Succot. One of the most beautiful holidays of the year, in my opinion. Once we've survived the Succah Building and I’ve successfully managed to dodge cooking duty (Just kidding mom, I really DID have to study) I can look forward to spending y't with family and friends.

This year, the new recipes all went over pretty well. We laughed about the ill-fated Touchdown Chicken Fajitas, and fondly recalled the Fizzy Chicken. Succot is the anniversary of many different things, among them, what my dad likes to call the Succot Massacre. About five years ago, his friend's elderly father was the unfortunate victim when a table full of taleisim, lulavim, and esrogim collapsed on his leg. Thankfully he wasn't hurt, but he was so fed up (my shul takes a REALLY long time on y't, one of the many reasons why I daven at the earlier minyan) that he got up and left.

Chol hamoed, as I’ve said before, strikes terror in the heart of parents, as the kids start the famous What-are-we-doing-today-whine, as the dads slip out the door to work, grinning and whistling cheerfully. For those of us who are lucky enough to be retaining an education, and maybe taking exams the week of Succot, the joys of freedom are marred by the threat of an exam hanging over our heads. So I compromised. I met a friend and hung out with her in the city all morning, and the lugged my books over to Bryant Park where I sat in the shade of Chabad of Midtown's succah and studied Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Erikson's psychosocial stages of development against the background noises of the pigeons, and the shlichim asking passersby if they wanted to come sit in the succah. When I got tired of studying, I wandered over to Times Square where I spent two minutes sitting in each chair on Broadway.

Tuesday was such a disaster that I won't even mention it here, except to say that the redeeming factor was that I spent time with my family, and I was so tired when I got home, that I was in bed by 10:30, which left me well rested for my exam on Wednesday, which hopefully, I did well on, but I’m sitting on pins and needles waiting for my results.

Second days are coming up pretty soon, with the Annual Hoshana Raba breakfast being held on Friday morning to look forward to as well. I’m not such a big fan of Simchat Torah, but I’m not going to complain about it, so instead I will focus on attempting to channel the joy of being the People of the Book.