotten things, too.
I slept in (so desperately needed), and had a really nice day at home, bentching lulav for the first time this year in my sukkah, which felt right. Highlights of morning davening in the sukkah were nice too, though I missed the holiday piyyut before musaf (more than hoshanot: though I like the text well enough, the circling doesn't resonate for me, perhaps because I'm not on the side with sifrei Torah being circled.).
I'd started turkey soup right after carving the night before; now I had the time to take the bones out and put dumplings in; that was most of what I ate during the day, because that was what appealed. Late in the afternoon my sister-in-law stopped by with the nephew, and she, too, found herself in the mood for soup :-). (Sukkot is the perfect holiday for soup.)
After lighting candles, I started preparing for dinner, putting things in the oven (left on for this meal), and on the hot plate. Somewhere towards the beginning of the meal I realized that the oven wasn't warm at all, so not everything was warm as planned. Not the end of the world, but it made me a lot more stressed than I'd been, to have the meal be in more parts than I'd planned. (I have yet to catch up on sleep; my ability to cope has definitely been less this week, much though I wish it were otherwise.)
We were again six for dinner (the only meal without anyone under three): the kiddush organizer and his wife the ballet fundraiser; the new production editor and her robotics grad student boyfried; and the acquisitions editor. Conversation stayed mostly on robotics, ideas of programming and aggregate tasks, with some side forays into film, fundraising, and editing. Again, I was gifted with two bottles of wine and some sweets, this time refrigerator cookies of various sorts.
The menu:
We ended up having dessert inside (some people were cold), which meant that there was more time to chat; I like that. (Ususually, when people move towards the living room after a meal, they find the front door first, so no more mellow hanging-out time.)
Another good night's sleep, without the obligation to get all the dishes done, either (I mostly use real plates on Sukkot, because there's not room enough in my sukkah for a decent table, so meals are buffet style, and it's hard enough balancing a real plate when eating without worrying that it'll collapse all over you as well). Somehow I again didn't make it to shul, alas. Recuperating from all the hosting.... Again, lots of reading, this time punctuated by a walk to Central to get the farm share.
After separating the holiday from the intermediate days, I went to help Queue with some packing (and ended up seeing Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, which seems to me to be the guy equivalent of a chick flick. Not horrible, but not particularly to my taste, either.).
In the morning, it was back to work, and figuring out what to do about the dead oven. The stove top and the broiler were fine, but baking with a broiler doesn't really work. My back-up plan: call a friend and ask her to bake things I brought over. Luckily, that wasn't necessary, because Cambridge Appliance Repair came to the rescue. I'm pleased with their service: they had a time when I needed it (ie that afternoon), they were prompt in showing up, and in repairing the oven (also the fourth burner that hasn't worked in years). Nice guy, too. We chatted appliances and cooking :-). (Oven ignitors apparently have about a 5-year life span, btw, so getting about a decade out of it was apparently pretty good.)
The weather had changed; it was far less appealing to eat in the sukkah. Not that I had much time to, as I started cooking for Shabbat.
However, that was in the afternoon (I suspect the oven dying when it did was providential; otherwise I likely wouldn't''ve had time enough to get the things started that I had), because Thursday night I went to see the ASP production of King Lear with my fellow Shakespeare fanatics (more on that in another post, someday). The frustrating part was that this was just about the only night that worked. On the good side, they've extended the run twice and it's still sold out.
Anyway, it's not a short play; the 7:30 start was so we'd get out by around 11... Another late night.
Friday was cooking bracketing the time I spent at work and at the farmer's market; my concentration was obviously not complete, so it was nice to have a new task that took just the right amount of attention. Still, I was over-exhausted, so much so that I miscalculated when I needed to leave work by, and spent the hour or so before Shabbat rushing around in a tizzy.
In the end it all worked, but I suspect I was a bit rude to the people who arrived before Shabbat...
As soon as I lit candles, I started to calm down (read: become more human). The overnight guests (the science fiction writer and his documentator wife) had arrived just in time (I'd completely forgotten the Head of the Charles with its attendant traffic.). Their space was set up, all timers and such set, and the food was done, for whatever values of done I'd managed.
Dinner included the overnight guests, the former minyan chairs, and their two daughters (one working on walking, one about five or so and quite verbal :-). The talk was books to read, stuff about editing, and kid-stuff, mostly.
The menu:
(Obviously, I was getting more tired already...)
Much talk with the overnighters before falling into bed, and sleeping in some. Then it was time to do the dishes, yet again. Sigh. And get ready for lunch.
Lunch included the overnight guests; the school librarian and the programmer; and the Salad Queen, her husband, and their boys (one fairly new, the other almost three). The Salad Queen was going to bring salad with her, but it got left behind, so we improvised with the stuff I had around, and under her hands, a lovely salad appeared.
The menu:
It started drizzling just as we made kiddush; we ended up eating lunch inside, which, after the initial flurry of reorganizing and table-setting, was pretty nice; a much slower-paced meal than it otherwise would have been. Highlights included introducing the boy to Uno (yay for successful presents!), learning the Salad Queen's dissertation topic, talking kid books, and hearing the boy's knock-knock joke (among others I'd heard before):
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Ana.
Ana who?
Anaphylaxis.
Much of the day was taken up helping at his new place, or getting yet more boxes from the old place to the new.
Mid-afternoon, I headed west to Worcester, to catch the tail end of my parents' open sukkah. Unfortunately for me, I was hungry, and there were many yummy baked goods; I ate far too many of them. On the plus side, I saw some people I hadn't seen since I was growing up, and had a fun conversation giving book suggestions to the mom of a twelve year old.
Then it was time to walk to my parents' shul (the one I went to growing up), for the dedication of Zachor, a stained glass memorial window donated by the rabbi who had been at Beth Israel when I was growing up (who is a survivor). Note: the art at the link is not a rendering of the piece (Thanks to Tigerbright for the link.).
As with most shul functions, there was the schmooze, the official stuff, then more schmoozing :-). The official stuff included speeches by the current rabbi, one of the people on the committee for this project, the artist, the rabbi emeritus, and his son. There were musical pieces by the cantor and a guitarist, two in Yiddish (one that my dad obviously knew at least the refrain to but I'd never heard before), and one slow version of Ani Ma'amin (I Believe, from the Rambam's 13 articles of faith) that is very much not my default tune any more, though I remember it being so.
I think I learned more about what happened to R. Goldstein at this ceremony than I ever did growing up; I don't think he used to be able to talk about it so much. He lost most of his family in Auschwitz, married the sister of a rabbinic student who got him out of the camps, and ended up in Worcester unsure he could continue. Mr. Plich (sp?)(my sevent grade Hebrew school teacher, who we didn't appreciate as much as we should've at the time; he was one of the ones who actually taught us a lot of material) convinced him he could teach, and he found his way towards rebuilding, to making the world a better place. Not forgetting, but working still, not letting the badness get him down.
We went out into the lobby, and finally got to see the window, which features six hands reaching up from flames (some clenched in pain), with Hebrew/Yiddish first names written on them, and a seventh hand (I don't remember the symbolism of this one) with R. Goldstein's number on it (I remember being horribly embarrassed in 7th grade when one of the boys he was showing how to lay tefillin asked him about the number on his arm; didn't everyone know what that meant? Apparently not. And the rabbi didn't go into it then, either, saying it was how he remembered his phone number or some such thing. Anyway.) Above them in glass is the word zachor (remember) with the words of the Shma written below it (as the names are written on the glass, not set in it). The part I found distracting was that the 'window' is placed on an interior wall, with a couple of bars of lighting behind it, which just doesn't work, to me. I hope that they at least get a flat panel of lighting (though it will still not be as wonderful as having the intensity of real sunlight).
After the unveiling, there was a light supper in the social hall, with wraps and salads. More schmoozing, all around, and there was finally time to chat with my brother a bit.
As people drifted away, someone rounded up a group for maariv. I was surprised that, though it was well after dark, they started with an 'abbreviated' mincha, just Ashrei and Aleinu, presumably to let someone say kaddish. Still, it was a bit jarring. I joined in for maariv. Mostly, that is: I was holding my nephew at the time, so it depended on what I knew best. He seemed to like all of Shma :-).
We went back to my parents, and the family schmooze continued a while longer, plus photos were taken (happily, not in front of the mirrored dining room wall). Oh, and my parents gifted me with condiments! Black olive spread, a kind of pepper spread I haven't seen before, and garlic-lemon spread (plus a mixture of short-grained brown and black rices called Japonica). Whee!
I left later than I'd planned; luckily it was Sunday night with lots of classic rock on the radio to keep me awake.
This morning I didn't go to shul for the beating of the willow branches. It's been a quiet day at the office, and I'm happy about that.
And if you've read this far, you get a gold star, or some chocolate, or something :-).
Tonight starts the end of Sukkot, with Shmini Atzeret tonight, and Simchat Torah tomorrow night (as with most two-day holidays, in Israel and for reform Jews, it's telescoped into one day), so I'll be offline (again) until Wednesday evening. I'm looking forward to resting: I have no guests coming at all, I'll cook what I want when I choose, and Simchat Torah has lots of dancing, which hopefully I'll be in the mood for. (The celebration is ending then beginning the cycle of reading the Torah. Shmini Atzeret, on the other hand, is 'just' the festival day at the end of Sukkot, without much personality of its own.)
- The sukkah got built, and the food got cooked, but (not surprisingly) I didn't make it to shul. And despite some last-minute email and phone calls, we were six for dinner: new mom, her law-school student husband, and the infant; the theater director, and the new resident of the Frank building with his South African dad. The weather changed to mild for the first two days, luckily, so meals in the sukkah were quite pleasant. And I got to hear a lot about behind-the scenes theater stuff. And hear admiration of my floors by the South African dad, which was rather cute. I was gifted with two bottles of wine (plus some (milchig) chocolate-covered cherries) all completely unexpected; slowly my wine rack replenishes...
The menu:- extremely multi-grain challah and honey
- wine
- mushroom-barley soup
- turkey and gravy
- cranberry relish
- mashed winter squash (a couple of kinds together) with salsa
- sauteed eggplant with peppers, onion, garlic, hot peppers, and parsley
- [I think there was another vegetable dish; darned if I can remember what just now.]
- tea
- apple-plum crisp
- extremely multi-grain challah and honey
I slept in (so desperately needed), and had a really nice day at home, bentching lulav for the first time this year in my sukkah, which felt right. Highlights of morning davening in the sukkah were nice too, though I missed the holiday piyyut before musaf (more than hoshanot: though I like the text well enough, the circling doesn't resonate for me, perhaps because I'm not on the side with sifrei Torah being circled.).
I'd started turkey soup right after carving the night before; now I had the time to take the bones out and put dumplings in; that was most of what I ate during the day, because that was what appealed. Late in the afternoon my sister-in-law stopped by with the nephew, and she, too, found herself in the mood for soup :-). (Sukkot is the perfect holiday for soup.)
We were again six for dinner (the only meal without anyone under three): the kiddush organizer and his wife the ballet fundraiser; the new production editor and her robotics grad student boyfried; and the acquisitions editor. Conversation stayed mostly on robotics, ideas of programming and aggregate tasks, with some side forays into film, fundraising, and editing. Again, I was gifted with two bottles of wine and some sweets, this time refrigerator cookies of various sorts.
The menu:
- extremely multi-grain challah and honey
- wine
- turkey soup with sage dumplings and/or mushroom-barley soup
- green salad (with slivered almonds and black olives)
- chicken with brown and wild rices, onion, garlic, pine nuts, and preserved lemon
- cranberry relish
- roasted sweet potatoes and beets
- Brussels sprouts
- spicy almond noodles
- tea
- applesauce-banana cake with apple-plum crisp and experimental kiwi granita (It definitely should have sugar added, but the texture works. And it's green :-)
- refrigerator cookies
We ended up having dessert inside (some people were cold), which meant that there was more time to chat; I like that. (Ususually, when people move towards the living room after a meal, they find the front door first, so no more mellow hanging-out time.)
Another good night's sleep, without the obligation to get all the dishes done, either (I mostly use real plates on Sukkot, because there's not room enough in my sukkah for a decent table, so meals are buffet style, and it's hard enough balancing a real plate when eating without worrying that it'll collapse all over you as well). Somehow I again didn't make it to shul, alas. Recuperating from all the hosting.... Again, lots of reading, this time punctuated by a walk to Central to get the farm share.
In the morning, it was back to work, and figuring out what to do about the dead oven. The stove top and the broiler were fine, but baking with a broiler doesn't really work. My back-up plan: call a friend and ask her to bake things I brought over. Luckily, that wasn't necessary, because Cambridge Appliance Repair came to the rescue. I'm pleased with their service: they had a time when I needed it (ie that afternoon), they were prompt in showing up, and in repairing the oven (also the fourth burner that hasn't worked in years). Nice guy, too. We chatted appliances and cooking :-). (Oven ignitors apparently have about a 5-year life span, btw, so getting about a decade out of it was apparently pretty good.)
The weather had changed; it was far less appealing to eat in the sukkah. Not that I had much time to, as I started cooking for Shabbat.
Anyway, it's not a short play; the 7:30 start was so we'd get out by around 11... Another late night.
Friday was cooking bracketing the time I spent at work and at the farmer's market; my concentration was obviously not complete, so it was nice to have a new task that took just the right amount of attention. Still, I was over-exhausted, so much so that I miscalculated when I needed to leave work by, and spent the hour or so before Shabbat rushing around in a tizzy.
In the end it all worked, but I suspect I was a bit rude to the people who arrived before Shabbat...
Dinner included the overnight guests, the former minyan chairs, and their two daughters (one working on walking, one about five or so and quite verbal :-). The talk was books to read, stuff about editing, and kid-stuff, mostly.
The menu:
- challah (new batch, less heavy) and honey
- grape juice (which had changed flavor sitting for so long unopened)
- turkey soup with sage dumplings
- a reprise of the chicken with rice from the second day (especially for one guest who has a... limited palate)
- turkey 'pot pie': leftover turkey, frozen peas, parboiled cubed potatoes and carrots, sauteed leeks, and a sort of white sauce (a little olive oil, flour, soy milk, herbed sea salt, and pepper) all mixed together and topped with drop biscuits (I'd been nervous that I'd not cooked the potatoes and carrots long enough, but it all worked)
- curried Brussels sprouts (revised from first days)
- mashed baked squash (new, unsalsa'd)
- chocolate-chip bars brought by my guests
(Obviously, I was getting more tired already...)
Much talk with the overnighters before falling into bed, and sleeping in some. Then it was time to do the dishes, yet again. Sigh. And get ready for lunch.
Lunch included the overnight guests; the school librarian and the programmer; and the Salad Queen, her husband, and their boys (one fairly new, the other almost three). The Salad Queen was going to bring salad with her, but it got left behind, so we improvised with the stuff I had around, and under her hands, a lovely salad appeared.
The menu:
- challah and honey
- grape juice
- gefilte fish (loaf kind, slightly sweet)
- turkey meatloaf (the destination of half of the challah leftover from first days; I suspect the rest will be turkey stuffing on Thanksgiving)
- the rest of the turkey pot pie
- cranberry relish
- the end of the roasted beets and sweet potatoes
- Asian slaw
- green salad: romaine, radicchio, sliced daikon, sliced apple, black olives, some salad greens, and a garlic vinaigrette
- squash pie (the squash left from first days mixed with maple syrup, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice, then poured into a pie shell)
It started drizzling just as we made kiddush; we ended up eating lunch inside, which, after the initial flurry of reorganizing and table-setting, was pretty nice; a much slower-paced meal than it otherwise would have been. Highlights included introducing the boy to Uno (yay for successful presents!), learning the Salad Queen's dissertation topic, talking kid books, and hearing the boy's knock-knock joke (among others I'd heard before):
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Ana.
Ana who?
Anaphylaxis.
Mid-afternoon, I headed west to Worcester, to catch the tail end of my parents' open sukkah. Unfortunately for me, I was hungry, and there were many yummy baked goods; I ate far too many of them. On the plus side, I saw some people I hadn't seen since I was growing up, and had a fun conversation giving book suggestions to the mom of a twelve year old.
Then it was time to walk to my parents' shul (the one I went to growing up), for the dedication of Zachor, a stained glass memorial window donated by the rabbi who had been at Beth Israel when I was growing up (who is a survivor). Note: the art at the link is not a rendering of the piece (Thanks to Tigerbright for the link.).
As with most shul functions, there was the schmooze, the official stuff, then more schmoozing :-). The official stuff included speeches by the current rabbi, one of the people on the committee for this project, the artist, the rabbi emeritus, and his son. There were musical pieces by the cantor and a guitarist, two in Yiddish (one that my dad obviously knew at least the refrain to but I'd never heard before), and one slow version of Ani Ma'amin (I Believe, from the Rambam's 13 articles of faith) that is very much not my default tune any more, though I remember it being so.
I think I learned more about what happened to R. Goldstein at this ceremony than I ever did growing up; I don't think he used to be able to talk about it so much. He lost most of his family in Auschwitz, married the sister of a rabbinic student who got him out of the camps, and ended up in Worcester unsure he could continue. Mr. Plich (sp?)(my sevent grade Hebrew school teacher, who we didn't appreciate as much as we should've at the time; he was one of the ones who actually taught us a lot of material) convinced him he could teach, and he found his way towards rebuilding, to making the world a better place. Not forgetting, but working still, not letting the badness get him down.
We went out into the lobby, and finally got to see the window, which features six hands reaching up from flames (some clenched in pain), with Hebrew/Yiddish first names written on them, and a seventh hand (I don't remember the symbolism of this one) with R. Goldstein's number on it (I remember being horribly embarrassed in 7th grade when one of the boys he was showing how to lay tefillin asked him about the number on his arm; didn't everyone know what that meant? Apparently not. And the rabbi didn't go into it then, either, saying it was how he remembered his phone number or some such thing. Anyway.) Above them in glass is the word zachor (remember) with the words of the Shma written below it (as the names are written on the glass, not set in it). The part I found distracting was that the 'window' is placed on an interior wall, with a couple of bars of lighting behind it, which just doesn't work, to me. I hope that they at least get a flat panel of lighting (though it will still not be as wonderful as having the intensity of real sunlight).
After the unveiling, there was a light supper in the social hall, with wraps and salads. More schmoozing, all around, and there was finally time to chat with my brother a bit.
We went back to my parents, and the family schmooze continued a while longer, plus photos were taken (happily, not in front of the mirrored dining room wall). Oh, and my parents gifted me with condiments! Black olive spread, a kind of pepper spread I haven't seen before, and garlic-lemon spread (plus a mixture of short-grained brown and black rices called Japonica). Whee!
I left later than I'd planned; luckily it was Sunday night with lots of classic rock on the radio to keep me awake.
This morning I didn't go to shul for the beating of the willow branches. It's been a quiet day at the office, and I'm happy about that.
And if you've read this far, you get a gold star, or some chocolate, or something :-).
Tonight starts the end of Sukkot, with Shmini Atzeret tonight, and Simchat Torah tomorrow night (as with most two-day holidays, in Israel and for reform Jews, it's telescoped into one day), so I'll be offline (again) until Wednesday evening. I'm looking forward to resting: I have no guests coming at all, I'll cook what I want when I choose, and Simchat Torah has lots of dancing, which hopefully I'll be in the mood for. (The celebration is ending then beginning the cycle of reading the Torah. Shmini Atzeret, on the other hand, is 'just' the festival day at the end of Sukkot, without much personality of its own.)
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 09:15 pm (UTC)Once the chagim are over, I actually might end up playing with chocolate, now that the weather's cool enough....
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 12:19 am (UTC)(Two days off without meals for anyone else have made entertaining again sound possible, even.)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:15 am (UTC)Oh, yum. Miss....
no subject
Date: 2005-10-27 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-31 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-31 06:38 pm (UTC)