30 years

I've been quite lax on posting recently, mostly its because I don't have any time. I have one of those strange jobs where I am actually busy for the better part of 9 hours a day. When I started blogging I would take a couple minutes each day, but then I was informed that non-business websites were against company policy during the non-lunch hour. Which is strange because I wrote the Internet use policy and I certainly didn't include that. In any case, daf yomi takes up my lunch time in general so I am basically in a non-writing time period.

It's my birthday. I'm 30. Ouch.

As I expected, my older brother blogged a story that he loves to tell about me on a visit to the Skokie spa (or yeshiva. whatever). I made chocolate chip cookies for work because the custom here is to bring cake or something in honor of your birthday. I made damn good cookies. Even though the ingredients in the Galilee are different then the ingredients in Southfield.

Cooking in the galilee, and maybe cooking anywhere in Israel is much different then the same in the US. You really have to consider the ingredients to be Israeli. In order to work, it needs to be beaten. and beaten. and beaten. and beaten. ok you get the point. the problem I think stems from the sefardi brown sugar saying they are not going to mix with the ashkenazic white sugar. that is only the start. The sugar in israel is too sweet. You have to use less sugar in order to get the right sweetness. Also the margarine here sucks. We melt the margarine before mixing it in with the other ingredients otherwise the cookies come out with pieces of margarine in them. No they don't melt after they are in the mix. I don't understand it either. I've explained to my wife that you have to beat everything Israeli if you want them to do what you want. 2R told me the story that she went to a government office and got a number to wait online. she was number 172. They called 172 and told her to go to desk 3. She went to desk 3 and he informed her that he doesn't take any numbers over 25. She patiently explained to him that this is where they told him to go and he replied that it didn't matter. He doesn't take numbers that high. She then asked him where to go and he said try another desk. She went to another desk and someone processed her paperwork. She needed to take his head and bang it into the desk, or at the very least start yelling. Then he would have understood and he would have done it. But she doesn't understand that yet. She's been here 6 months less then we have.

Reflecting back on 30 years is a long time to reflect. I would say that most of my life has been a lot of fun and very enjoyable. I enjoyed elementary school - I pretty much did what I wanted to. I enjoyed high school - I pretty much did what I wanted to. I enjoyed 2 years of beis medrash. Even Baltimore was enjoyable, maybe not in the same way, but I spent a lot of time on someone's couch watching Beevis and Butthead. I think every school I went to, except OJ, threatened to throw me out for some silly reason or other. I think people are just too concrete and cannot handle a little bit of creativity.

I think I had the best time in high school. WITS was definitely the place to be and the people to be with. It was a place where very few people walked out with the same name they walked in with. Being in a class with personalities such as Sal, Swank, Bosh, Rex, Wedge and Bill to mention a few definitely made for interesting times. I have plenty of yeshiva stories to tell, but I will leave the storytelling to airtime.

College was also a lot of fun, though it was mostly the time period and not the actual college. I didn't really socialize on campus that much. I did get a lot of travelling done and met my wife while travelling home from New York, via Toronto, with Whatsa in my grandparents new car. I met tons of people and had a small group of friends to hang out with in each city I stopped in. I hung out with the goon squad of Chicago when I was there. A bit older and a bit wackier but lots of fun in any case. Guys like goober and gumby just had a different way of having fun.

I'm not even going to get satarted on kids, which consist of some of the most frustrating and most enjoyable experiences on this earth.

Moving to Israel and now living in the holy land is definitely an experience that I am loving every minute of. The land speaks to me and the aura of holiness gives me the strength to deal with the Israelis who were here first. I found Maalot quite by accident after deciding I was going to live up north but not having anywhere to go telling my wife to call her friend and have her rent us a place until we decided where we wanted to live. The clean mountain air and the view reminds me of home. And no. there are still no mountains in Detroit. We are 20 minutes from the beach, which we visit on a regular basis. We live in the hills of the galilee, in some of god's most gorgeous countryside. God willing we will be buying a house soon, though it is too soon to tell for sure because there are tough negotiations going on.

In short it's been a good 30 years.

I've got to thank god for this life.