Feast of the Seven.....

This year on Christmas Eve we had the traditional feast of the two pizza's, three Jews, one Druid (not really) one seven year-old, one puppy and one puppy incident. The incident happened between the puppy and the seven year-old - but I'll leave it up to you to figure out who peed on who.

Usually I celebrate x-mas eve over at my Dad's house with his wife and her mother. It's always great food and wine and lots of presents plus the family heirloom red crystal glasses come out for their yearly visit. This year they switched the celebration to Christmas day because we had a bigger crowd. When I made it known I was free I was able to get an invitation to go with my friend Todd on a pilgrimage to spend Christmas eve with his family over in the wilds of South Jersey. We packed up Todd's puppy (who is not named Tippy)
and headed over to Jersey. On the way over we stopped for a few last minute gifts including a bottle of wine at one of South Jersey's ubiquitous liqour marts (Starbucks has nothing on the liqour stores over there).

I always love going to see Todd's family because I've known most of them my entire life. His father Ray, step-mother Judy, sister Reina and her daughter Brittany- I almost feel like another member of the family. There is the easy back and forth and gentle kidding and vicious insults (not really) that you expect from good old friends. Todd loves to joke that you never know what there will be to eat when we go over there. I have never actually gone hungry there- but they don't shove food in your face like I'm used to in the Jewish tradition. There was plenty to eat and drink this time - my enjoyment only complicated by the lingering effects of my root canal a few days ago. (My temporary filling came out - but I was able to get some good advice on what to do from Reina who is a dental assistant- actual quote when I showed her my mouth - "Ewwww, grosss!")

The other two Jews there were Ray and Judy's good friends Mark and Elaine who I've met several times. At one point Mark jokingly (I think) wondered if we were going sing "Happy Birthday" considering what we were actually celebrating. Reina says we don't have to because they already did it in church that day- along with a cake and a candle. All of us immediately disbelieved
her, thinking she was trying to pull one over on us Jews and non-believing heathens and fake druids. When Judy backed her up we actually did believe it -
you have to believe Judy because she actually does go to church regularly and even teaches religion. I had never heard of this happening in church, but why not- the cake must be better than those crackers they usually serve.

The evening ended shortly after the incident with the puppy and the seven-year-old ("Really - he never does this anymore, he's very well trained"). We packed up the dog and Todd's gifts and headed out into the Jersey night looking for the all night drugstore. I needed to get something to fill in the new hole in my tooth. Ewwwww gross!

The New Tom Sawyer

I know you're thinking - where has he been? No words of wisdom lately? Too stressed out by the Winter Holidays to write? Well, actually I've been chopping wood. Yes really. Last Saturday my brother Alex, his neighbor Chris and I went out to the suburbs and worked all day to turn a bunch of former trees into (mostly) usable fire logs.

I noticed the piles of wood the first time I was out in Elkins Park at Julies' house (She's my sister-in-Laws' sister). That was almost a year ago and I've been wanting to cut it up ever since. I don't particularly need a lot of wood - I don't have too many fires and I really don't have a great place to keep a bunch of wood, but it just seemed like it would be so much fun to make a bunch of logs into smaller logs. It became a major operation wherein my brother and I had to rent a gas powered "Log Splitter" and then a truck to tow it and to haul all the wood. I ended up putting everything on my credit card ( I'll be reimbursed for most of it). My brother was helping even though he doesn't have a fire place- he's just being a nice guy. Yes, I do mean my brother Alex. I guess he liked the idea of using a manly machine like a log splitter too. Julie's husband Nigel came out to help us as well- and probably to make sure we didn't do any more damage than necessary to his property.

A log splitter is a fairly simple machine - and that's good because none of us had ever used one before. Its basically an I- beam with a pneumatic cylinder attached on top and attached to the cylinder is a fairly sharp steel wedge. You power it up - its kind of loud, but not chain saw loud- you place the wood on one side of the beam and then you pull the handle and the wedge s l o w l y makes it way over and splits it in half. I thought it was going to be something faster like a log guillotine kind of thing. This thing wasn't all that dangerous. We hardly needed the extra eye protection we got. It was kind of fun though- for like the first two hours. Then it go monotonous. We just kept splitting the logs down to a fireplace size. Some of the logs were so big we could split them into 8-10 firelogs. A lot of nice wood too, some Cherry I'm told, some pine maybe- I think some birch. It really smelled great- kind of like a Christmas tree lot.

We got into a rhythm of lifting, splitting and re-splitting and then tossing and stacking the logs. We even made Nigel sing the Monty Python Lumberjack song- he's English so it sounded very authentic. He seemed to know the lyrics pretty well.

We ended up with more than enough wood for everybody. Probably a few cords worth at least. Everyone always likes to talk about cords of fire wood but no one is really sure what a cord is. For all I know I should be spelling it with a "K". Alex says a cord is two piles of logs stacked four feet high and twelve feet long and they usually sell you a "face cord" of fire wood which is just one stack, not two. Anyway, we didn't weigh or measure anything and I'm not sure at all how much wood we got, but I do know I missed my regular Saturday nap and I have a pile of logs I should probably move from my front hallway. So if you need a few logs, don't hesitate to ask. I cut it myself.

December Party

I am not offended by Christmas. Just thought I'd get that out there. Some of the music I can do with out - both popular and Classical xmas music is way overplayed. I hear there are two radio stations here in Philadelphia that start playing ONLY xmas music at about Thanksgiving. Shouldn't that be a part of the UN ban on torture?

It is a holiday celebrated by more than 80% of the US population whether they are religious Christians or not. It is generally a lot of fun and very important for the world economy.

A few years ago a much noticed trend emerged that many non-xmas celebrators were apparently upset by Christmas. So now we have "Holiday" parties at work. And people worry if a decorative wreath or Christmas ornaments will hurt someones' feelings. I never remember Jewish friends or relatives complaining about Christmas and what you call the annual party at the office, but somehow it all got mixed up in the political correctness movement. I was offended when an aunt of mine converted to Judaism and stopped making her amazing Egg Nog at the "Annual" party. She is of course now a much more observant Jew than I am.

We had a Holiday party at my workplace the other evening and it was one of the best I've ever been to. There was a cocktail reception with hors d'oeuvres, a very nice sit-down dinner and then dancing. It was at a local Hotel which has of course decked its' halls in Holiday lights and verdant evergreens. It looked great and I don't think that anyone minded that there weren't fake menorahs too. I'm pretty sure the DJ was Jewish, because I think I've heard him at every Wedding and Bar-Mitzvah I've ever been to. I was surprised about how many of the staff got up to dance immediately. Sometimes people are shy to get up to dance, especially at work. I know I am. I didn't dance until the last song of the night when a coworker dragged me out to the floor. Well, she really didn't have to drag me I was more than happy to get out there - especially since she knew how to dance and could make me look good.

Being a traditional "December Office Party" there was some drinking, and dancing with other peoples' wives/husbands/girlfriends and boyfriends -but I don't think anyone went really overboard. That might have made for a better blog post, though. I had a great time talking to co-workers about stuff besides expense reports and invoices. I was hopping from table to table- talking with a variety of co-workers and their spouses / significant others. Even though I'm pretty new most people know me because I do the payroll and Accounts payable (and my office is near the mailboxes). I hope there are many more chances to go out with my co-workers- no matter what the occasion is or what we say it is- I don't need much of an excuse.

Now, let me tell you what I think of Christmas trees........

One Up

I am a sucker for traditions, especially at Thanksgiving. My High School,The original Central High, has been playing football on Thanksgivng since the 1880's. I've been to a few of those games, but none recently. We have had about the same Thanksgiving dinner with about the same people for about 20 years now. The best thing about it - besides the food always being great - is that both sides of my divorced family are able to come together. My Dad, his wife, his sister, cousins from that side and my Mom, her sister and cousins from their side. In the last few years we have had to expand to two tables - although it isn't just kids at the second one - really no kids at all as most of us are in our 30's now.

All of us "kids" have another tradition we started around ten years ago- the "Cousins" dinner. I don't know if we've ever figured out how long its been exactly. Maybe one of the cousins with a better memory can figure it out. It started because of a lasagne, but it has become one of our favorite traditions and one created by our generation. Lasagne? Oh yeah. One year Alex wanted to add a lasagne to Thanksgiving dinner in the Italian American tradition. Not because we are Italian, but because he likes it better than turkey. Dad, in his wisdom, refused to add it to our menu thinking another big dish would detract from our already bounteous fare. So we decided to have dinner at my apartment or Alex's every year on friday after Thanksgiving and only invite the "kids". We actualy vary the menu every year- we've only had lasagne once or twice. Most of our parents don't feel left out- I'm sure they are happy to not have to plan and pay for another big meal. I'm sure they eat left-overs. Of course over the years we have added spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends and two "real" children (although they haven't actually made it to the dinner yet I'm sure they will). The one constant is probably that every year Alex and I have an arguement about what to make and how much. We have never gone hungry, so I guess we're doing OK.

This year Abby added another tradition onto the cousins dinner that I wish I had thought of. Being a new parent she has been getting into shooting and editing video of her daughter Rebecca - who I always refer to as my neice. So anyway, after making a video about my neice's first year she decided she would document our cousins dinner and ask each of us the same three questions every year (at least I think the questions will be about the same) All of the questions are designed to make us talk a little about what we have done in the past year and what we are thankful for of course. I think it will be fascinating to see the changes in all of us over the years and I wish we had started it ten years ago. It will be a work in progress and continuously growing- just like all new kids -and traditions.