On my first day of class, i entered a heated discussion with my lab partner Tracy about Juadism and intermarriage. she comes from a family that was traditionally Conservative, but is now Reform. so I kinda feel pressured to make a good impression on her (i invited her for a Shabbat meal and she said she'll come so now i gotta start working on my family to straighten up. )
and that's why i was mortified when this incident occurred last week:
I've always been bad with time and dates. i knew that Rosh Hashana was coming up the next week, and Yom Kippur the week before that. hello, i totally know when Yom Kippur is because i celebrate my birthday two days before that. but i didn't realize that the end of September was so quickly approaching. so when my lab professor announced that we won't be meeting on the ninth of October, without thinking i called out
"why? what's on the ninth?"
Melissa, the girl who sits across from me looked up at me and said
"oh it's Y-Yom Kippur?"
my face flushed even as she stumbled over the words. in a room full of people i was one of two people who would be observing that holiday! i squirmed and mumbled, more to myself than to Melissa who was once again intently bent over her life-sized model of a human nose,
"i that. i really did"
before leaving this week i turned to Tracy to wish her a Shana Tovah, and asked her if she was going to services this year. (she didn't go last year because two years ago she brought her Catholic boyfriend and he felt uncomfortable)
she proudly nodded and then started singing Dip The Apple In The Honey. i looked at her and grinned.
"you know the song!"
"you bet! it's like the best part of RoshHashana!"
i smiled weakly back at her.
the best part.
sure.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sarah Palin said the only thing separating hockey moms from pit bulls is lipstick.
well in the kosher supermarket where i shop, you can come see the pit bulls without lipstick.
it s out badly enough. i the store and for my list...only to have my hand come out of my pocket with a fistful of keys, but no list. my blood runs cold. this wasn't just some small list i could call my mom and have her re-dictate. this was a full-fledged Yom Tov Cooking List. in desperation i u around the cashiers stand and dash back out into the rain, and wonder of wonders, there's the list, right next to my car. it must have fallen out of my pocket as i was getting out. i it, and to my immense relief, it had only sustained minimal water damage. i it up, a new cart, and hurry back inside.
from there things go bad to worse. my mother is trying some new things for yom tov, so there i am, wandering up and down the aisles, desperately looking for stone ground mustard. i guess regular mustard isn't good enough. and i never realized how many different types of soy milks are out there. just when I'm beginning to despair of ever finding the cholov yisroel brands, (they weren't in the section with all the other milk products) i find tucked away with chocolate pudding. still haven't figured that one out yet.
dodging frustrated fathers, maniac moms, screaming sticky kids, and even helpless old grandmas, i doggedly steer my cart up and down the aisle, looking for the required items....a shallot. i gotta take my guess at that one. i think they hang out with the onions and garlic, so i grab last two and toss onto the every growing heap of vegetables. this time i remembered to get the foil pans last. as a guy in the next aisle so correctly was explaining to his friend "there's nothing worse than coming home and finding your foil pans like this" he demonstrated by twisting a foil pan half. i stifle a laugh as eight boxes of tissues are tossed into the cart.
by the time my cart is full, I'm exhausted, frustrated, and still looking for the darned frozen peas. ah yes, the guy-who-stocks-the-shelves-and-who-is-always-in-the-way-but-never-getting-anything-done-and-doesn't-speak-enough-English-to-be-helpful was blocking the frozen pea section.
i check my list one last time...oh i forgot the sugar. at least i know where that one is. i wheel my cart over to the baking section...what? the entire shelf is totally bare! people, get a grip! it's not pesach, you don't need to go overboard on the baking! sheesh (although reader will note, that apparently no sugar is a big deal, because i forgot to tell mother about it and i was driven out in the pouring rain to borrow some from a neighbor)
so i finally make it to the checkout counter, and to my luck, i get the aisle with the new cashier. he's feverishly pumping in the codes for the vegetables that the bagger is yelling at him (i check the screen, and BINGO! they were shallots! anyone who buys shallots has to be making one of Susie Fishbein's concoctions. before her cookbooks came out no one had ever heard of them) in the middle of waiting to pay for my groceries, one of the cashiers comes running up to the owner of the store
"Mr. N, it's crazy out there, there are no carts left!"
i can't suppress a smirk. he sees me and replies
"it's not funny! people are fighting for carts!"
he punches his friend in the shoulder, they both laugh, and he goes back to his lane.
by the time I've paid for my groceries, gotten my receipt, and loaded my cart, my nerves are so frazzled, that i can't even stop to think if the white haired man standing fourteen feet away is my great uncle. I'll have to wait till i see him on rosh hashana to say hi. i grab my cart and run for my car, dodging raindrops and fighting off desperate hockey mom-cum-pit bulls who would give a tube of lipstick for my cart.
well in the kosher supermarket where i shop, you can come see the pit bulls without lipstick.
it s out badly enough. i the store and for my list...only to have my hand come out of my pocket with a fistful of keys, but no list. my blood runs cold. this wasn't just some small list i could call my mom and have her re-dictate. this was a full-fledged Yom Tov Cooking List. in desperation i u around the cashiers stand and dash back out into the rain, and wonder of wonders, there's the list, right next to my car. it must have fallen out of my pocket as i was getting out. i it, and to my immense relief, it had only sustained minimal water damage. i it up, a new cart, and hurry back inside.
from there things go bad to worse. my mother is trying some new things for yom tov, so there i am, wandering up and down the aisles, desperately looking for stone ground mustard. i guess regular mustard isn't good enough. and i never realized how many different types of soy milks are out there. just when I'm beginning to despair of ever finding the cholov yisroel brands, (they weren't in the section with all the other milk products) i find tucked away with chocolate pudding. still haven't figured that one out yet.
dodging frustrated fathers, maniac moms, screaming sticky kids, and even helpless old grandmas, i doggedly steer my cart up and down the aisle, looking for the required items....a shallot. i gotta take my guess at that one. i think they hang out with the onions and garlic, so i grab last two and toss onto the every growing heap of vegetables. this time i remembered to get the foil pans last. as a guy in the next aisle so correctly was explaining to his friend "there's nothing worse than coming home and finding your foil pans like this" he demonstrated by twisting a foil pan half. i stifle a laugh as eight boxes of tissues are tossed into the cart.
by the time my cart is full, I'm exhausted, frustrated, and still looking for the darned frozen peas. ah yes, the guy-who-stocks-the-shelves-and-who-is-always-in-the-way-but-never-getting-anything-done-and-doesn't-speak-enough-English-to-be-helpful was blocking the frozen pea section.
i check my list one last time...oh i forgot the sugar. at least i know where that one is. i wheel my cart over to the baking section...what? the entire shelf is totally bare! people, get a grip! it's not pesach, you don't need to go overboard on the baking! sheesh (although reader will note, that apparently no sugar is a big deal, because i forgot to tell mother about it and i was driven out in the pouring rain to borrow some from a neighbor)
so i finally make it to the checkout counter, and to my luck, i get the aisle with the new cashier. he's feverishly pumping in the codes for the vegetables that the bagger is yelling at him (i check the screen, and BINGO! they were shallots! anyone who buys shallots has to be making one of Susie Fishbein's concoctions. before her cookbooks came out no one had ever heard of them) in the middle of waiting to pay for my groceries, one of the cashiers comes running up to the owner of the store
"Mr. N, it's crazy out there, there are no carts left!"
i can't suppress a smirk. he sees me and replies
"it's not funny! people are fighting for carts!"
he punches his friend in the shoulder, they both laugh, and he goes back to his lane.
by the time I've paid for my groceries, gotten my receipt, and loaded my cart, my nerves are so frazzled, that i can't even stop to think if the white haired man standing fourteen feet away is my great uncle. I'll have to wait till i see him on rosh hashana to say hi. i grab my cart and run for my car, dodging raindrops and fighting off desperate hockey mom-cum-pit bulls who would give a tube of lipstick for my cart.
Friday, September 26, 2008
stupid forwards
i want to know who starts the stupid forwards. they're all so frustrating.
1. there is a girl missing! please circulate this picture and let the authorities know if you see him/her (according to snopes, which is an urban legend reference site, there's a greater chance that this child is thirty years old and doesn't want their sixth grade school photo passed around)
2. bill gates/gap/Microsoft is giving away free money/clothes/computers for every hundred people you forward this too (it is impossible to track emails. period)
3. the salvation army/red cross is giving away five cents for every person you forward this to for the health of a little child dying of some unheard of terminal disease (again, we haven't yet come up with the software that can track emails. at least not that i know of)
4. send this email to thirty four people in the next twelve seconds, you will have tremendous luck, lots of friends, never grow old, and the love of your life will find you. oh and a great miracle will happen tomorrow at noon. (my server doesn't work that fast, and can i reschedule that miracle? because noon doesn't work for me
but it's gotten way worse than that. it started out as a few. but now i get at least twenty or thirty a day. I'm talking about the forwards that are texted.
1. tehillim names. i always get pleas to say tehillim. i never get a notice to stop. and somehow the name just has a way of getting mixed up.
2. stupid jokes. like about young learning boys. there seems to be an abundant of them:
a young boy who learns daf yomi online will grow up to be a Google b'yisroel
how does a Lakewood boy propose? he drives up with a fifteen-passenger van and says "can you help me fill this up?"
a yeshiva boy is like a cellphone: free nights and weekends but no plan
urgent! rabbanim have declared that no yeshivas in Lakewood open up until every yungerman has a parking spot.
what's the difference between a dead body and yeshiva bachur? one goes from life support to the freezer...
they're not funny.
3. insults:
i volunteered to help at a mental health facility. they said i need 24 hours of experience. are you available tomorrow?
if i were to write a dictionary, this is what it would say; BEAUTIFUL: you SMART: you PRETTY: you LIAR: me
i just heard that the cops found an unidentified body, noted for its extreme ugliness. are you OK?
4. apparently for those who had Verizon, when you sent a text message to someone else in the Verizon network, a little check would appear next to the text when it was received. and now that doesn't exist anymore. so first the text that went around said that if we all call Verizon they'll change it back. now it's saying that if you send a text to ten people who are all within the Verizon network, it'll change.
and what's more annoying, is that everyone has enough time on their hands to pass it around. so i don't just get it once, i get it about six or seven times.
and you'd think that after constantly berating my friends they would learn not to send it to me. i just don't get why people waste the time to forward these things. if no one forwarded stupid jokes and the like, whoever starts them will stop.
1. there is a girl missing! please circulate this picture and let the authorities know if you see him/her (according to snopes, which is an urban legend reference site, there's a greater chance that this child is thirty years old and doesn't want their sixth grade school photo passed around)
2. bill gates/gap/Microsoft is giving away free money/clothes/computers for every hundred people you forward this too (it is impossible to track emails. period)
3. the salvation army/red cross is giving away five cents for every person you forward this to for the health of a little child dying of some unheard of terminal disease (again, we haven't yet come up with the software that can track emails. at least not that i know of)
4. send this email to thirty four people in the next twelve seconds, you will have tremendous luck, lots of friends, never grow old, and the love of your life will find you. oh and a great miracle will happen tomorrow at noon. (my server doesn't work that fast, and can i reschedule that miracle? because noon doesn't work for me
but it's gotten way worse than that. it started out as a few. but now i get at least twenty or thirty a day. I'm talking about the forwards that are texted.
1. tehillim names. i always get pleas to say tehillim. i never get a notice to stop. and somehow the name just has a way of getting mixed up.
2. stupid jokes. like about young learning boys. there seems to be an abundant of them:
a young boy who learns daf yomi online will grow up to be a Google b'yisroel
how does a Lakewood boy propose? he drives up with a fifteen-passenger van and says "can you help me fill this up?"
a yeshiva boy is like a cellphone: free nights and weekends but no plan
urgent! rabbanim have declared that no yeshivas in Lakewood open up until every yungerman has a parking spot.
what's the difference between a dead body and yeshiva bachur? one goes from life support to the freezer...
they're not funny.
3. insults:
i volunteered to help at a mental health facility. they said i need 24 hours of experience. are you available tomorrow?
if i were to write a dictionary, this is what it would say; BEAUTIFUL: you SMART: you PRETTY: you LIAR: me
i just heard that the cops found an unidentified body, noted for its extreme ugliness. are you OK?
4. apparently for those who had Verizon, when you sent a text message to someone else in the Verizon network, a little check would appear next to the text when it was received. and now that doesn't exist anymore. so first the text that went around said that if we all call Verizon they'll change it back. now it's saying that if you send a text to ten people who are all within the Verizon network, it'll change.
and what's more annoying, is that everyone has enough time on their hands to pass it around. so i don't just get it once, i get it about six or seven times.
and you'd think that after constantly berating my friends they would learn not to send it to me. i just don't get why people waste the time to forward these things. if no one forwarded stupid jokes and the like, whoever starts them will stop.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
the newest college dance
it's called the frum slide. it's what your eyes do when they latch on to a kippah or skirt at college.
first you affirm that it is indeed Jewish looking. that it is really a skirt and not just an incredibly baggy pair of pants. that it is truly a kippah and not a weird hat. then your eyes slide up or down to the face to see if it's a familiar one.
if it is, you rush over to each other, or maybe fall into step with them and do the whole catch up routine. ("what classes are you taking?" "who's your professor?")
if you don't know them, you do the shy -i-don't-really-know-you-but-you're-an-oasis-in-this-crazy-place-grin.
first you affirm that it is indeed Jewish looking. that it is really a skirt and not just an incredibly baggy pair of pants. that it is truly a kippah and not a weird hat. then your eyes slide up or down to the face to see if it's a familiar one.
if it is, you rush over to each other, or maybe fall into step with them and do the whole catch up routine. ("what classes are you taking?" "who's your professor?")
if you don't know them, you do the shy -i-don't-really-know-you-but-you're-an-oasis-in-this-crazy-place-grin.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
you know you're a college student when...
1. you used to go to school at eight am, now any class before noon is considered 'early'
2. you max out your credit card in a bookstore
3. you call having a social life, bumping into more than three people you know in the hallways.
4. breakfast is anything that will keep you up for class
5. you'd rather wash dishes than study or write that paper
6. you're idea of 'doing lunch' with a friend is picking up food and eating in the cafeteria before class.
7. your facebook status usually has words in it that have to do with what you're studying
8. you've got your professors on speed dial
9. you've become real good at procrastinating, without feeling guilty
10. you spend all night blogging
2. you max out your credit card in a bookstore
3. you call having a social life, bumping into more than three people you know in the hallways.
4. breakfast is anything that will keep you up for class
5. you'd rather wash dishes than study or write that paper
6. you're idea of 'doing lunch' with a friend is picking up food and eating in the cafeteria before class.
7. your facebook status usually has words in it that have to do with what you're studying
8. you've got your professors on speed dial
9. you've become real good at procrastinating, without feeling guilty
10. you spend all night blogging
Monday, September 22, 2008
this morning the season of summer ended at 11:44 am.
but for me it ended earlier.
even though i started school after labour day, the summer didn't end until the day i packed up the pool chairs. it was breezy and slightly chilly as i folded and stacked the brightly colored chairs that were scattered around the pool. they lay in a disconsolate heap, as if knowing they were going to be huddling miserably under a tarp for the next seven months. then i collected all the pool toys and put them in the large chest where we keep everything. i inhaled deeply and took in the summer scent of chlorine and sun tan lotion for the last time-and slammed the lid shut.
and that's when my summer ended.
when i was younger and i had a case of the winter blues, i used to go into the bathroom and open the bottle of suntan lotion, and like a genie's lamp, the summer memories used to come flooding back of sunshine and happy days. (gosh, i really hated school back then)
but for me it ended earlier.
even though i started school after labour day, the summer didn't end until the day i packed up the pool chairs. it was breezy and slightly chilly as i folded and stacked the brightly colored chairs that were scattered around the pool. they lay in a disconsolate heap, as if knowing they were going to be huddling miserably under a tarp for the next seven months. then i collected all the pool toys and put them in the large chest where we keep everything. i inhaled deeply and took in the summer scent of chlorine and sun tan lotion for the last time-and slammed the lid shut.
and that's when my summer ended.
when i was younger and i had a case of the winter blues, i used to go into the bathroom and open the bottle of suntan lotion, and like a genie's lamp, the summer memories used to come flooding back of sunshine and happy days. (gosh, i really hated school back then)
Sunday, September 21, 2008
my handicap
please don't ever ask me to buy soda.
i can't do it.
i don't like soda, so i never drink it. so when I'm asked to get soda, and I'm not given a specific list of exactly what to buy, i can stand in the aisle in front of the bottles for hours. is coke better than Pepsi? what is fresca the diet version of? what's the difference between soda with lime and soda with lemon? do people drink fanta or that other gross looking purple soda?
i can run any kind of errand. i can go to home depot to buy pipes. i can pick up paint, get pictures printed, have keys copies, get kerosene canisters, fill up a car with gas, take pets to the vet, or drop off clothing at the cleaners.
just PLEASE don't ask me to buy you soda.
i can't do it.
i don't like soda, so i never drink it. so when I'm asked to get soda, and I'm not given a specific list of exactly what to buy, i can stand in the aisle in front of the bottles for hours. is coke better than Pepsi? what is fresca the diet version of? what's the difference between soda with lime and soda with lemon? do people drink fanta or that other gross looking purple soda?
i can run any kind of errand. i can go to home depot to buy pipes. i can pick up paint, get pictures printed, have keys copies, get kerosene canisters, fill up a car with gas, take pets to the vet, or drop off clothing at the cleaners.
just PLEASE don't ask me to buy you soda.
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