Shhhh!  Did you hear that?

Yeah, that was my silence for the last couple days.  I suppose it is no biggie as I never claimed to try to blog every day!  However, we are into one of those weeks where time is very short.  We are into working on the final show of the season and then couple that with the fact that it is Passover and guess what?  I have not a lot of time to surf the tubes or write.  So, since I have a few minutes I thought I would let you know what is going on.

Monday night I was invited over to the Cantor’s house for the first Passover Seder.  For those who don’t know, the Seder is a service and dinner to celebrate Passover.  This is the second year running that I have been invited by the cantor and his wife to celebrate with them and their other guests.  Thankfully, with the current schedule for hang and load-in at the theatre, I was able to move around my work calls so that I could go to the cantor’s for the seder.  There are definite benefits to running your own department!  While it is not quite the same as being with my family, I don’t know if there is any place that is any more welcoming and fun to spend this holiday!

In my traditional style I arrived early and was happy to be put to work helping to set up and prepare food.  I like helping out around the kitchen, and given that the cantor’s wife is a little to short to see over the pot of soup, she was very appreciative of the help.  Besides, it is matzah ball soup, you just can’t go wrong with that!

The Seder itself was very fun and interesting.  I really enjoy the insight that is brought to the text and the ritual by the cantor.  We had a lot of very interesting conversations and of course we had plenty of singing.  It is actually written in the text that the rabbis of old would sit up and tell the story of Passover over and over until it was time for the morning prayers.  Form this we learn that there is always something to learn no matter how well you know the story.  Also, I think it is the justification for how long the cantor’s seder goes.  I don’t think we got to the eating part until about 10PM.  It didn’t really matter though as we were having a good time.  I ended up bowing out at around midnight and they were still singing!

Tuesday started off with a bang.  I totally forgot about the production meeting that we were supposed to have that morning until my computer and my phone started beeping at me.  At least I was awake!  I threw on some clothes and raced up to the theatre and made it in time to not owe donuts or bagels next time.  I was also really happy to see that our TD had brought bagels, since I hadn’t had the chance to eat anything as I rushed out the door.  In fact, I was moving so fast I didn’t even tie my shoes!  Ironically, it was probably a meeting that I could have gotten away with not being at and I didn’t really have anything to say and no one really hand anything for me.  Such is the way of things I guess.  After the meeting I had time to head back home to actually shower and put on clean clothes.

So we started hang a day late (yesterday) and things are moving along well.  This show is not super huge even though it is a big musical, so we are happy.  I even managed to find the time to head over to Skyline High School to do a little workshop on VectorWorks yesterday as well.  It is just the being at the theatre until after midnight that is a killer.  If we hadn’t had to ferry weight up to loading deck to fly out our last to electrics, life would have been easier.  It happens.

So this is what my life is looking like right now.  I should have a little free time next week and then back to the grind.  I am sure that I will find some time to do some writing in there, so stay tuned!

First of all, I am foregoing Music Monday for this post on Valentines Day.

Second of all, I think that it is kinda funny that some people abbreviate Valentines Day as VD.  I mean really? VD?  That is just kinda dumb and I hope that no one is out getting VD on Valentines day, that would just suck!

I think it is interesting how many people around the blogsphere were cracking down on the people who disapprove of or dislike Valentines Day.  Am I against what Valentines Day is about? No.  It is more that I am against the fact that it is another over commercialized holiday that comes for a religious base and ins somehow a national holiday in this country.  How the heck did that happen?  Sure, we still have work and school and such, but it really is nationally recognized and everyone is expected to participate.

Think bak to elementary school.  We used to spend at least one day prepping for Valentines and then we celebrated on the actual day.  Whose bright idea was that.  In public school we shouldn’t be celebrating holidays with religious connotations and we certainly should not be supporting the commercial nature of said holidays.  We decorated little brown paper lunch bags and every kid in class was basically required to either make or buy Valentines Day Cards for every other kid in the class.  Really dumb.

Then of course around this time of year you start hearing and seeing all the advertisements for diamond heart this and Valentines gift that.  There is nothing wrong with having a day to celebrate your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, significant other and your love for them.  However the irony of the situation is that at least in American society the man is supposed to do something for the woman, it doesn’t really have to be reciprocated.  What is up with that?

Along the same lines, I love the ads that show guys trying to outdo eachother in the gifts department.  There is a great Walgreens ad to that effect.  Then there are the commercials that talk about what different gifts imply that a guy is saying.  Why is it that everything has these connotations?  This is the problem with this holiday, it is no longer about what it is supposed to be about.  It doesn’t matter who you are you probably really do have the expectations that society has placed on this holiday.

So what did I do this Valentines Day?  Well, I kicked it off with Ruth and we bought ourselves a blender.  I think this is a good valentines gift, and it was a mutual thing.  Then I went off to Alta for a wicked ski day with some friends of ours.  Here is a great photo from today:

Friends enjoying the nice powder at Alta!

Then we headed up to Ruth’s parent’s home for Sunday night dinner.  In all, I think it was a pretty good day, and that is how I would like to spend a holiday like this!

At 5:17AM 26 years ago I was born.  That is pretty cool in and of itself.  My parents were excited, my grandparents were excited, It sounds like it was a pretty good time.  I certainly can’t remember.  I also can’t remember the fact that when my mother got to bring me home from the hospital on February 14, she was bummed out that my father had to be working.  I do remember things like the day my sister was born because it was the day of my fourth birthday party.  I thought that was inconvenient, but My sister turned out OK!   According to my mother today, I turned out good.

It is kind of fun to wake up in the morning to have it snowing.  I like that about having a winter birthday.  Maybe the fact that I was born in the winter has something to do with how much I enjoy the winter.  It is also fun to wake up and have an inbox full of emails and notifications with birthday wishes.  Normally I am not a big fan of Facebook messages, but the fact that people take the time to send a quick note for a birthday is pretty nice.  When you consider the number of “friends” I have on facebook, the fact that even a few take the time to send a birthday note is kinda cool.

As expected, I talked to most of my family today.  Thankfully, my mother waited until after I woke up to call me.  Unfortunately my sister called first, right after I poured myself a bowl of cereal.  I was going to go back to it after I got off the phone with her, but then my mother called.  Needless to say, that bowl of cereal was a little to soggy to eat after two phone calls.  There are worse things of course, but it was a little sad.  It was nice to talk to my sister, I have talked to her more this week than many months on account of her birthday was on the seventh.

I think the only people I didn’t talk to were my grandparents on my mother’s side.  They are in Israel right now, so that is not surprising, but the email they sent was nice to get.  If nothing else, a birthday is a pretty good excuse to check in with the family!

I had a nice dinner with Ruth, though it left my stomach feeling a little funky.  I think I just had a little to much spicy wings…  In any event, I have been feeling better and better.  After the show tonight I am going out with a couple friends from the theatre for a little celebration, and all in all I think it was a pretty good day.  So, thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, hopefully this is the beginning of another good year!

Yup, the jew did just say that!

I was invited to sped Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Ruth and her family, that was certainly a first for me. It is definitely a little different and I sorta find it kinda awkward, but it was fun. I was probably the only one thinking it was awkward, and that probably only stems from being Jewish and not believing in what Christmas is all about.

I have to say, I enjoy spending time with Ruth and her family. They do their big dinner on Chrismas Eve, which is ironically a Jewish kinda mentality in starting the holiday the night before. Steve made a great dinner with turkey, ham (which I don’t eat), taters, rolls and more. We forgot to make the salad, so we didn’t end up having one. It happens.

After dinner we all watched Pixar’s “UP” which I hadn’t seen yet, so that was a lot of fun. All five of us “kids” piled into the living room to watch the movie. Midway through the movie we all got to have some of Steve’s cheesecake with caramel sauce, which was great.

Before going back to the movie we started in with the Jones’ traditions which include the opening of a Chrismas Eve gift which is always PJ’s. So we all got awesome hand made fleece PJ pants made by Ruth’s mother, they are pretty comfy. Ruth’s mother also made me the “Jew Stocking” (pictured above) that was hung with the rest of the stockings.

To the sound of Wendy’s most annoying cell phone alarm we were roused out of bed at 5:45AM for the Christmas morning festivities. I managed to score us a few more minutes of sleep by staying down as long as I could. They aren’t allowed to open presents without the entire family and they aren’t allowed to wake their parents without all of them being there.

There were lots of fun gifts, lots of things that people were excited to get, and then there were the projectile weapons. Yup, all the boys (Steve, Rob, and me) got marshmallow shooters. A bow and arrow one and a pump action one that shoot the mini mallows and a crazy single shot bolt action one that shoots big mallows. As can probably be imagined, hyjinx ensued. There were flying marshmallows all morning and mallows smushed into the carpet and into new PJs.

On top of all that, there was even a “Legendary Original, Red Rider 200 Shot carbine action, range-model air rifle…” Well it was actually a 600 shot and it didn’t have a compass and this thing which tells time built right into the stock. It was for Wendy, and she was pretty excited. She even managed to almost pull off an “A Christmas Story” moment when she took it out in the back yard, missed the target and had a BB ricochet around the yard off the fence. Pretty exciting, it even made the classic ricochet sound.

I very much appreciate the hospitality of the Jones’ and the gifts that I was given. It was a lot of fun, though I have to say, I am pretty darn tired now. The funny thing is that, according to Ruth, her mother wants to celebrate Hanukkah next year. I find that interesting because Hanukkah isn’t really a big deal holiday, but it is nice that they think of me like that.

The big holiday party was lat night and it was a lot of fun.  Getting to see people who i don’t get to see very often is a treat.  It is an awful lot of work to pull off a party like that though.  We had twenty-some odd people at the house.  My mother and I made almost 20lbs of potatoes into latkes, we made 16-ish pounds of corned beef, a turkey and more.  I don’t remember what my father said was the count on number of bottles of wine drunk.

Seeing family and friends is fun, but it is mighty tiring.  People started to show up at 5 and the last guest left between 9 and 10, plus we did all the prep beforehand.  I think I got to tell the same stories over and over to different people, and it is hard to keep up with all of that.  Seeing my cousins Greg Weisman, and Sarah and Brian Swett was nice.  I have not seen them in a long time.  I don’t know if I can convince greg to come out to Utah this year, he has all kinds of other adventures planned.  Maybe SCUBA diving in Israel this spring, he sounded interested in that.

Then of course there are the gifts.  As much as I like getting money as a gift, sometimes I feel like it is a cop-out.  I do kinda need money to pay off all my bills, what with buying a washer and dryer and such, but then I feel like I didn’t really use the gifts that I was given.  There are things that I want to get, but then i feel like I could have used the money to be practical and pay the bills.  Worst of all, is that most of the gifts were in cash, and when i have cash I tend to spend it on things that really are not gifty, like dinner.  It is kind of a dilemma.

Over the course of this trip I did get to visit some friends of mine.  Best of all was getting to see Jesi, who, unfortunately is not working currently, thought that allowed her the time to visit.  We went out to see “Radium Girls” produced by the BU Theatre Department.  It was a great show and I got to finally tweetup with a couple more friends: @gizm770o, @jamisonkissh, and @lightingguru44.  The production was really great, a very interesting show.  I would recommend it to anyone who likes going to the theatre.  One of the other great things about the performance was the fact that they has a talkback after with the playwright, which was very interesting.  I enjoy hearing how good plays came to be.

What really bummed me out was not getting to see my good friend Molly who is currently working at Shakespeare and Company in Lennox, MA.  She had performances most of the days that I was home and then it started to snow on the night that she hoped to come visit.  To tell the truth, out of all the people that were at our party, if i had been able to see Molly, it would have made me a lot happier.  Another time I guess.

So, now thanks to Delta for free wifi on the airplane, I can post this entry.  Go figure that they would actually give something away.  I mean the fact that you have to pay to check bags now is totally ridiculous.  It is even more ridiculous that its costs you MORE to check your bags in the airport rather than online at home even though you still have to go see a real live person at the airport to actually check the bag!  It makes no sense.  More people would fly if it cost less to fly!

I think that is all I have, time to sit back and watch a movie to kill the time before we get in to Salt Lake City.  Then i have to go to work, huzzah for photo call!