Week in Review

Every other week, there are so many good carnivals being posted almost simultaneously, it is almost impossible to stop reading and actually write something! This was one of those weeks, with amazing editions of Tangled Bank, Skeptic's Circle, Carnival of the Liberals, Carnival of Education, I And The Bird, Grand Rounds etc, etc.

Carnival of Education is a big carnival which also makes it really important to read every entry carefully - you cannot wing it if you are a host. Thus, this week, it really took quite a lot of my time - which was pleasurable, as the posts were generally very interesting - which may explain, if not excuse, the lack of posting here for the most part of this week.

This was also a week when the dog had to go to the groomer on one day and to the vet on another. Both cats had their own appointments with the vet at different times. Both kids had doctors' appointments on different days.

Of course, this is also the week of Passover, which entails a lot of house-cleaning, cooking and shopping. Miraculously this year, all stores in the area ran out of all Passover-related merchandise days in advance. I went to Whole Foods and the first thing I saw was a guy whose badge read "I am Jeff, we do not have matzos".

What happened? Was there a sudden and huge influx of Jews last year? Or is this a year when everyone decided to forgo cooking and get zimmes and gefilte-fish from the store instead? Fortunately, I got some of the stuff way in advance. The only thing missing was Manishevitz wine, which is a good thing. In its place we got several bottles of delicious wines from Spain, France and Argentina.

We had some wonderful people over for the Seder. Mrs. Coturnix fixed the very best matzo-ball soup ever in the history of the Universe and some fantastic stuffed mushrooms. We went through the Haggadah pretty fast. The guests always like our liberal, secular, atheist, feminist, environmentalist, gay-pride, pacifist Haggadah. Even the 10 plagues are Modern Plagues, this year eerily reminding us of what we're doing in Iraq...

Speaking of making the Seder fast, and making it fit the modern times, you can hear a tiny little snippet of a funny song here and lyrics are here. And, here is the way to get through Passover really fast!

One of the standard questions that a medical geneticist has to ask a new patient is "Do you have Jewish ancestry?" (because of diseases like Tay-Sachs etc.). Sometimes, the answer just blows your mind: "No way we are Jewish, we are too poor!"

Speaking of stupid things some people say, involving Jewish stereotyping, read this post by Sarah Jones (hat-tip: Ed Cone). $2.00 for bread. How much for matzos?

Yesterday, we kept the kids home from school and had great fun together as a family. At one point we put on the Janis Joplin greatest hits CD on and danced to it in many different styles, from Fred Astaire to Travolta, from tango to disco, from walking like an Egyptian to breakdancing, from can-can to kazatchok! Have you ever heard of anyone dancing kazatchok to Janis Joplin?! I bet Janis would be pleased if she saw our performance.

Last night, I went to the Chapel Hill Blogger MeetUp. There was a bunch of us, starting with coffee at 3Cups, continuing with beer across the street. I am assuming that Anton will post the complete list of present bloggers on BlogTogether soon.

And I'll try to write something meaningful over the weekend....