My schedule yesterday

Just for a quick idea of why I've fallen off the face of the earth for most non-Cincinnati people.

6am - Alarm rings. Ignore it.
6:30am - Jonathan and I get up. He leaves at 7am, I do last-minute homework.
8am-11am - Walk to school, sit in class, take notes, walk home
11am-1:30pm - Come home. Call utility company and internet company to switch service to new house. Call U-Haul to confirm truck. Arrange for delivery of washer/dryer and guest bed, make appointment with CPA so we can do our taxes and thus the FAFSA, call Dell to get my laptop fixed (the battery won't charge). Pay bills. Pack 7 boxes.
1:30pm-5:30pm - Walk back to school, classes, meeting with prof about upcoming paper. Lose my daily calendar, which I still haven't found.
5:30pm - Run back home, organize house for prospective renter coming at 6pm. Pack 2 more boxes. Confirm meeting with electrician after dinner. Skim homework.
6:00pm - Prospective renter moved til 7pm. Am annoyed. Eat dinner. Try to organize basement so can move things easier.
7:15pm - Jonathan gets home. He eats dinner, we load boxes I've packed into car. Give up on prospective renter, assume landlord will meet them. Leave for new house.
7:30pm - Arrive at new house. Meet with electrician to go over work he will do next week. Bring boxes into house, unpack them upstairs while Jonathan cleans the kitchen.
9:45pm - Leave for home. When get home do more homework, Jonathan does work on laptop. Eat way more cookie dough than will ever be healthy.
11:00pm - Go to bed. Stay awake for half hour thinking of upcoming to-do list.

6:00 am today - Start all over, but substitute packing and laundry for things like phone calls.

WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!

As of 4pm today, we own a house!! They even spelled my name right on the title. The process took about an hour, and there were eight people there, more than I was expecting. Jonathan and I went right to our new home after the closing and dropped off two boxes. It wouldn't have been really ours without our stuff in it!


Here is Jonathan celebrating with his cigar. He got it in Cancun, Mexico, on our honeymoon and was saving it for our next big life event. That was tonight! He only had about five puffs, however, and then was done. They look really cool, but sure do stink.

Today was wonderful, but was the climax of a crazy week. We're still packing boxes, are dealing with heavy work and school schedules, and are planning our move next weekend (this weekend was out because I leave for my pulpit early tomorrow morning). What fun!

Back to the mundane

This will be completely unsurprising to all who know us, but the last weekend has been about food. Mediterranean with Ari and Xandy, rice and chicken with Jessica and Michael, Skyline chili with Jeffrey, leftovers to try and empty out our fridge, and chocolate chip cookie dough galore as a self-medicated stress reliever. Yesterday I attended a mandatory all-day teacher's seminar, and I have to admit, it was virtually identical to ones I've attended in California. Except... hehe... the food was better. Instead of salmon salad and the like, here they had good old-fashioned veggie lasagna with breadsticks.

Jonathan and I visited one of his coworkers last night because he has the exact same screen we're thinking of buying. And now my lovely husband and I are having issues. I think the screen is too big for the room, and he very politely disagrees. He says there is no such thing as a too-large screen. I say of course there is, and we don't want to have one. I've now polled my dad, a few friends from school, and Jonathan asked his coworker and the coworker's girlfriend. I'm all about sociology and gender constructions, but it's amazing how opinions are split exactly 100% based on if the person asked is a girl or a guy.

This week is going to be nuts. Tomorrow we make a ton of phone calls to finalize the paperwork with the broker and our current landlord, Wednesday is the walk-through, Thursday we close, Friday and Saturday I'm at my pulpit, and Sunday the electrician comes over to the house to fix the last remaining things. Then next Monday is school again and packing. It's going to be so hard to focus in class, and for Jonathan to focus at work. Lalalala Torah, yes, right, notes, hmm, house!

I'm so done living here

We came home from a wonderful dinner at Jessica's to find that we couldn't get in our house. There was a chain on the side door, which is the shared entrance for both floors. This made *both* entrances to our house chained closed, because Jonathan and I always keep the front door chained for security, and go out through the side.

We rang the neighbor's doorbell three times and waited in the literally freezing cold for him to come down. "Can we help you?" he says. We tell him the door is chained and we can't get in. He closes the door in our face, goes to the side door, unchains it, and goes back upstairs. He doesn't even have the decency to unlock the door for us, not to mention apologize.

Five more days til closing... five more days.

Why it feels like my life is crazy

The whole living room and dining room look like this. We close on our house in six days, and will start moving boxes right after. The furniture gets moved out on February 2nd.

The last of the wedding goodness

30-second interview with Joe

Alan's advice to Joe

Dan's advice to Joe

Michal's advice to Nicole

Splendid wedding

From left to right: Alan, Jonathan, Dan, Joe and Nicole

So all of you have heard of our terrible flight back, but I haven’t talked about the whole reason for risking life and limb with Delta: Joe and Nicole’s wedding!!

This was my first run at being a groomsman, and I took my new responsibility very seriously. I was here for Joe, and by the look of him when I arrived, he needed all the help he could get. There were some difficult guests making life hard, and the hotel with the reservation for the out of town arrivals decided to tear out half its contents and rebuild it while everyone was staying. Joe likes things to go as planned, and this definitely wasn’t going to plan.

I did my best to help where I could, but mostly I just stood by his side and assured him that no matter what, the wedding was going to happen and in the end, it will all be wonderful.

Things started looking up for Joe once we got to the rehearsal and he was finally reunited with his beautiful bride to be, Nicole. The love for each other was obvious in their eyes and if they looked half this much in love on the day of the wedding, everyone would take back happy memories. We ran through the ceremony and I was assigned as guard to the post-ceremony retreat for the bride and groom. Apparently gaining a few extra pounds makes one bouncer material. The wedding planner went over everything with us in the unyielding determination of a marine drill instructor. Her best quote was when she told Joe about the dangers of being late to his own wedding: “The wedding is going to start at 5:30 sharp, and whoever is here will be going down the aisle.” We knew she wasn’t kidding, too.

After rehearsal was the dinner with the out-of-towners. We were served an elegant dinner in a posh little restaurant with a view of the water. As soon as dessert was finished Dan Bord, Best Man and brother of the groom (and like Joe from Britain), Alan Brown, fellow groomsmen and old friend of Joe (who is Scottish and has the thick brogue to prove it), and myself spirited Joe away with Ethan for our covert plans of single male bonding. This plan primarily consisted of going to a few pubs and getting him sloshed. It was a wonderful evening that I’m of course sworn to secrecy about, but let’s just say that I now have a new association with Irish pubs and female undergarments.

The next day, we the intrepid groomsmen joined up, dressed in our tuxes and ready for the evening’s grand affair. Our first stop was the family home of Nicole, where many fine shots were taken of the family, the groomsmen, bridesmaids, and of course Joe and Nicole (who was looking every bit the part of the beautiful bride). After the pictures were taken and people were getting ready to go to the Temple, Dan sat down with me and asked my opinion of what to do with the rings. I suggested that he keep them on him in a pocket so he wouldn’t forget them before the ceremony. A suggestion I later came to regret….

At the Temple we took more pictures as we awaited the arrival of guests. We also did some last minute review of what we are to do and where we are to stand. Nicole and Joe went off to do something or another before guests would arrive and I was left alone in the sanctuary with Alan when Dan entered with the words “Bollocks!!!” (in his thick British accent). Alan and I turned to see him pale-faced and looking frantic. We stared at him, puzzled by his outburst. In the three days I’d spent with him, he was always cool as a cucumber, but this was a side of Dan I hadn’t seen. It was the truly terrified side of Dan. He began scanning the floor with his eyes, looking for something desperately.

“I’ve lost the rings!!! There was a hole in the pocket of the tux and now I think they fell out somewhere on the ground!!! HELP ME LOOK!” Dan later told me that during this time he was imagining himself as the “man that lost the rings.” He was sure that both his family and Nicole’s would disown him for this.

Alan and I began looking around and asked if he was sure he hadn’t put in another pocket. Dan said “yeah, yeah, I’m sure (in his very British accent), they were right here in this pocket with the hole in it…” and he paused and began patting the area of his tux side pocket. He stopped and squeezed a part of the jacket seam. “Wait! I think I found one!”

We ran over and saw an outline of a ring sitting just above the bottom seam of his tux jacket. Immediately Alan and I began groping Dan’s jacket (with Dan in it) for the second ring. In hindsight, I’m glad we were alone in the sanctuary. We found it, further around the bottom seam, near Dan’s butt. Then came the part of how do we get them out of the seams of Dan’s jacket.

Being men, our first thought was to have Alan and I hold Dan upside down and shake him vigorously, but he was lanky and unbalanced so we decided to come up with a new strategy. We examined the hole in his pocket. It was just big enough for a man’s finger, or ring, to fall through. I was thinking of how I could manipulate the rings back through the hole when Alan took the Scottish approach and ripped the hole open enough to fit his fist through.

Before you ask, NO, it NEVER occurred to us to take his jacket off before fetching the ring.

I then had the pleasure of seeing Alan and Dan engage in some bizarre form of Twister as Alan shoved his arm into the seams of Dan’s jacket (while it was still being worn by Dan, who was standing and had to keep flinging his leg in the air in awkward positions while clinging to Alan to keep from falling over). All the while I was doing all I could to stifle my laughter at the sight before me. Larry, Moe, and Curly would have been proud.

At last Alan retrieved them both from the nether regions of Dan’s tux. No sooner were they safely in the tightly clinched hands of Dan when Joe walks into the sanctuary. We look at each other uneasily. Joe asks how we are doing and we glance at each other, nod and say fine. Then Joe says, “Oh good...” then turns to Dan, “You do have the rings don’t you?” Dan looks at us, we look at him, and then Dan smiles back at Joe, puts on his best façade of confidence and says, “Of course, we got it covered Joe. No problems.”

Joe smiles happily and says in his very British way, “Wonderful, that’s just wonderful, because that is about the only thing that would totally muck up the whole wedding. The whole affair would be buggered if those rings were lost. Glad you’re on top of it!” He smiles happily in his ignorance and pats his brother on the shoulder as Alan and I pitch in our confident affirmations on how we are fully on top of the Ring Tending Duties. As soon as he leaves the room the three of us sigh and fall into the pews, going over “what were the bloody odds of that happening.” I looked down and Dan’s hands were still shaking. We all decided that Joe needn’t know about any of this until after the ceremony.

We went off to the Ketubah signing were I got to put my signature down on the sacred parchment as witness to this blessed event. As soon as the rest of the guests arrived the wedding started. Standing there just outside the chuppah, I got to see one of the most romantic and heartfelt ceremonies I have ever seen. I’m not one to cry at movies, and I have NEVER felt like crying at a wedding, but I had to admit, I was really choked up at this one. Myself and Michal aside, I have never seen two people look at each other with such love. If anyone had any doubts about their marriage, it was put to rest right then.

After the ceremony ended and everyone had dried their eyes, we went off to the reception and partied like it was 1999. Over the evening and the next day we talked and bonded with many of Joe and Nicole’s friends, many of whom we hope to stay in touch with. Hotel room aside, it ranks as one of the best weddings I have ever attended, and I have been to a lot of weddings.

Sunday was bittersweet as we all had to say our goodbyes and make our respective journeys home. Joe and Nicole flew to New York, Dan and Alan went back to the UK, others journeyed to LA and Boston, and of course, Michal and I flew to Ohio. We got to spend some extra hours with Alan as we went to the airport together, and at last had to hug him a final farewell before we boarded our ill-fated flight home.

For many more pictures of the wedding, click here.

Mazel tov!

To Jenny and Gabe in sunny Irvine. Their new son Benjamin weighs 7lb 14oz and looks adorable!

Rabbinic tidbits

I learned something completely new today, and I feel like I should have put it together long before. The rabbis from the 2nd century CE on said that they had authority over the Jews because their words were based off the Bible. They said that the Bible is "God's words," which many people believe today. But if you look in the Bible itself, only a small part of it is God's dialogue. The rest is written by an omniscient, anonymous narrator. The Bible never considers itself to be written by God. It was the rabbis and their predecessors (the ones who revolted against the Second Temple priests in the Maccabeean revolt, using the Bible as their base of authority) who adapted the authorship of the Bible to suit their purposes, so that they could interpret it as they wished. Cool, huh?

In other news, Simcha has become very whiny. He sees all the boxes and goes ballistic, and he hasn't really left us alone since we got back from vacation. Jonathan had to get up twice last night to shush him so he'd stop meowing outside our door.

Wedding write-up and pictures coming soon.

a REALLY bad flight home

I plan on writing an entry on Nicole and Joe's Fabulous Wedding, but before I do, I need to recover from the flight from hell. Rather than write my normal dramatic play by play, I'm going to paste my letter of complaint to Delta airlines below. I'm seriously considering purchasing the URL "Deltasucks.com". But if my experience is any indicator, someone probably already has a site there.

Here's my letter to Delta's "customer care" department.

I’m writing in to you by the recommendation of your customer service. Though I have had continuous problems with delays and flight cancellations with Delta in the half dozen or so flights I have taken with you in the past six months, last night surpasses them all and ranks as THE worst flight of my life. This is a considerable feat considering my extensive travel experience.

It was on the second leg of a connecting flight that was to go from Cincinnati to Dayton. The first leg that went from Norfolk VA to Cincinnati had been delayed of course, and I had to run to the opposite end of the airport in order to get to the gate on time. I arrived there only to find out that the pilot could not be found and the flight was to be delayed until he would arrive. No estimate on when that would be was ever given.

When we finally did board, we sat on the ground for half an hour then taxied for another 20 minutes before it was decided we needed to be de-iced. That took another 40 minutes as we waited in line to be de-iced. Then we were told that we had run out of fuel from sitting on the ground with our engines running, so we had to taxi back again to get more fuel. That took another 30 minutes. At this point we had been on the ground, locked on the plane for almost two hours!! In addition, no food or snacks were offered, even when asked by the now starving passengers (myself included). Once in the air, we seemed to meander for about an hour, which was odd as the flight should take less than 20 minutes since we were only going about 60 miles to the Dayton airport. We finally got a message from the captain, who stated that some of the landing gear wouldn’t ascend and that we would have to make an emergency landing back at CINCINNATI! We circled for at least another 30 minutes, not descending, making us all wonder what the hell the pilot was doing. Apparently there was some uncertainty about how to get the rest of the landing gear back down properly so we could land. My wife was terrified and in tears, and everyone was praying that we would just making it back down alive. During this whole fiasco, we were told we weren’t allowed to leave our seats, even to go to the bathroom, which only added to our discomfort.

We finally did land and were instantly rushed off to a room where we were told we had to stay until management was contacted. We were refused any food, drink, or compensation of any type during this waiting period that lasted for more than a half hour. The biggest irony is that I live in Cincinnati, and was only flying into Dayton because of Delta’s strange ticket-pricing strategy that makes any Cincinnati resident on a budget to reboard a plane in the Cincinnati airport and fly to Dayton only to drive back to Cincinnati. At this point, I just wanted to grab my luggage from the plane and have a taxi drive me 10 miles to my house. This modest request was refused by the unfriendly man standing guard over us and holding our luggage hostage. When at last we were informed that we could get our luggage, we were told that we could not receive any compensation for the taxi home. After being ignored, starved, and terrified, I was appalled that after all of that, I was refused the simple courtesy of being driven home.

To add to all of this, a friend of mine had driven out to pick us up from the Dayton airport and was told by Delta that our flight landed normally in Dayton, even AFTER we had landed back in Cincinnati with our malfunctioning landing gear. Thus, Delta not only ruined my evening, but that of my friend’s as well.

This could be seen as a comedy of errors by Delta, a series of unfortunate events caused by poor planning, bad training, lapsed maintenance, and misguided management. One could, in hindsight almost laugh at this if it wasn’t for the fact that we are talking about air transportation here. The risk and injury to the passengers of flight 5516 is impossible to erase by any compensation. For me and my very shaken wife, I would expect at the very least, full refund of the money spent on our tickets ($476.20) and taxi fare ($36). Any additional compensation would go a long way in repairing such an indelible injury to us.

We're alive!

Sorry for the long blogging lag! We're now back from Virginia and I have TONS of pictures to put up. Nicole and Joe's wedding was amazing, I reconnected with HUC people, met a lot of fabulous new people, and Jonathan looked great in his tux. We hate Delta, the plane flight back was hellish, but we got in late last night and the cats met us at the door.

Many more details (and pictures!) to follow. Right now, off to class!

Pictures for the purpose of... pictures

Wrestling=biting=love

Osher apparently is a bill sitting in my inbox.

Whaaat? We're helping you pack!

But I don't waaanna get out.

It has been a fabulous day. We got an email from Savta and Avraham offering to finance our soon-to-be-purchased high-definition LCD screen. Jonathan heard from a falconer and is going to apprentice with him. And I made sugar cube and candy temples with my third grade today, and they had a blast.

Happy Sunday, people!

Hi Chana!

That's the whole post. :)

Happy New Year's!

We had a lovely New Year's Eve with Ari, Matt and Erin. There was Thai food, board games, champagne, good music, and watching the ball drop. I have to admit, I actually felt a twinge of nostalgia while watching Ryan Seacrest. He used to make my morning commutes bearable. The Cincinnati DJs are good, but not nearly as self-righteous or pompous... and therefore, not nearly as amusing.

Yesterday we went and got FURNITURE!! Thanks to my father's generous gift, we are now the proud owners of a double bed (for our guest room), a desk for Jonathan, a dining room table, a china cabinet, and an extra bookshelf. And if I may say so myself, we got them at a steal. As a treat to ourselves afterwards we got this globe for $40. Both of us have always wanted one.

Isn't it pretty? Not only is it textured, but it's accurate too with all the newest former USSR countries.

We woke up this morning all set to go back to school/work and lo and behold, it was snowing! Seriously snowing. (At least for me. Anyone back east, skip this paragraph). There are two inches of snow on the ground, and it's 9 degrees out. According to weather.com, it feels like -5.

Me going "aaagh it's cold." I promptly threw a snowball at Jonathan.

I never really believed people when I heard the "every snowflake is unique" schpiel. Even in third grade when they had us make paper snowflakes for the first time, I remember thinking, "but it's just white stuff!" Then we got in the car.

The windshield actively proves me wrong. They really are in different dazzling shapes!

In other news, our cat-sitting gigs are now over. And in case they were feeling ignored, Sandra and David sent over some new toy mice for Simcha and Osher. They're better than TV, I swear.

Discovering the mouse.