Hil, we have an AWESOME book that a resident wrote a couple of years ago on the Jewish community here. The old synagogue is now the county historical society.

Cool. That's a bit of history that a lot of people tend to forget -- that throughout the 1800s, there were a whole lot of German Jews in small-ish towns all over the midwest and south. Mostly they owned small stores, or sometimes were doctors or lawyers or stuff like that -- basically, the non-farmer stuff that towns surrounded by farmland needed. Lasted several generations, but a lot of them moved to bigger cities when the local economies were collapsing during the Depression, and then, of the families that stayed, most of the baby boomer era kids went to college and then never moved back home -- also generally went to the bigger cities. I've seen a lot of articles lately about towns trying to figure out what to do with the old synagogue buildings.

I'm frankly scared to try unsupervised, but most of my "recent" PT made the pain intolerable.

Yeah. A friend of mine had to stop derby after a major concussion. It's one of my biggest fears.

There's a town in Alabama that has a synagogue like that -- used to be a thriving community, but now most of the Jews have moved -- that made the news several years ago when they started offering some pretty big amount of money (I think it was $40,000) to any young Jewish couple with kids who'd move there and make a commitment to staying for a while.

Most of the Jews that move here come to work at the university. There is still a synagogue in a town 15 miles away--where most of them go. I want to do a larger story on the history of Jews in the community.

Canadians pretty much say everything people think they do. Ask one to say "The moose is loose about the house" sometime.

Give the hairy eyeball to this conversation.

We are not cliches! We do not say aboot!

I was waiting for you to join the conversation, Sue!

I was out finishing my Xmas shopping, (Uh, with the exception of my Buffista Secret Santee, oops.) and then it was the work Xmas party. It was a busy day, eh.

(I will totally cop to saying, eh.)

OK, put my work-secret-santa gift in a prettier bag and have mostly assembled the salad for the potluck. Probably should have something besides two pieces of cheese for dinner, but that decision may be beyond my current capabilities. ETA: aha!I have cookies! That will round out the meal nicely.

We do not say aboot!

Everyone who's ever said that to me was saying aboot at the time. You're aboot-deaf, all of you.

I have not done cards (and probably will not. I suck). I have not sent the three-four presents that need sending. I will, but they'll be late. The tree is up and lit, but has bulbs out and H bought spares and is working his way around the "pre-lit" tree to find and replace the duds. It is not decorated. Some days the only thing that gets me out of bed is knowing I get to open another day on my Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar. I should have been generous and sent it to someone else, but I'm so glad I kept it.

I am under some idiotic spell, and all I want to do is nap. We blew off going to the movies this afternoon because neither of us felt like putting on decent (that is, not "chore") outside clothes and get in the car. Even a brisk walk in the bracing air just makes me even more nappish, and moar coffee just makes me jittery *and* nappy, which is probably entertaining to an observer, but not so effective for me.

In the good column, though, supper last night was an enormous bowl of steamed broccoli dusted with sea salt--NOM! I should do that more often than I do. I got LDB'd last night by the St. Olaf choir from Trondheim on PBS. If you're going to fall, that's a pretty darn good way to go.

And finally, honeycrisp apple cider is amazingly good.