Hello out there

I know it's been ages since I've blogged ...
Lunch today was an 'Ashkenazic picnic,' or as Iris and Steve Katzner would put it, 'Jewish camping'. That is, first we decided to have a picnic. It was Jessica's idea and it was in order to remove the onus of more cooking and preparing after having just cooked and prepared for Shavuot. I agreed with alacrity. We'd all show up with some salads and stuff in tow and there we'd have it a meal. Ten minutes later, Jess called back. It will be too hot to picnic - the hunt for a suitably shady spot that wasn't too far a walking distance for all included - Jess and Daniel, Miriam and Peretz and kids (Daniel's sister and family), Elise Bernhardt (visiting dignitary from Bklyn) and Lisa and Alan and small children. We discuss various places to picnic and I suggest 'picnicking' on our mirpeset/porch, which is generally shady in the afternoon. This idea is immediately seized upon as the perfect idea. Noa, Miriam and Peretz's youngest, decides to actually have a picnic with friends on real grass and doesn't join us and the rest come to eat on plastic by us. Too many desserts but altogether a good meal.

Daniel told a good story today. He just finished the month or 'shloshim' - the 30 days of initial morning after the death of his father, Leo. He's been looking kind of 'bivak'sin,' or unkempt, that is, in need of a haircut and beard trim. He read that while he's allowed to get a cut after shloshim, he should wait until someone tells him that he should get a cut. He bumps into his regular haircutter in the neighborhood and proceeds to tell him this story. Eitan, the haircutter, said, "Daniel, you must get a haircut immediately." Daniel, wanting to make sure he hasn't too overstretched his bounds, responds that he really has to mean it. Eitan answers, "And I've made you an appointment for tomorrow at 8:30am." Daniel thanks Eitan and arrives the following day for his much anticipated haircut. Eitan cuts his hair and when Daniel goes to pay him, refuses him and said, "I invited you...we're a nation of customs." This from the secular hairdresser. One of those Israeli moments.

Watched Gabe play baseball on his team on Friday. Drove a bunch of boys out to Givat Zeev, a bit outside Jerusalem, sat in the blazing sun for 2, almost 3 hours, reading, watching, commenting (I did take on break to walk into town and get a cold drink and find a place to go the bathroom) and enjoying the chitchat in Hebrew and English between the boys as they alternately supported and occasionally berated each other, in good humored fashion, throughout the afternoon.