Argh. There are loud drunk people outside my window. As usual.

It's not like I was actually trying to sleep yet, but I do want some quite. With the echoes in the alley, I can hear every word of their conversation.

Feel-better-and-escape-the-ER~ma to Tep and Hil and vw's kiddo.

askye, the bouquet sounds beautiful. And "just because" is perfectly splendid.

I'm bewearied. Since getting off work I've: shown the car to a prospective buyer (he thinks there may be something serious but quickly fixable going on, so he's going to come back tomorrow morning with one of those little car code machines and run a diagnostic, and if it looks fixable he's going to fix it then and there and buy it); retrieved Matilda by bus; had a horrible phone fight with Hec about how to get to the 5 from Oakland (with subsequent apologies so all is well, but MAN we should just never, ever travel, either together or separately); made a hardware store and drugstore run with Matilda; fed her and appeased her with Totoro; scrubbed about 1/3 of the kitchen floor; and epoxied a gaping rusty hole in the bathtub rim.

Next up, bedtime rituals, and after she's down I'll pull up and replace the totally crap-ass and cracked kitchen tiles.

So. Tired.

Lady: I am sorry you lost your wallet, but the 130 people watching a movie in there right now will not "understand" if I stop the film so you can look for it.

My windows are closed. I live on the fourth floor. The people outside are still louder than my radio. Something is wrong here.

Once I graduate and move somewhere else, I am so checking the acoustics outside the windows before signing a lease.

Oh, yes, a purple bouquet "just because" does sound wonderful, Askye.

Hil, good luck getting some relaxation in.

JZ, I hope it does turn out to be fixable and the guy gloms right onto the car.

Oh! I have a story to share.

So, I informed my mom that, when she's making plans for Passover food, she should keep in mind that I'm not eating eggs anymore. (For the seder, we go to my aunt's house, and my aunt cooks a few things but we buy most of the food already made.) So my mom passed this along to my aunt. My aunt said that she wanted to make me potato latkes that I could eat. She found a recipe using Ener-G Egg Replacer, which is kosher, but she wasn't sure if it was kosher for Passover. She looked up the organization that certified it kosher, so that she can call them and ask, but it's a NJ number, and she doesn't want to make an unnecessary long-distance call, so she emails my mom and asks her to call and ask if this stuff is Kosher for Passover, since it will be a local call for her.

My mom says fine. She calls, figuring she'll get a secretary or somebody who can just look it up. They transfer her call to the head rabbi of the organization. She's totally embarrassed and feels like this is a ridiculous question to have to get transferred all the way to the head rabbi, but she asks anyway, and also asks if there's another similar product that is kosher for Passover if this one isn't. He says he's not sure, but he'll get back to her.

Ten minutes later, he actually does call back. The product she asked about is not kosher for Passover, and he can't find any similar ones that are. My mom figures, since she's got the head rabbi of a kosher-certifying organization on the phone anyway, she might as well ask him to settle a debate she'd been having with some people at work -- are chicken feet kosher? She thinks they are, her coworkers think they're not.

If the chicken feet come from a kosher chicken, the rabbi says, they are indeed kosher, though he's not sure where you could buy kosher chicken feet.

The drunk people outside are cheering for something. I'm not sure what. The way the overhang is constructed, I can hear them, but can't see them.

Hee! But what about the latkes?

I keep hearing, "Do it! Do it! Go go GO!" then a pause of about five seconds, then wild cheering. What the hell is going on out there?

Oh, my aunt found a recipe online that uses apple sauce instead of eggs. There are enough Jewish vegans that there are vegan recipes for practically every traditional Jewish food online.