sj, I'm sorry you have to do unpleasant tasks but I'm glad you have someone with you. Company can make those things easier to do.

Where in the West Midlands did you go, Spidra?

I stayed on a farm with some podcasters I know. The nearest village is Preston-on-Wye. The male of the couple is a mixed farmer - raises cattle for stores and grows various seed crops - the wife is the proprietor of Wiggly Wigglers.

I got to see a bit of the surrounding around when I was a passenger in the Wiggly Wigglers delivery van and we got lost for a bit. :)

[link]

Happy Hannukah!

It is the best of holidays, really. So comforting, too. No restrictions on food. Just light, and laughter, and good food, and family. I love it.

Yay!

Jessica, I share your quandry on how to raise basically secular kids nowadays. Because of my own upbringing, we're pretty much a Chrismukkah house (thanks to The OC for coming up with the perfect name for it). So candles and Hannukah gelt tonight.

Where is this vet??

Centreville/Manassas, VA. We actually considered boarding our cats with them when we went on vacation earlier this year. (We decided not to because we'd have needed too many roomlets that wouldn't have given them as much space as we'd have liked. Niece ended up bringing her menagerie up to cat-sit. Which worked out well for everyone because she was cooped up in our place, which is larger than her apartment, when the big snowstorm hit.)

She's likely to end up switching to our regular vet.

Oooh, Fred Pete, how scary for your niece. Much kitty~ma for her little guy.

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate...I've got an Adam Sandler earworm now.

Fred Pete, much ~ma for your niece and her cat.

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate...I've got an Adam Sandler earworm now.

I now do too, but it isn't all that bad.

~ma for your niece and her cat, Fred. How scary and awful.

Apparently my mom's been making schnecken this whole time but she doesn't call them that. I'm sure a bakery's would be even better because she kinda cheats by buying bread dough from the freezer section and starts with that. But the cinnamon, the brown sugar, the raisins, the butter, the rolling, the carmelization? Yes. These are the rolls she makes us for big holidays with a family breakfast like Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Jessica, I share your quandry on how to raise basically secular kids nowadays.

Raising them with NO religion would be easy, but DH and I do want the kids to be somewhat in touch with their Jewish roots even if they never set foot inside a synagogue. If nothing else, they should know why my mom is Bubbe instead of Grandma, right?

I really wish the Society for Humanistic Judaism had a Brooklyn chapter - they're pretty much perfect for us, but getting into Manhattan for services at 6-7pm...ugh.

In conclusion, yay latkes.

Yay latkes is always the right conclusion.

And yeah, that's tough, but I agree that they should understand the cultural background, even if not religiously observant.

I'm hungry now. And my teakettle is boiling. What should I have?