Skip to main content

A day of bits and pieces


Some days, it feels like have gotten nothing done. This is when having this blog comes in handy. As I think about what to post, it forces me to look back at my day and account for my day.

Today I woke up before 5:30 because my youngest had to be awakened to be at school early for a class over night trip. I made him breakfast, ( with hot chocolate made with grated Callebaut chocolate and lots of vanilla) got him out the door for his trip to the country in the driving rain.

I made a flyer for a building light bulb recycling project and tended to other building board work. I did a silly Bollywood dance workout video. I also made the first of five Cholesteral Death Kugel's that I'm making to serve this Shabbat after services as part of our goodbye for our oldest son. At this point, it was 9:30 am.

I went to a rainy grave-side funeral in New Jersey. I also found a printer to do the print work on the invitation that I'm designing. Then I got to work on a second draft of the invitation that you see above.

On the busking front, I received a call back from the office of one of the City Council members that I had called about my son busking. The staffer was outraged and was all gung-ho about taking on helping my son figure out how to busk in Times Square in a kosher way.

I just pulled a second Kugel out of the oven. Several loads of laundry have gotten done during the day as well. Soon, I will begin a marathon laundry fold.

So as I think about it, I did get a fair amount done today.

The invitation is for a bar- mitzvah boy named Noah. After some back and forth we have settled on God's promise to Noah to let nature go through it's usual cycles year after year. We rejected out of hand using the imagery of a dove. We had toyed with the idea of writing the word in an arc/rainbow but have decided on this stylized olive leaf. A similarly shaped olive leaf will be inside the invitation with his Noah's name in both Hebrew and English . The invitation is a gate fold so the invitation text will be on the two outside gates of the inside of the invitation.

Tomorrow the bar-mitzvah mom and I go visit the printer to choose the paper and envelopes and figure out what our various options are. This is a fun piece to work on. The family is wonderful. I love that while they have wonderful ideas, and high standards, they are ready to compromise when reality sets in. So tomorrow while we may not find the perfect envelopes and papers we will find envelopes and papers that will work really well.

Posted by Picasa

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

 I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night.  I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1)  אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה  God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2)  אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר   May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3)  יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

 My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of  linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin.  You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...