Ashley

A bit of a weird Purim. I showed up very late after all the initial chatting was done, since I was with Laila after her surgery, but fortunately when I arrived there was still some food left. I sat down while the Purimspiel was going on, watching most of it from the other room while I ate black bean burgers and fries and hummus with vegetables. It was entitled "The Tonight Spiel" and all television themed, including a "Niggun or Noggun" quiz show (a niggun is a wordless vocal melody), a dubbed-over version of the Princess Bride wedding scene, a Chicago version of Subway Takes called El Takes, and a Would I Lie to You?" section with the rabbis.

Unlike my complaints about last year, they did change the Megillah reading quite a bit this year. It was all television themed--chapter one of Esther had commentary based on the Real Housewives, chapter three had was based on Survivor, etc--but this was my favorite section:


yoni-labow-5693413a and whoolia45 were both there. I hadn't seen yoni-labow-5693413a in a while, so we caught up, chatted about our kids, I talked to whoolia45 about Laila, and we drank our respective drinks--as was traditional, I had found a drink ticket on the floor and so got an extra drink.

After listening to the Megillah, I saw kevin.hogan.353 and dana.kroop waiting near the door and went over to talk to them. I hadn't spoken to them in quite a while, so dana.kroop caught me up on what's been going on in their lives--kevin.hogan.353 had had quite a few drinks and was more prone to going on tangents--I and told them about Laila. We also mused a bit about the changes we've seen in Mishkan after going for years. dana.kroop said it's a different crowd and that's really true--I keep thinking when I go to a Mishkan event that I really don't know most of the people there, and sure, it's not helped by how I don't get to go very often anymore, but it's true. I look across the crowd and think, "What happened?"

You cannot stop in the same river twice. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Just before I was going to leave, hannah.bloom.75 ran up to me and ask me how the procedure went, so I chatted with her for a bit about how everything went well and Laila was peacefully sleeping when I left. Like she said, Purim was a very appropriate holiday after hearing such good news.

This time it's a Mediterranean restaurant called Oasis Fresh, where I got a vegetarian platter. Basmati rice with dolmas on top, side salad, hummus, and pita. Simple and very good. The rice was much better than that place I got the boiled unflavored rice from (Assyrian...something) with no hummus. I added it to the "good" restaurant list and I'll remember it for the future, though I'm just bringing my lunch tomorrow.

Visited Laila in the hospital yesterday. sashagee told me before I got there that Laila was energetic and chatty earlier in the day, but by the time I got there she was listless and half-asleep. I waited around for an hour but she never got any more energy, but this morning right when I was finishing my breakfast, I got a FaceTime and Laila excitedly showed me Ariel and told me about the wires coming out of her head, so she had more energy at least earlier today. We'll see if she has more energy when I go see her after work today--I saw some pictures that Poppa and Nana took when they visited and she was more subdued then. We'll see.

I've been slowly reading a book that's much more interesting than my slow pace would indicate, called The Son and Heir. The book starts with the author finding an SS uniform hat in their attic and then expands to the story of his family--Dutch in Latvia and owners of a business empire, the clashes between his father and his grandfather over heritage (his grandfather was very proud of being Dutch and his father wanted nothing to do with the Netherlands), the way his father ran away to enlist in the German army to fight the Russians... I'm halfway through the book and the author is three years old, but his father has already divorced his mother, been put on trial for being an SS members and gotten off after only ten months in jail, avoided being sent to South America, and married another (already-married) woman. The book is only half-over. Now that the setup is all over I wonder when we're going to get the author's reaction to all of this?

Computer is still working. It's been over a month now without a single crash and the only thing I changed is plugging some things into the USB ports. Maybe it really was a faulty USB connector. Well, it saved me $2000, so I won't complain. Of course, now sashagee is asking for a gaming laptop so she can play Stardew Valley with mods, and Clair Obscur with the "disgustingly easy" parry mod. I've been looking around but I have no idea what a "mid-range" gaming laptop should look like so it's slow going. I'll gladly take any suggestions if anyone has any.