on your journey, i will bless you...

Excuse Rebecca while she gets some grumpiness off her chest. This is a list of things I'm sick of lately:

1. TV spots for Savages. They show them pretty constantly on USA (where I watch old NCIS episodes) and A&E (where I watch Storage Wars).
2. We're scheduled for inventory, which is always a headache, at work tomorrow. My managers have all been talking and stressing about it non-stop. I hate the word inventory now. But not as much as I'll soon hate back-to-school. Ugh.
3. The smoke smell in one of my purses. I got it from my cousin. Most of the time, it's not noticeable unless you shove your face inside it. But I keep making the mistake of putting a change of clothes in it, and then my clothes end up smelling like smoke! Ugh! I'm going to flush that smell out soon.
4. Our new stocker at work. He seems to find any excuse he can to talk to me. Within a few seconds of meeting me, he asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with him. (Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter? No? How about the new Spider-Man movie?) Ugh. If this keeps up, I'm going to talk to the manager about it.

And now onto happier news... As of tomorrow, we'll have had Tovah for one month! One of the reasons Sara and I picked her from all the cats at the animal shelter was that she's so skinny. (The last time I was at JC & Co's, I held their cats and the difference was amazing. I couldn't feel all their bones!) We've been trying to fatten her up and have offered her bits of just about every human food we eat -- pizza, cheese, ravioli, oatmeal, fish, beef, etc. But she never really ate any of it, she just sniffed. Remember how in the Ramona books, her cat was named Picky-Picky? Yeah, that's Tovah.

Then we made the mistake of giving her a slice of turkey. I've never seen Tovah gobble up anything so fast. Now she comes running every time she hears the refrigerator open (even if she's asleep in the next room!) and meows pathetically, like she's never been fed a day in her life. It's annoying, but we've started putting bits of turkey on top of her cat food, and she finally seems to be eating more and gaining a little weight. Hallelujah!

And for no reason, here's the trailer for a recent (2010) French biopic of Serge Gainsbourg. If I could find a version with English subtitles, I'd love to see this.

As most of you probably heard, the world was supposed to come to an end on May 21, 2011. The craziest thing about the would-be rapture was that it all started with this one lone nutjob, and enough people believed him that it became a big deal. There was even a huge billboard warning about the end of days along the I-10. I first saw it on the way back from Purim in Lafayette. Obviously, nothing happened, but it did give me an excuse to listen to "The Man Comes Around" over and over. (Love that song, love Johnny Cash.)

Friday was a No-Good Very Bad Day, for a few different reasons. I was very late for work that morning. I had applied for a job at the place where my sister works and actually, foolishly started looking forward to it, but it looks like I won't get hired. At the temple that night, my Jewish grandfather had told my Jewish grandmother that I was looking for a job, and she bombarded me with all suggestions all through services. She seems to think that since I have many marketable skills -- yes, she obviously knows me really well -- I must not be looking hard enough. Ugh. I ended the day by riding my bike around late at night, in hopes that I might get hit by a car. Obviously, that didn't happen either.

But Torah study was the next morning, and this was one of the first times that I felt like the parsha really spoke to me. It was the last two chapters of Leviticus, and I took it as a lesson about being happy with what you have and a warning against being dominated by fear. ("The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight. Fleeing as from the sword, they shall fall, though none pursues.") Everybody at the temple was talking about Netanyahu's recent visit to DC and press conference with Obama, to the point that I was surprised we got to the parsha at all.

In other Jew news, I'm starting to feel like I'm banging my head against a wall with Rabbi W. At the most, he's in town for services every other week, and whenever I talk to him about converting, he gives me the same directions every single time (things I've already done, some of them 2-3 times). I'm not sure what to make of this. I know he's a very busy, probably forgetful, and possibly a tad senile old man, but things have been going on in this vein since January, and it's becoming a little frustrating. I'm thinking about contacting the temple's former rabbi, who now lives in Baton Rouge. No doubt that'll be another awkward e-mail to write. But not as awkward as having to ask someone to come to your mikvah.

Grandma is about to sell Aunt Carolyn's old books and CDs, but first, she asked me if I wanted any of them. Haha. Best of Barry Manilow and/or Air Supply, anyone? But I did borrow a few CDs and I'm importing songs one by one into iTunes library right now.

Well, the sun may have come out for a few days, but it sure disappeared again quick. Today and yesterday were both back to gray skies, rain, and freezing cold. On top of that, the shrink episode of NCIS wasn't as good as I'd hoped. On top of that, I apparently didn't get the job I applied for last week. (Yes, the one I was so sure I had.) They said they would be making a decision Monday or Tuesday, and Rebecca was practically reduced to spending those days staring at her phone, waiting for it to ring. The lesson here, kiddos, is that no matter how well you think the interview went, you did not get the job.

I was tempted to spend yesterday at home being depressed, but instead, I picked myself up, braved the cold and rain, and went to a concert at the temple. An Israeli musician named Amir Gwirtzman was performing there, and the price of admission was canned goods to go to Abraham's Tent. It was a little strange, but I enjoyed it. He juxtaposed different wind instruments (like a saxophone and a shoffar, or a Native American flute and an Irish penny whistle) and made it seem like they were talking to each other, and he recorded them in layers to create the sound of a full band. He played one piece that he said was a traditional Korean melody, and I have no idea why, but it sounded so familiar and sad to me, I almost started crying.

 
Amir Gwirtzman

The temple was more crowded than I'd ever seen it, because most of the crowd was people of other faiths who'd come to hear the music. At one point I thought to myself how weird it was to see so many unknown faces in my temple, and then I did a mental double-take, thinking, "My temple?" Where did that come from?

But best of all, there was a reception afterwards of delicious dessert foods, and my sassy Jewish grandfather kept piling my plate with cream puffs! It was quite a replay of the Nuit Blanche 2007, when Rebecca stuffed with face with cream puffs in front of all her French professors.

Oh-seh shalom bimrom'vah hu yah-seh shalom aleinu v'al kol Mizraim.
This is a tweaked line from the only Jewish song Amir played during the concert, "Oh-seh Shalom." (We sing this song fairly often during services, and it's one of my favorites. Some of the first Hebrew I ever learned.) The original line ends in Yisrael. This version means, "May the One who causes peace to reign in Heaven cause peace to reign in Egypt."