trip to Toronto
Dani and I went to Toronto to spend the beginning of Pesach with
his family. Overall the trip went reasonably well. The weather
was gorgeous, so we and his sister went out for long walks on
Saturday and Sunday afternoons. They live in a pretty neighborhood.
Traffic was fine on the way up -- dodged everyone's rush hours.
On the way back we caught some slow traffic in Pittsburgh, and we
had bad lane-choosing luck at the border and toll booths, but other
than that it was fine.
Gas prices: Angola 3.54, Buffalo just after crossing from Canada 3.74, Erie (I think it was Erie) 3.55. Yeah, I didn't think prices had gone up 20 cents in three days; good thing Dani didn't plan to fill up in Buffalo. :-) From the QEW we spotted a sign that said 1.63, which we couldn't reconcile with anything -- too expensive for liters, way too cheap for gallons (and anyway Canada doesn't do gallons), so huh? I speculate that this was actually a price for something else, like half a dozen cigarettes or something. Couldn't tell. Dani's sister told us that local prices are close to 1.20 per liter, which is rather more than in the US. That seems odd. (For purposes of this trip we just assume that the US dollar was at best par. We saw it discounted 5% at one rest stop, and the toll booth at the border bridge is now $3 for any combination, rather than $2.50US or $3.50CDN like last time.)
All three of Dani's nieces were there, and it was good to see them. One was working on a paper about the Internet, censorship, and democracy; she didn't have most of it written yet, but she had some of her textbooks (an Internet course! with textbooks!) with her. She asked us to help her fill in some history that we remember clearly and she wasn't alive for. Her thesis, by the way, is that everyone doing research in the 90s thought the Internet was going to be pretty much impossible to censor because of its decentralized architecture, and here are some reasons it didn't work out that way. She was familiar with the net-neutrality issue, which pleases me. She also knew about Pakistan's denial-of-service attack on itself when it tried to block YouTube. She is, by the way, a liberal-arts major, not a techie. School -- or at least one school -- has changed since I was an undergrad.
The sedarim were ok. Dani's sister hosted the first one, which was their father's side of the family. One child old enough to know better (11?) was behaving very badly; his parents were trying to keep him under control, but with mixed results. Sigh. Most of the guests weren't really into it, but Dani's sister pressed on valiantly. I got several "ooh!"s when I chanted the kiddush. We sang more songs than I expected to, though often in highly-abridged form. (Both nights, for instance, we sang only the first and last verses of Echad Mi Yodea.) On the first night we sang all the verses of Dayeinu that I had prepared (seven of the fifteen), though most people did not sing. I failed to note times, but I think the first night the part before the meal was about 45 minutes.
On the second night we were a small group -- seven adults. I turned out to be the youngest, so it fell to me to sing Ma Nistanah. Note to self: next year arrange for younger attendee. :-) (It's fine; it just felt a little odd.) On the second night we sang fewer verses of Dayeinu, more songs in general, and more Yiddish songs than last year. None of the Hebrew songs I brought last year survived to this year.
I also brought along a version of the four sons -- the traditional Hebrew with a faithful English translation plus slight gloss/commentary. (We're talking one or two extra sentences per child of interpretation.) I copied it from a haggadah published by CCAR. We did this at both sedarim. The nieces really liked it (one took a copy home), and everyone else seemed ok with it.
The text (and translit) of a Hodu were on the same page as Dayeinu and did not get used at either seder. Win some, lose some. :-(
At the second seder the pre-meal part ran a little longer (still no more than an hour). One of the guests explained that he doesn't spill wine for the plagues because the Egyptians deserved it and still do; he seemed rather fierce in this opinion. I shared something I'd learned in shul the previous day: early in the seder we dip a vegetable (karpas) in salt water and eat it, and the haggadah offers various explanations for this having to do with spring (rebirth) and tears. The rabbi on Shabbat morning gave an additional reason: it reminds us of the Yosef story, which is after all how we ended up in Egypt in the first place. When his brothers sold him into slavery, they took his distinctive coat and dipped it in an animal's blood to convince their father that Yosef was dead. This dipping reminds us of that dipping. (The rabbi said there was a textual connection between the word "karpas" and a garment in Megillat Ester; I haven't gone looking for it yet.)
The food at both sedarim was plentiful, which is normal. There was no actual need for us to bring either the cookies or the wine that we brought, but host-guest conventions call for it. I had to stifle a laugh at the second seder: Dani's mother explained that she knows almost everyone prefers dark meat for chicken, so she only had one or two breasts. This explanation puzzled both me and Dani, as we'd never noticed such a preference. I think I know what it must be, though: there is always too much food at the seder and you have to take some of everything to be polite, so I always go for the smallest pieces. With chicken, that's the dark meat. I think I'm not the only one who does that. :-)
There was another person staying at Dani's sister's house -- her husband's nephew. He's in the final stages of bringing to market a new piece of golf equipment; from his explanation, the problem he's solving is widespread but no one else is in that space. He's gone through several rounds of design and is currently waiting for his first shipment of several thousand pieces, which he will sell via the Internet and whatever other venues he can find. (He goes to lots of golf tournaments, I think mainly as a player, and it sounds like there are avenues there.) It's kind of neat that he went from idea to design to implementation pretty much all on his own; I hope it works out for him.
Gas prices: Angola 3.54, Buffalo just after crossing from Canada 3.74, Erie (I think it was Erie) 3.55. Yeah, I didn't think prices had gone up 20 cents in three days; good thing Dani didn't plan to fill up in Buffalo. :-) From the QEW we spotted a sign that said 1.63, which we couldn't reconcile with anything -- too expensive for liters, way too cheap for gallons (and anyway Canada doesn't do gallons), so huh? I speculate that this was actually a price for something else, like half a dozen cigarettes or something. Couldn't tell. Dani's sister told us that local prices are close to 1.20 per liter, which is rather more than in the US. That seems odd. (For purposes of this trip we just assume that the US dollar was at best par. We saw it discounted 5% at one rest stop, and the toll booth at the border bridge is now $3 for any combination, rather than $2.50US or $3.50CDN like last time.)
All three of Dani's nieces were there, and it was good to see them. One was working on a paper about the Internet, censorship, and democracy; she didn't have most of it written yet, but she had some of her textbooks (an Internet course! with textbooks!) with her. She asked us to help her fill in some history that we remember clearly and she wasn't alive for. Her thesis, by the way, is that everyone doing research in the 90s thought the Internet was going to be pretty much impossible to censor because of its decentralized architecture, and here are some reasons it didn't work out that way. She was familiar with the net-neutrality issue, which pleases me. She also knew about Pakistan's denial-of-service attack on itself when it tried to block YouTube. She is, by the way, a liberal-arts major, not a techie. School -- or at least one school -- has changed since I was an undergrad.
The sedarim were ok. Dani's sister hosted the first one, which was their father's side of the family. One child old enough to know better (11?) was behaving very badly; his parents were trying to keep him under control, but with mixed results. Sigh. Most of the guests weren't really into it, but Dani's sister pressed on valiantly. I got several "ooh!"s when I chanted the kiddush. We sang more songs than I expected to, though often in highly-abridged form. (Both nights, for instance, we sang only the first and last verses of Echad Mi Yodea.) On the first night we sang all the verses of Dayeinu that I had prepared (seven of the fifteen), though most people did not sing. I failed to note times, but I think the first night the part before the meal was about 45 minutes.
On the second night we were a small group -- seven adults. I turned out to be the youngest, so it fell to me to sing Ma Nistanah. Note to self: next year arrange for younger attendee. :-) (It's fine; it just felt a little odd.) On the second night we sang fewer verses of Dayeinu, more songs in general, and more Yiddish songs than last year. None of the Hebrew songs I brought last year survived to this year.
I also brought along a version of the four sons -- the traditional Hebrew with a faithful English translation plus slight gloss/commentary. (We're talking one or two extra sentences per child of interpretation.) I copied it from a haggadah published by CCAR. We did this at both sedarim. The nieces really liked it (one took a copy home), and everyone else seemed ok with it.
The text (and translit) of a Hodu were on the same page as Dayeinu and did not get used at either seder. Win some, lose some. :-(
At the second seder the pre-meal part ran a little longer (still no more than an hour). One of the guests explained that he doesn't spill wine for the plagues because the Egyptians deserved it and still do; he seemed rather fierce in this opinion. I shared something I'd learned in shul the previous day: early in the seder we dip a vegetable (karpas) in salt water and eat it, and the haggadah offers various explanations for this having to do with spring (rebirth) and tears. The rabbi on Shabbat morning gave an additional reason: it reminds us of the Yosef story, which is after all how we ended up in Egypt in the first place. When his brothers sold him into slavery, they took his distinctive coat and dipped it in an animal's blood to convince their father that Yosef was dead. This dipping reminds us of that dipping. (The rabbi said there was a textual connection between the word "karpas" and a garment in Megillat Ester; I haven't gone looking for it yet.)
The food at both sedarim was plentiful, which is normal. There was no actual need for us to bring either the cookies or the wine that we brought, but host-guest conventions call for it. I had to stifle a laugh at the second seder: Dani's mother explained that she knows almost everyone prefers dark meat for chicken, so she only had one or two breasts. This explanation puzzled both me and Dani, as we'd never noticed such a preference. I think I know what it must be, though: there is always too much food at the seder and you have to take some of everything to be polite, so I always go for the smallest pieces. With chicken, that's the dark meat. I think I'm not the only one who does that. :-)
There was another person staying at Dani's sister's house -- her husband's nephew. He's in the final stages of bringing to market a new piece of golf equipment; from his explanation, the problem he's solving is widespread but no one else is in that space. He's gone through several rounds of design and is currently waiting for his first shipment of several thousand pieces, which he will sell via the Internet and whatever other venues he can find. (He goes to lots of golf tournaments, I think mainly as a player, and it sounds like there are avenues there.) It's kind of neat that he went from idea to design to implementation pretty much all on his own; I hope it works out for him.