I'm sorry, Tom. You should be able to spend your birthday any way that makes you happy.

I have eaten dinner. I'm working my way through my second Smirnoff Ice and catching up on Dresden Files and The Riches with TCG, so this day is not a total loss.

I'm hoping that by the time this posts, it will be time for me to leave.

ETA: Dang it!

We have Yehuda because there were 5 boxes for $1.99 at Safeway.

ND, I'm sorry about the job. I don't like that they made you wait so long for disappointing news.

A ex-neighbor in Berkeley tells me that my old apartment was turned into a 2 bedroom and rented for $700 more than I was paying within a week after I left. Dear New Renters: Kevin screwed you.

eta: ((Tom)) That's a hellava thing to say.

My Mom just called me to tell me that I'm being inconsiderate for not spending my birthday with my family.

Thanks, Mom.

I think you once posted that we have the same mother. This confirms it.

UCI's loss, Drew. I'm so sorry.

I have most of Saturday free if you wish to embark on any video game distractions.

I'm way behind in here, but just saw ND's news.

Bah. Drew, they should have hired you. I say that blithely, not knowing the other guy at all, but knowing well how cool you are. Sorry, man.

Look at you , cleaning up actual Chametz!

A friend (who lives in Poland) was telling me she invited a co-worker for dinner over Passover. He's of Jewish heritage but is non-religious. He accepted her invitation, then asked if he could bring anything. She thanked him, but told him no, they were all set. And then he said he only mentioned it, because once before a collegue invited him and another friend to Passover. They brought vodka and cake and never understood why it was not served. He thinks they might have thrown it away.

Oh, that's a sad waste of vodka and cake. I'm going to pretend it was given to gentile neighbors. Well, the cake, anyway. The vodka could easily be stored for a week...

Once we invited some cousins (Jewish, but not terribly religious) for Passover, and they brought some non-pesadik brownies. They'd just figured that, since we don't keep strictly kosher during the year, we wouldn't be keeping Passover.

This was the year that my mother and I edited the Haggadah, because we were having some conflicts between the people who wanted a traditional seder and the people who wanted to be done at a reasonable hour. We compromised on cutting out all the parts that my father refers to as "rabbis doing arithmetic." (For those of you not familiar, it's stuff like:

In Egypt it says of them, "The magicians said to Pharaoh `This is the finger of G-d.' At the sea it says, "Israel saw the great hand that the L-rd laid against Egypt; and the people feared the L-rd, and they believed in the L-rd and in His servant Moses."

Now, how often were they smitten by `the finger'? Ten plagues!

Thus you must conclude that in Egypt they were smitten by ten plagues, at the sea they were smitten by fifty plagues!

And it goes on for pages and pages with various explanations and possibilities and different numbers of possible plagues that smote the Egyptians at the sea.)

Heh, that's DH's favorite part. Though he prefers to expound upon it while we are not waiting to eat.

I kind of miss the traditional seders we'd have with H's mom and the pocket sized haggadah's she'd had for 30 years. This year it'll be first night with just me and H and we might not really do the whole meal and everything because we'll get thet 2nd night (and also because we'll be in Yosemite all this weekend, so prep time will be minimal). But that 2nd night seder is decidedly different from the Sieff family seders, not least because half the people there are Irish. It's fun and in some ways very satisfying, but it's not what I'm used to. It's different to be a guest than to be part of the family, I guess.

ION, I've had Fay's picture open in another tab all day and I keep clicking over to it. So beautiful! Not only is Fay gorgeous, the picture is wonderfully composed and appealing in a way that suits her look.