I always wondered how the rabbis sat down and dealt with which New World foods would be kosher. "I have studied and studied and I see nothing in the Torah about corn. Didn't G*d know about North America?"

For grains, it's complicated. Most of the things that aren't specifically mentioned as not-for-Passover but are considered not-for-Passover by Eastern European Jews are things that used to be ground or processed or stored in such a way that it was pretty much impossible for them to not get mixed with some stuff that was definitely not-for-Passover. (Like, back then, in that part of Europe, the usual way to eat beans was to grind them into a flour, using the same mill that may have just been used to grind wheat, so there was no way to get the beans without some wheat in them.) In Span and Italy and the middle East and North Africa, the food was processed differently, and there were different rabbis considering the question, so Jews from there will eat rice and beans and corn on Passover.

(For most non-Passover questions of kashrut, there isn't so much of an issue, because for what mammals and fish you can eat, it describes specific physical characteristics that the animal has to have, rather than naming specific ones, so if you get to a new continent and there are some new animals wandering around, you'd just got to look at their feet and their stomachs and figure out if they fit the rules or not. So bison are kosher, deer are not.)

Cool bike. They need to make a robotic one.

I just had a huge banana split. I feel like a python that's just swallowed a pig - like I need to just lay about digesting for a week or two....

Ooh, that sounds good! I had a well-balanced dinner, in stages, that ended up being one thing too many:

1) small bowl of chili
2) small tortilla with cheese
3) brocolli with ranch dressing
4) thin mints

"I have studied and studied and I see nothing in the Torah about corn.

I like the part (explained to me only recently) where, because meat and milk aren't to be eaten together, and meat is the main course of a meal, and chicken is also a main course, to be on the safe side you should not have chicken with milk. Even though chickens are not mammals and thus could not be said to be cooked "in its mother's milk."

I like that somebody sat down (eons ago) and had to think that through. It pleases me, the same way that discussions about whether mittens count as gloves, and vice versa, please me.

I've just been brushing my cat for ten or fifteen minutes straight. There is nothing she loves as much as being brushed. Which is good, as being a long-haired cat, she needs to be brushed regularly.

Sometimes I ask her why she has so much fur. "You can't possible need that much fur," I tell her. She just looks at me like the question's absurd.

When I was little, I was utterly aghast that my friends' jewish grandmother had never eaten a cheeseburger! Oh, and how she disapproved that they had. (They lazily kept kosher. During holy days, they definitely did. The rest of the time? Hit or miss.)

I remember when they were off in Mexico on sabbatical, we'd eat at her apartment (attached to their house) once a week, and she'd put on a whole proper multicourse meal. Changing tablecloths, using different ovens, etc. I loved her matzoball soup. I'm pretty sure she explained why she did everything with a good dose of religious education, but I was young enough, I sadly don't recall a lot of it. She was so very proper, could be a bit of a pill, but her heart was huge.

Huh, I haven't thought about those dinners in years.

She just looks at me like the question's absurd.

Well, duh. It is. It gets her more brushing.

It's always seemed to me that long-haired cats are the preeniest. I mean, most cats preen like there is no tomorrow, but longhair cats the most. Or maybe I've just had a lot of longhaired diva-cats.

So I'm watching a PBS thing on caring for your parents. And maybe I shouldn't. Because I'm really not ready to face this, but it is in the back of my head in the past few years. I mean, they are fine now. But dad's talk of retirement, mom's physical limits... it's coming. And I know they have very strong views about kids being primary caregivers, having done that themselves. But ... there are so many variable.

So it is scary. But it will come and we will manage.

Oh god, that scares the crap out of me -- especially seeing how much my mother and her two siblings have done for her parents over the years, and knowing there's just one of me. I assume at some point I'll have to move back up there.