Tonight, at sundown, I’ll begin fasting for Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is a time for repenting. It is a time to think about all the things you did wrong over the year and plan how to do better in the coming year. There are many restrictions, such as fasting, designed to focus people on their repentance. The fast lasts from sundown on Friday night to an hour after sundown on Saturday night. In short, 25 hours. During this period, I won’t be able to eat or drink anything. No, I can’t even have a sip of water. (Some people are so religious that they won’t brush their teeth or shower during Yom Kippur. I do not belong to this group, however, and continue with basic hygene hygene.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What is the longest period you went without eating or drinking?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #55

For the full story behind this photo, see my post over on DadRevolution.com.

One can be forgiven for thinking that we are vegetarian. The fact of the matter is that we usually do eat vegetarian. This isn’t because of some moral stance on not eating animals (though I respect those with that moral stance). Instead, it is because we keep Kosher in the house and the price of Kosher meat is exorbitant. So instead of paying an arm and a leg (and trotting out the meat pots, meat dishes and meat silverware), we buy soy products instead.

Just before Rosh Hashana, however, I got the call to pick up a package from B’s grandmother. She had a big bag with challah, gefilte fish, grape juice and other items. On the bottom was a package of quartered chicken. Normally, I’d toss this into the freezer to deal with at a later time, but it was already thawing. So I put it in the fridge, consulted the sacred tomes (aka my recipe books), and came up with a plan.

First, I gathered the ingredients.

For those of you who don’t want to click to enlarge the image, that’s olive oil, pepper, 2 onions, minced garlic, salt, the aforementioned chicken, oregano and potatoes.

Next, I quartered 6 small spuds and placed them in my slowcooker.

Then, being in a cutting mood, I quartered the onions and saved them for later.

Next, I skinned the chicken and put it in the slow cooker over the potatoes. This took awhile and reminded me why I love working with cutlets that have already been de-skinned and de-boned.

Remember those onions? (If not, get your memory checked.) Well, I tossed them in on top of the chicken.

Then came the equivalent of 1 clove of minced garlic into the slowcooker. (Equivalent because I was using pre-minced garlic. Less mess and doesn’t spoil as quickly.)

Now, I mixed a half cup of water with 3 teaspoons of oregano, 1 teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper. Into the slowcooker it went.

Finally, a tablespoon of olive oil was drizzled on top of it all.

I placed the cover on, set the slowcooker to high and let it cook for about five and a half hours.

The best part? No need for side dishes. It forms a whole meal all by itself!

YUM!

With all of the Rosh Hashana and blogoversary stuff, I almost forgot another anniversary. The anniversary of B and me. Not of our marriage. That was in June. This anniversary was of the first time we met. Yes, it was 11 years ago last night that B and I first met. I remember it like it was yesterday… or at least like it was a flashback.

*wavy flashback lines*

The date was September 12th, 1999 and I had just come back from Rosh Hashana services. I signed onto my computer, after being offline for 2 days, and decided to browse through the Yahoo! chat rooms for a bit before heading to bed. A few weeks prior, I had edited my profile to include the line “Nice, Jewish Guy Looking For Nice, Jewish Girl.”

Meanwhile, B was online, but had forgotten to close the chat window. She noticed it open, looked at the chat room, noticed me in there and decided to look at my profile. That line I had added a few weeks prior caught her eye and she contacted me. Right from the start, I knew that something was special about this “angel.”

We chatted for hours that night and many nights afterwards. Late night online chats turned into late night phone calls. That turned into meeting in person which turned into a long distance relationship. Before I knew it, I had fallen helplessly in love with my angel and have been stuck there ever since. (No rescue attempts please. I’m happy being stuck here in love with my angel!)

Happy Meeting Anniversary to My Angel Forever!

This post celebrates a few things. First of all, it is Rosh Hashana. This means that I’m offline for a few days (this post was scheduled in advance) and will be spending the time in temple, with my family and eating apples and honey.

Secondly, it is my second blogoversary. It’s hard to believe that I started this blog a mere two years ago. There were times that I felt like just stopping because I had no comments and other times when I felt like I had too much to say for a mere 5 posts a week. Speaking of 5 posts a week, I think this was the year that I hit my stride. I posted more regularly. I blogged as I lost 20 pounds. I was able to do more reviews and giveaways. I blogged about my history with bullying (including a story I wrote soon after the incident). I blogged about our trip to Disney World for Disney Social Media Moms and about our trip to New York City for BlogHer 2010. (On that last one, I got to meet a lot of wonderful fellow bloggers.)

I have some big plans for the next year. More reviews and giveaways, of course. Also, a redesign of my site and a “How Does That Work?” series.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: If you blog, how do you celebrate your blogoversary? If you don’t blog, what do you like to do to celebrate special occassions?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #54

We got a lot of BlogHer swag. Although we tried to limit ourselves to things we would use, we still wound up with a lot. I’ll admit that a lot of the swag got put away to be looked at later. Perplexus was not one of these items. When we got home from BlogHer, one of the Perplexus boxes (we had each gotten one from the Sweets in the City event and B recieved an additional one as part of her Toy Industry Association package) and we tried it out.

By “we tried it out”, I mean NHL seized it and began guiding the ball across the track. His brother watched on as NHL tried to go as far as he could and had a blast even when he fell off.

When I finally got my hands on it, I was instantly hooked. I couldn’t get the ball past 29, at first, but I kept trying over and over. Finally, I made it over the purple tightrope (a narrow strip that you must navigate across) only to fall off a few steps later. After much trying, and falling, I actually made it to 100! (Granted, this was over 3 weeks after we first opened it up.)

If you think the fun has ended now that I reached 100, though, you’d be wrong. I reached it once, but I can’t reach it consistently. Certain parts of the maze still trouble me. (And parts that don’t usually trouble me will suddenly cause problems when everything else is running smoothly.) In short, beating it once just proves that it can be done and makes you want to beat it again and again.

Another misconception would be that Perplexus is a one-person game. It is true that it is a fun way to pass the time if you are all alone, but people can collaborate with it. When we brought it to B’s aunt’s house, her cousins and aunts quickly eyed our Perplexus, asked what it was and began to take turns seeing how far they could get. They would try to help each other through the maze. Even B’s grandmother expressed interest.

All in all, Perplexus is fun and highly addictive. It is inexpensive (only $19.99 on Amazon.com), requires no batteries (definitely a plus) and can be played by kids and adults alike. I definitely think we’ll need to open our second one so that two of us can be “Perplexus-ing” at once.

Disclaimer: As stated above, we recieved two Perplexus boxes, one for each of us, during the Sweets in the City event at BlogHer. B also recieved an additional one from the Toy Industry Association as part of a package thanking her for attending their event. No review was expected of me, but I decided to review it anyway because I liked it. The opinions expressed above are my own.

During our first trip on the lake, before it began raining, I filmed two videos. For the first, I positioned my camera so that all you saw was water, no trace of boat. Then I let it go for a minute and a half to get a nice video of us zooming over the rolling waters. (My niece, S, was afraid I was going to topple overboard.)

The next video came a couple of minutes later as I realized that JSL and S were singing “Row Row Row Your Boat” with the wind whipping through their hair. I realized photos wouldn’t do it justice so to video I went!

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Owen’s Mom for winning the Hot Potatoes! The BEST of The Wiggles Giveaway.

This past weekend, B’s family members were in town to celebrate her grandmother’s 85th birthday. My boys love seeing Mimi and all of B’s family. Especially Cousin’s S and B. NHL seems particularly enamored with Baby B, wanting to see him, hold him and talk to him all the time.

JSL and Cousin S seemed joined at the hip so many times. They would hold hands while walking, even throwing temper tantrums if they couldn’t.

On Saturday, we headed to Aunt S and Uncle M’s house on by the lake. We tried to go for a boat ride but had to hightail it back to shore when it started to rain.

Of course, once we got everyone off the boat and the cover on, the clouds parted and the sun came out! We stayed indoors for a bit but then decided that it was time for Plan B. We got the kids in their swimsuits so we could head for the beach. Wouldn’t you know it, it began to rain again! Not to be daunted, we decided that the kids and I (the only adult in his swimsuit) should play in the rain. JSL was hesitant at first, but then got the idea that I was actually permitting him to get wet and step in puddles!

This didn’t last long, though, as the rain soon ended. You can see JSL wondering where the wonderful rain went.

We then headed to the beach for some sand fun time.

Then, we decided to head to the pool. This didn’t go over well with JSL who wanted to play in the sand more. He threw a temper tantrum and refused to go into the pool. Opting, instead, to sit on the side with B. NHL did a good job of walking through the shallow end while I carried Cousin S through the pool.

Might I add that B has turned into quite the photo-bug. She even took a few “artsy” shots like this one of our pool/beach items on the pool chairs.

After drying off and changing back into clothes, it was time for wind down time, dinner and fun with family.

The next day, we stopped by a new supermarket with B’s brother and his family. Then, we headed back to the lake. This time, our boat trip wasn’t interrupted by rain. You can see B’s post for photos, but I’ll just add two that she neglected to post of her showing how much she appreciated my constant photo-taking.

I love you too, B!

The rest of the day was spent with family, playing games and enjoying the company of family.

Monday morning, I let B sleep in (or at least lay in bed for a few hours) when JSL woke up early. Then, NHL joined us and we tried our best to be quiet. (Which, with two young boys, is never quiet enough.) Eventually, we got up and headed out to meet one of JSL’s classmates who is new to the area. The boys had a blast playing in the playground, seeing some older kids playing baseball (and retrieving stray balls for them) and just enjoying the great weather. Before we knew it, we have been there 4 hours. After playing, JSL accompanied me for a grocery store run and then we went out for one last dinner out.

This morning, the hard reality hit. Summer vacation is over and school time has arrived.

NHL had his first day of second grade and JSL was going for his first ever day of school – even if it was only 45 minutes of nursury school with mommy by his side. (His first mommy-less day will be tomorrow.) How did my boys get to be so big, so quickly?

This is a warning. The rest of this post is NSFW. It involves "toys of an adult nature" and photos. No, the photos don’t show the toys being used for their intended task, but some of the toys themselves aren’t safe for viewing in the office. So I’m providing a break below. Click the "read more" link to read the entire post. If you’re in the office, don’t click and wait until you get home. If you can’t stand the sight of "realistic looking toys", then just forget that this post ever happened.

Read more of this article »

While at the BlogHer 2010 session “Fight Spam and Hackers! Plugging Security Holes in Your Social Media Life” (audio), I Amy of Amiable Life asked a question. She said that she wants to understand security issues but that much of the reference material went over her head. She was wondering if there was any “WordPress for 5th Graders” or “How to Protect Yourself for an eight year old.”

This sparked an idea. I understand this technical stuff and pride myself on the ability to explain complex items in simple terms. So why couldn’t I take a subject like “How Does The Internet Work” and, perhaps using some crude graphics, explain how it works without delving into the details of TCP/IP, request headers and other topics that would cause peoples’ eyes to glaze over?

I still have some work to do before I can pull this off. The words will come easily, but I’ll need some graphics. And those might be trickier for me to do. So this might be a once every-other-month type of feature. My other concern is the selection of topics. How am I going to figure out which topics people want to learn about? Well, as this is an Aloha Friday, I bet you can guess how. I’m going to ask everyone out there!

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What computer/technology subjects would you like explained simply?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #53