later morning 2001-04-05 010405_31.html
weekend and holiday plans
Note to non-rowers: this entry will be in English. You can start reading again.
Exciting News
I have now been here long enough to start splitting up my archives by month. If you click on Older Entries, you will see this month’s postings and then a link to all the stuff I wrote in March. Okay, I realize that may not be especially interesting to anyone else, but dammit, it’s a milestone of a sort. After the age of 21, if you don’t have kids, there are fewer and fewer of those, so I like to recognize them when they happen. The day I get my first Google referral will no doubt be another big banner day.
End of announcement
The one good thing about T’s current schedule is that he takes weekends off....no work, no rowing, no coaching. We are planning to spend this particular weekend Together, for which purpose we plan to visit an interesting local boutique tomorrow evening. A, ummm, toystore. (Damn! I just realized I forgot to buy grapes yesterday.) Don’t worry, I won’t go into detail here (well, I may go into detail on people-watching and new products at the Castle Boutique, but just for human interest reasons). On the other hand, at least if I happen to get out of bed and write anything here, it won’t be about rowing.
We’re supposed to have someone come by and check the cable Saturday, so with luck, I’ll even be working on a faster connection. (Also, to keep from scaring the repair person, decently dressed.)
"In keeping with the theme of the weekend", as T put it, Passover dinner will just be the two of us, by candle light. The menu involves matzoh ball soup, but I’m not sure what else. In a rare fit of Jewish-friendly buying, my local supermarket had not cut-up whole chicken, so I don’t have to either improvise or do my own cutting, but actual, real mandlen (soup nuts). Next thing you know, they’ll start stocking kasha again (they stopped carrying it about 6 months ago, possibly because I was the only customer who ever bought any).
I was brought up in the Ashkenazic tradition of Judaism, as a Conservative (that is, not Orthodox or Reform) Jew. In that tradition, in addition to the basic prohibition against leavened bread, thre are all kinds of other foods that are not eaten during Passover: any grain product not specially marked for Passover (prepared under the supervision of a Rabbi) including things like malto-dextrin, and legumes, for reasons I have never understood.
I’m sorry, but I think that’s just stupid. (And now if I get struck down by lightning, you’ll know why.) I like ritual, but I also like to know the historic reason for it, and I’m pretty sure bean-dip wasn’t one of the things the Jews left behind when they fled Egypt. Those additional prohibitions are also not found in all streams of Judaism; one Israeli told me the "nobody really likes matzoh" so he and his friends used to go into the Arab neighborhoods to buy pita bread for Passover. Though I do like matzoh, really. So my chicken soup will have noodles in it, and I won’t scan the ingredients of everything I serve in case there might be lurking soybeans.
I probably won’t really keep Pasadic anyhow, but I won’t serve bread at my sort-of-a-Seder dinner, either, even though it is just the two of us.
And the answer to "Why is this night different from all other nights?" will be "Because we get to stay up later than seven PM, if we want to."
Posted by dichroic at April 5, 2001 10:31 AM