Reasons I have not been posting

 

1. Florida Football

 

My weekends are generally consumed in a rage of drunkenness and screaming at a television set. This is usually followed by hangovers and trying to get ready for the week ahead by having a few beers watching Minnesota Viking football. However, the Vikings usually just make me vomit, not the beer, just the play calling. On top of giving at least my weekends to my alma mater I also have been spending a ridiculous amount of time reading articles and scouring message boards in excitement for upcoming games. I am actually already planning my Baton Rouge tailgate for Oct. 6.

 

2. Jewish Holidays

 

I should have so much to say about these but for the life of me can not put them down into words. Spending Rosh Hashana with my Mom and sisters was great as it was the first time my mother has ever made that particular meal. And who complains about apples and honey? No one. Plus the challah was fantastic. Yom Kippur this year was a pretty hard fast for me, normally I go my 24+ hours without anything crossing my lips with ease but this time I had hunger pangs by 9 pm and by late the next afternoon my headache was terrible. Of course as soon as I broke fast I felt sick from eating. Go figure.

 

3. Video Games

 

Most people already know I am a huge nerd. They already know I play way too many video games but what many do not know, is that over the summer during a crazy storm the power cord on my XBOX blew out. Microsoft sent me a free replacement; however that replacement took two weeks to get here. And in that time NCAA 08 came out, being a practical consumer not one known for making rash purchases I used the broken power cord excuse to buy an XBOX 360 with NCAA. I was not enamored with the game and actually have not even opened the case in weeks. Instead I have been playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion nearly non stop in my free time. I am addicted, I plan it into my day and I have actually gotten to the point where I am extending the game instead of pushing forward to beat it. Though, today may start something wholly different as it is Halo 3 day and my copy is waiting for me now. I did not call in Halo sick as some others so I will have to wait.

 

4. TV shows

 

The new seasons are back starting this week and to be prepared I spent my time not doing the other things on this list by catching up on shows DVDs so I would be ready. Particularly, I watched all three seasons of the Office. I had really doubted this show based on season 1 but it is an amazing show and I can not wait for Thursday night. As a matter of fact the take over of my DVR has already begun with Family, Chuck and Heroes. All shows looked pretty good in their openers which gives hope to a solid season to follow from shows like House, Smallville and Friday Night Lights.

 

So, there you have it, I could add a fifth item to this list but I really don’t want to talk about work. I will just say my new position has me busier than I have been in a while and I still have no idea what I am doing. Hopefully that will change or someone will notice, at this point I would take either but so far everyone seems to think I know exactly what I am talking about while I feel like I don’t have a clue. Oh well, better get back to work.

Haven’t done this in a while

A couple of years ago I was working on the road over St. Patrick’s Day, when it also happened to be the opening weekend of March Madness. At the time I was alone in a hotel room watching games and had a lot of things I wanted to write about but nothing longer than a paragraph or two, so I just wrote about all of them in one monster post. Since, I have not been posting very regularly anyway; I figured why not try that again. So here goes. Feel free to skip to something you like.

 

 

On A Somber Note

I didn’t even realize it until I woke up this morning but it is the 6^th anniversary of 9/11. Granted I have taken a pessimistic view on the subject since day one but it has changed the country and it has resonated for some people for a long time. I prefer to listen to Colin Powell on the subject when he says that terrorism is not the biggest threat we face as a nation because acts of terror will not in themselves change the American way of life. Only we can do that, and hopefully we are strong enough to not let outside stimuli force us into giving up the tenets that we live by. Still, I doubt I will ever forget where I was that day, the way I felt and how the rest of that week unfolded. The mood that day in Gainesville is one that I have felt on very few occasions and it will stick with me for a long time.

 

On a lighter note

September is still my favorite month of the year and 1/3 of the way into it September is living up to the hype. After going for months without much activity in the DC area I have spent plenty of time going out, not making it home at the end of the night and just doing my usual drinking partying that comes with football season. Unfortunately, the Gator bar makes it really hard for me to watch games at all; I mostly just sit around drinking and talking to people until I lose my voice. After Labor Day weekend my voice was completely gone, after the Viking game on Sunday it was only half gone, thankfully the NFL is not all that exciting or I would have been done for.

 

Summer, what happened to you?

I don’t mean that in the sense of where did it go, it was definitely here, it was definitely hot and I did get to enjoy parts of it. No, my question is more about how summer has gone from my favorite time of year to my least. My childhood ranking system looked like this:

1. Summer
2. Summer
3. Summer
4. Summer

 

Adult ranking system

1. Fall
2. Spring
3. Winter
4. Summer

 

How the heck did this happen? I have two theories on the subject. The first being that as I grew up a Floridian the only seasons I knew of were Hot, Hotter, Hurricane and rain at 4. The second theory is what I like to call Summer Camp syndrome. To this day I will bump into people who will bust straight into summer camp talk. It happened on Saturday, it happens all the time, and the conversations are always the same, people talk about what camp they attended and what cabins they were in and then begin playing the name game. But, that has nothing to do with my theory, at least not directly, no; Summer time without summer camp is simply hot, rainy and bad TV. But Summer time with summer camp is the outdoors, new friends, lakes and kickball and if you go on to be a camp counselor it also means remote locations and drunken nights. Every June I seriously consider quitting my job to go work at sleep away camp, but every time I realize its not the best idea and decide to suffer through another boring summer with bad TV, bad weather and bad movies.

 

I am a bit of an introvert

I think I have always known that to be true, though I am not sure people who know me understand. So if you care, read this little article that I stumbled upon. I am not as bad as the description it gives but there are some definite similarities. I don’t consider myself anti-social as I do need social interaction as well as time alone but I definitely get that feeling sometimes of being overwhelmed by too much face time. This summer when I spent 5 of 6 weekends out of town either visiting family or working I was constantly with people. When I finally got back to being home for a while all I wanted to do was decompress and spend some time alone. So, I did that until September started.

 

I could keep doing these short things all day but I will stop here

I am going home tomorrow for Rosh Hashana. I have not been back to Florida in six months and I am really looking forward to my trip home. My mom ordered challah and is making homemade chicken soup and brisket and I just can not wait. It has been far too long since she has made me a home cooked meal, so I will forgive her for making me cook as well. I am also really happy that the holiday lines up perfectly with the UF-UT weekend so that my cousin and I can drive up and see our beloved Gators in person. It is sort of becoming a family tradition as we attended the game last year in Knoxville.

 

 

And on that note I am out, maybe I will put up some pictures after the game or something, it has been a long time since I have posted pics. I actually do not think I have put up any pics of myself, maybe I will. I can guarantee that if we barbecue you will see pics of what we eat and probably a bottle of Jim Beam.

Seder was…

It was great. After days of stressing over the details and then an entire day of cooking and cleaning, my largest Seder to date went off with only one minor hitch*. And even that little problem didn’t come up until the night was already over. All in all, it was a fantastic night featuring roast chicken, brisket, charoset, two kugels, magic bars, tzimmus and broccoli, lots of wine and some interesting revelations**. We did a cliff notes version of the Passover story, but still covered all the good stuff and sang dayenu. Some of us even took the drinking of four glasses of wine literally which is why I am useless today. The number of attendees at one time ballooned to 15 so when a few people cancelled and the number fell back down to a more manageable 12, I was happy. It was unfortunate circumstances*** that kept some good friends away but it made my life a lot easier, there was hardly enough room for the 12 of us as is. Now that it is all over and the only thing left to do is finish cleaning up I have to say I am very pleased with the outcome and plan on continuing the tradition next year no matter whether I am right here in NoVA, or in Jerusalem as we all proclaim during the Seder.

 

* After dinner my roommate and I were cleaning up when we realized we couldn’t shut the dishwasher. In the state I was in I could not figure out how to cure this ill, but this morning in much better shape I was able to remove the obstruction and get her going again. Now that the dishwasher is working we can finish the cleaning.

 

** Interesting revelation #1 – my buddies girlfriend who we all thought was Jewish was in fact not.

Interesting revelation #2 – my friend Michelle who is most certainly Jewish was not Bat Mitzvahed and I am thoroughly shocked. However, it has been my dream for someone to have a Bar Mitzvah at our age; we just need to convince her parents to pay for the party.

 

*** So, my very good friends Mike and Courtney got very sick over the past few days and they felt terrible for not being able to make it last night. I felt worse for them, after all they missed out on a good time because they were sick and that sucks. I hope they get better; maybe I should bring them some soup?

Just Be

One of the major practices in Judaism is the observance of Shabbat. In my pre Bar Mitzvah days this represented to me being forced to go to services on Friday or Saturday morning. Back then services were spent mostly running around with the other kids my age, not paying attention and trying not to get in trouble while flirting with the Hebrew school girls. In my post Bar Mitzvah days my attendance at services seriously waned, at first we still went on high holidays, then just once in a while until finally we didn’t go at all. But, in the past few years my feeling toward Shabbat has changed greatly, I no longer just look forward to another weekend; I look forward to a day of rest. I still do not go to Temple as much as I would like but I do make it a point to welcome Shabbat and let a little peace into my life no matter what is going on. Tonight, I will light the candles, close my eyes and let go of all the tasks that make up every other day of the week. It seems so simple and yet so many of us never do it. I am not overly religious but I would like the observance of Shabbat to become a constant in my life.

Someday, I hope to be able to pass on this tradition to a family of my own. I look forward to someday leaving a long week of work to attend Friday night services followed by a family meal and then spend 24 hours to just be. The rest can wait, and I can rest.

Shabbat Shalom