logisticslad

My brother and sister-in-law are in the midst of having an addition put onto their house and the contractors were breaking through into the kitchen this week. So we had decided to hold Thanksgiving at my place. Now, as many of you know, I CAN cook, but I really don't enjoy it in its own right. So my suggestion was to arrange to buy the various T-day goodies from my local co-op and serve that for dinner. My parents and brother were completely ok with this idea, however, my sister-in-law exclaimed that it would not feel like Thanksgiving to her if someone did not provide home cooking. Several of my friends offered to teach me how to make various parts of the meal and puzzld1 even offered to help me cook it, but I decided that the stakes were too high to try to raise my cooking karma for such a food important day. So my sister-in-law contrived to make the cooked dishes at her place, my parents agreed to bring salad and appetizers, and I was in charge of beverages. Meanwhile, I had spent the week cleaning my place. I bought new dishes (to go with my new cookware that I had recently bought). I had a friend come over and figure out how to change the fluorescent light in the kitchen fixture that had baffled me for the last 2.5 yrs. I had borrowed a carpet cleaner and solution to clean the kitchen floor, when my brother called to say that two of the three kids were recovering from strep throat and that they didn't want to risk traveling under those circumstances. Also, the kitchen breakthrough was far less disruptive than had been feared, so cooking there was not a problem. So they felt it would be easier for all concerned if we had Thanksgiving at their place after all. Since the point of switching was to make things easier in the first place, I quickly agreed.

So I halted my frantic cleaning and drove the hour to Hightstown on T-day. Except that I had the misfortune of getting stuck in traffic and having to reroute at the earliest exit, so it took me over two hours to make it there. When I got there, I realized that I had forgotten to bring the wine with me, so I went to a local wine shop that was still open and bought a nice German Riesling to go with dinner (not that my family noticed the difference in quality, but I did). The kids were delighted to see me and my folks, but were also extremely rambunctious, which lead to a number of time outs throughout the day. My 6 yr old nephew is now into Pokemon cards, so I brought some cards with me and he explained to me how to play. He also arranged some trades so that he could have three powerful cards that I couldn't use yet, while he gave me three weaker cards which would allow me to use other powerful cards that I had. As the indulgent uncle, I was completely ok with this somewhat lopsided trade, and impressed with his logic in arranging it. He then used his newly acquired cards to soundly stomp me in a game, which made him very happy. I'm thrilled to death to be encouraging a young gamer in the family!

Dinner itself was delicious, however, the kids fought during it and were punished with time outs, which lead to the middle one melting down, which set the baby off crying, too. This made the dinner experience much less pleasant, but my family coped well and my brother archly expressed his thanks for the wine to help get him through :-) When it got to my turn to express what I was thankful for, I got a laugh by saying that I was thankful that we weren't at my house after all :-) This lightened the mood and we did our best to polish off the food. After dinner we all watched the classic Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special and the new one about the Pilgrims and then it was off to bed. The kids could not believe that my brother and I had watched the same show when we were their age. All in all, it was a good holiday, and maybe we really will have it at my house someday.

I drove down to Alexandria, VA, yesterday with my parents for my cousin's wedding. We managed to survive the trip - they had me drive their car, and we alternated choosing the music. Thankfully, the directions were good and we did not get lost. We are staying at the Old City Hilton, which is quite nice. My cousin arranged for us to receive a goody bag of munchies upon check in, which was quite nice. We walked around Old City and had a yummy seafood dinner at The Wharf, which looked a lot less touristy than some of the other places and turned out to be pretty good. This morning we had brunch at the hotel with some old friends of my parents, whom I had never met. Then I went for a walk and found a comic shop and a used book store, both of which pleased me greatly. So I'm spending the afternoon relaxing, waiting to get ready for the wedding in the evening. Tomorrow there will be a brunch for the out of town guests and then we pack up and head home.

Last weekend was Swarthmore's Alumni weekend. it wasn't my class' year to get together, but since I knew many people across the classes and the sci-fi club that I used to be part of always has a gaming/hang out room, I went up for the day on Saturday. I was delighted to see dwvanstone and his handsome beau, eclectic_boy, who arranged for a yummy BBQ, my former housemates grr_plus1 and ruthling, the lovely metasilk with pictures of her son, mst3kforall who is actually in my class, nutmegger and his lovely wife, jedediah who is New Jed to my Jed Classic, and syndicatedebby sans jhp64 who was home with the kids. In addition, I hung out with a number of folk who don't have blogs such as Jim H., Anne M., David SG, Neil O, Sylvia W., and Jay S. It was good to see everyone and recapture memories and reaffirm the camaraderie we had all shared during our college years and beyond.

In the gaming room, I got to watch two games that I had heard of but had not seen. Transamerica looked like it was easy to learn and kind of fun, but did not seem to require much complex strategy. Order of the Stick looked overly involved with too many rules and modifiers, but definitely captured the spirit of the webcomic. I think it would be more fun if everyone actually knew the basics of how to play (which did not seem to be all that intuitive).

In the midst of the heat, I drove over to see blueflamedfire and cuddlebunni3 to drop off stuff for June Pride. My brother had invited me up for a family visit on Sunday, so I decided to do that instead. It was fun to see them and I look forward to seeing their new place. Sunday also turned out well with the rambunctious nephews telling me that they wished that I lived with them all the time (melt). Of course, my brother pointed out that he and I had lived together growing up for quite awhile and that we were both much happier to no longer do so. In any event, the weekend was very centering for me with prepared me to face another week at work.

In a few weeks, my brother and I are going to NYC to see the new musical production of Young Frankenstein on Broadway. This is in honor of his 40th birthday (He liked that I had seen a show for my 40th and wanted to do something similar). We are seeing a Sat matinee and I'd like to take him to a nice restaurant for dinner after the show. He's not too adventuresome when it comes to food, so I suspect that a nice American, Italian, or Chinese style place would be just fine for him. Does anyone have any restaurant recommends for a place we can walk to from the Theatre District?

Thanks to everyone who offered their advice through my very first poll (which I can do now that I have a Permanent Account). I did indeed take it to my family BBQ, where my cousins and nephews devoured it with gusto (sorry puzzld1, there wasn't any left to save for you). I did feel kind of dirty enabling my young impressionable relatives develop a taste for the evil zucchini (but I suppose it beats buying them cigarettes or alcohol :-) Anyway, we had a lovely time celebrating my Dad's 80th birthday with my brother's family and my visiting cousins from Arizona.

For those who don't know, zucchini has become my Totem Vegetable - that of which I do not eat. This is because back in college, I spent 2.5 years working on The Great Zucchini Project for my undergraduate thesis. This consisted of growing thousands of baby zucchini plants in the dark and then harvesting their stems and mashing them up in a Cuisinart in order to extract proteins out of them to study for my experiments. I helped characterize the function of the growth hormone transport protein, which would allow the world to build bigger and better zucchini (It turns out that zucchini have the biochemical oddity of concentrating this protein in the base of their cells, making it much easier to isolate). This resulted in a successful thesis and my very first paper published in the journal Plant Physiology. After all this slaughter of countless zucchini plants, I completely lost my taste for it (not that I liked it much to begin with). The last time I knowingly ate zucchini was when my supposed "friends" (to those of you reading this, you know who you are) bought me an order of fried zucchini sticks to celebrate my thesis defense (oh the irony!). Since then, I have avoided the stuff in vegetable medleys, Chinese food, stealthily baked into chocolate cakes, and wherever else it may lurk. I have extended this dislike to the creation of a personal policy by which I do not consume anything that I have done experiments upon. In addition to zucchini, this list includes: rats, rabbits, scorpions, sea amenones, and pufferfish. Good thing I don't work on people !-}

The good news is that despite the surgery being delayed until after 6:00pm (when they told him to be there at 11:00am), Dad came through the procedure okay and is doing well. They replaced his pacemaker and added a defibrillator. The doctor said that everything went smoothly and that he can go home tomorrow!

Whew!

Thanks to everyone for their kind words of support. It helped me get through the day.

PS: There were no unpleasant surprises from Chester when I came home today. We'll see what happens at 3:00 in the morning...

Had a lovely Solstice gathering hosted by my friend J. who had recently lost his partner. He had asked us to all light candles dedicated to Brigid for health, hearth, and healing the night before and I was glad to do so. His place looked magical with dozens of candles all sparkling helping to keep away the darkness and bring back the light. Since it was also the last night of Hannukah and Shabbat we lit even more candles and said prayers, which fit very well with the theme of the evening. Hosting this dinner was part of his own healing and I was very happy to be there for him. We had delicious cheese fondue for dinner, with green apples, bread, and turkey ham for dipping. Then we played a 6 player game of Seafarers of Cattan, which was a lot of fun, but ended early by mutual consent so that we would have time to enjoy the dessert, chocolate fondue. We dipped cheesecake, strawberries, poundcake, bananas, and orange slices and discussed the many other yummy options available for dipping (I was sad that we didn't have double chocolate oreos for the ultimate chocolate buzz :-) S. found the pickle on the tree and received the pickle prize of a lovely moon fairy. The second pickle prize of Lindt chocolate was sent home with me to be given to puzzld1 and M., who unfortunately could not make it this year. They were both missed by all. Despite the difficulties that he has been facing, J. made this event a celebration with his chosen family and friends and I think it was really good for him to have done.

Yesterday, I flew to Scottsdale for a long weekend to attend my cousin's Bat Mitzvah. My parents and my brother's family have also come. We all took separate planes due to our various schedules, and my parents remarked that they preferred it that way so that the whole family wouldn't be lost if there were an accident. Ah, the ways in which my parents can worry still astound me! They wanted me to have dinner with them before they left, in case it were to be the last time. Not wanting to be an enabler, I declined. My trip was uneventful. However, I had less than an hour to settle into my room and change (during which my nephews made their boisterous appearance) before I had to go to the Friday night Shabbat services.

Services turned out to be quite an event. First, the rabbi and cantor were married and conducted a musical service with a band (in order to try to broaden the appeal and get more people interested). Plus there was much food. It was actually very nice. Many of the tunes for the prayers have been updated, but it was easy enough for me to follow along. I was amazed at how much of the service came flooding back to me. When I had gone to hebrew school before my bar mitzvah, I had learned how to conduct an entire service in Hebrew. With the help of the transliteration, I was able to follow along (this was a reform service, so only portions of it were in Hebrew, but more than I expected). I said a Mourner's Kaddish for my friend's partner and while I know it wasn't his tradition, it felt right to do.

The rabbi discussed the torah reading for the week. It was the section describing the flight of Jacob from his estranged brother Esau, and tells of how he spent all night wrestling with a stranger whom he thought was divine and in the morning received the name Yisrael, which literally means, he who struggles with God. The rabbi interpreted this story as a parable about it being healthy to question one's faith and pointed out that one's relationship with God grows and changes over one's lifetime, just like any other relationship. This had great meaning for me since this feature of Judaism is one of the main reasons that I remain Jewish. It's not about blind faith, but about coming to one's own faith when one is ready.

Then the group of us, me, my parents, my brother, sister-in-law, my two nephews, my cousin, her father, her husband, his brother, and their two children (one of whom was the Bat Mitzvah) all went for what turned out to be a very difficult dinner. There was unpleasantness from my cousin's father about being seated outside, then the service was painfully slow to the point that my nephews both fell asleep before the food arrived. All in all, it took two hours to get our food, which turned out to be very good when it finally arrived. We all skipped dessert and returned to the hotel. I was driving with my parents, who could not agree on the directions and kept getting us lost. Oy vey! I was exhausted when we finally got back and crashed, but did not sleep comfortably because the hotel beds are much too soft for me.

This morning was the Bat Mitzvah service and my brother and I had an Aliyah together, as did my parents. It was very moving and I was very glad to have traveled over 2000 miles to be there for it, especially since none of our other cousins chose to come. We are all resting for the afternoon, before we return for the evening reception. Then tomorrow morning we are going to the cemetery for my aunt's and cousin's gravestone unveilings and then to a museum with the kids. In the meantime, the weather is gorgeous here, so I may take a dip in the pool.

Yesterday, I spent my birthday at the Philly Zoo with my nephews and my brother and sister-in-law! It was a terrific day! My nephews were entranced with the animals - the 4 year old kept asking to see specific creatures that he knew were kept at zoos and the 1 and 3/4 year old kept saying goodbye to each animal after we saw it :-) We saw the new Big Cats exhibit, which was basically the same animals in a guided walk through their habitats in a way that allowed one to get much closer to them. We said goodbye to the elephants - apparently they are going to move to another zoo after having been here for over 30 years due to concerns about their housing. My nephews were convinced that the crocodiles weren't real because they weren't moving for so long...and then one blinked!!! They were disappointed to learn that red panda are not the same as black and white panda. They were entranced by the primate house, but we had the most fun watching the otters at play!!! I was very touched that they loved the otters as much as I always have. We will definitely go back to the zoo.

Then they came over to my house for pizza and cake. Whew! It was a whirlwind of potential destruction. I had thought that my place was mostly childproof, but they proved me wrong by finding all sorts of unexpectedly breakable or potentially toxic things within reach. And they chased the cats, who didn't seem to mind the extra play, but it just added to the chaos. The contrast of quiet after we put on Winnie the Pooh was quite striking (at least until they started messing with each other while watching it). They gave me the X-men III DVD, which I had refrained from buying myself, hoping that it would be a birthday gift (while I didn't love the movie as much as the first two, I thought it was something I would watch again). It was simply adorable to see how my nephews understood the concept of birthday parties and how connecting it was for them to have a party for me (they wanted to know why my friends didn't come to the zoo for my party. My brother was gonna say that I had no friends :-P but then explained that I had wanted to spend the day with just them). This plus puzzld1's visit on Friday definitely made up for my having spent last year's birthday in the hospital having my appendix removed. I was exhausted by the time they left, but I had an amazingly fun birthday!

Happy Rosh Hashana, everyone! Tonight I had friends over for dinner and games. Several had to cancel at the last minute, so we scrapped plans for D&D, but we managed to have enough for a satisfying game of Lord of the Rings. It is important to defeat the Dark Lord at the start of the year! I lit candles and served the traditional apples and honey. We debated between ordering out for traditional chinese food, but were daring and went for pizza instead. Tomorrow is holiday with my family and here's hoping that we can keep the family drama to a minimum.