I can’t mail these latkes to everyone, so here are some photos.  Just try not to slather your screen with apple sauce or sour cream.

No, I didn’t make these.  This was a collaborative effort between Aunt M and B’s grandmother.  And, yes, they tasted as delicious as they look.

It seems like only yesterday that I was lamenting the ending of August.  I was sure that the nice, warm weather was soon to be replaced by cold, wind, and snow.  Summer was over, but I was in denial.  It didn’t matter if the thermometer read 50 degrees instead of 80.  It didn’t matter when snow began coming down.  I was still in a summer frame of mind.

Of course, I could only maintain denial for so long.  Eventually, I had to give in and admit that fall was here.  After all, the crunching of leaves under my feet isn’t particularly “summery.”  Neither is the need to put on a jacket before going out.

But here we are now, November 28th, and I’m suddenly struck by how quickly the months have gone.  I barely realized that October had begun and then we were taking the boys trick or treating.  The candy stashes from that holiday weren’t gone when it was time for turkey and Thanksgiving.

Now, we stand on the precipice of the winter holiday season.  The stores have long ago begun the annual Christmas assault – putting up decorations and playing music the minute Halloween was over as if Thanksgiving didn’t even exist.  Radio stations are going Christmas Music 24-7.  Shoppers are crowding malls for deals (and getting a little too aggressive, I might add).

I feel like someone has pressed fast-forward on the world’s remote control.  Can someone please find it and hit pause for a bit?

As I sit here writing this post, my stomach is filled to the brim.  I couldn’t eat another bite.  I’ve indulged in turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, Asian salad, chocolate rugalech, pumpkin chocolate chip cake, and dark chocolate peanut butter banana ice cream.  I can’t eat any more.  I can’t even think about food.

Ok, maybe I can think about food a little bit.  Thanksgiving, to me, always means certain dishes.  It just doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving otherwise.  Of course, one is turkey and another is stuffing.  The dish that most says “Thanksgiving” to me, though, is sweet potato casserole.

Growing up, my mother and I seemed to have a ritual.  Every year, she would make a sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows.  Every year, I would eat the marshmallows and leave the “yucky” sweet potatoes behind.  Every year, my mom would bug me to try a little bit of sweet potato.  I never would.

One year, I had enough of being bugged.  I decided to just give in, take a taste, and show my mother just how disgusting those sweet potatoes were.  I took a small bite and… loved them!  I couldn’t believe how great they tasted.  I went from skimming the casserole for the marshmallows to eating the whole thing.  (My portion, that is, not the entire casserole.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What Thanksgiving food brings back memories?

P.S. If you haven’t already, go visit FollowerHQ and let me know what you think of my Twitter application.

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 linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #115

Yesterday, B and I began cooking some of the desserts for our Thanksgiving meal.  B made her Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake.  I made Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Ice Cream.  We will soon head out to B’s parents’ house where we will spend the day playing, watching movies, and cooking the rest of the food for our meal tonight.

Here’s wishing you and your family a very Happy Thanksgiving!

I have good news and bad news.  The bad news is that B, NHL, JSL and I have been turned into zombies.  The good news is that I’m going to use this opportunity to correct up a few zombie stereotypes.

First of all, zombies aren’t always calm, shuffling, hungry for brains folks.  Sometimes we can be quite angry.

Especially if we don’t get the brains.

Secondly, zombies can also be quite thoughtful.

Mostly, we’re thinking about how to catch more people with tasty, tasty brains.

Finally, you might think that zombies don’t have any heart.  While ours might not be beating, we still feel love.  Zombie love.

After this photo was taken, we dined on the photographer’s tasty brains…..  It was very romantic.

Well, I hope that’s cleared a few things up.  I’ve got to shuffle off now.  Here’s hoping you have a wonderful Halloween.

P.S. Remember to click on the photos for up close and personal zombie photos.  We promise not to jump out of your screen at you… Maybe.

P.P.S. Zombification is thanks to Google Plus’s new photo editing tools (powered by Picnik).

As you read this, I’ll be offline celebrating the holiday of Sukkot.  It may be a more minor holiday than Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur, but I like celebrating these holidays.  Now, I’m not Orthodox.  I do things like take photos, watch TV and the like.  One thing I don’t do, though, is use my phone or computer.  I use the holiday as time off from anything work-related (which includes all computers as I program websites for a living and phones as I could otherwise take calls from work defeating the purpose of being “off”).  Instead, I spend the time with my family.  The forced time offline means that I interact with my family more.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you regularly take vacations from social media/computers?

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 linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #109

On Thursday, I wanted to go to sleep early.  I was tired and NEEDED my sleep.  But I didn’t.  I was too enthralled with watching the reactions from the fallout between Brand Link Communications and TheBloggess.

In case you are the single person online who hasn’t heard about it yet, TheBloggess was pitched by PR firm Brand Link Communications to run a piece about one of the Kardashians in pantyhose.  Now, TheBloggess’ blog is many things, but it is not about celebrities and what they wear.  This wasn’t the first bad pitch she’s gotten.  In fact, she gets so many that she has a dedicated page to send them to.

Normally, PR firms will either not contact her back or will apologize and/or remove her from their lists.  This time, however, they replied in a bit of a snippy manner.  At this point, I’m sure TheBloggess would have just shrugged and gone on with her life.  She would have, that is, had Jose from Brand Link not hit reply all and used quite a colorful phrase to describe her.  From this point on, the situation spiraled out of control and not in a positive way for Brand Link Communications.

What does this have to do with Yom Kippur?  On this Jewish holiday, we realize that we’re going to be judged for the things we’ve done in the past year.  To make amends, we traditionally apologize to people we’ve wronged.  An apology doesn’t always make everything better, but it can go a long way towards repairing all sorts of relationships.  However, these apologies need to be sincere.  Just saying “I’m sorry, but I’ll do it again” or “I’m sorry if you were offended” isn’t enough.

When Jose realized his mistake, his response should have been an unequivocal apology.  Something along the lines of: “I’m sorry.  I messed up both in my language and in the match between the original pitch and your blog’s content.  I’ll look into ways to better target pitches so that you receive pitches that your readers will actually find useful.”  This would have helped smooth things over and we would likely have never heard about the interaction (a good thing in hindsight).

Instead, Jose sent an “I’m sorry but…” reply.  He even went so far as to blame TheBloggess for starting the mess and to tell her that she should be thankful that they send content her way.  As if, without PR firms, TheBloggess would be a nobody with nothing to write about.

TheBloggess replied with soon-to-be-immortal (and hopefully emblazoned on a shirt) words: “Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy.”

What happened next was quite a demonstration.  TheBloggess blogged about the situation and many of her 160,000 followers on Twitter started tweeting about it.   The story was picked up on by none other than Wil Wheaton (1.8 million followers) and Neil Gaiman (1.6 million followers), and Perez Hilton (3.9 million followers).  Obviously, there’s likely some overlap in followers, but needless to say that this story had millions of people worldwide viewing it.  It was a very public affair and very bad for Brand Link.

At one point, Jose (who has since deleted his Twitter account), tried defending his actions as trying to defend Wil Wheaton.  Then he claimed his account was hacked and finally, he mentioned that he had apologized to TheBloggess.

Could this have been avoided?  I was thinking about this during Yom Kippur and realized there were many times that Brand Link could have apologized and made it all go away.  After the original pitch and TheBloggess’ response, they could have apologized.  (And not had someone commit Reply-All-icide.)  After the Reply All, Jose could have been proactive, realized what he did and quickly followed it up with an apology (and not just a “I’m sorry if you were offended, but…”).

Once TheBloggess posted her blog post, however, the quiet person-to-person apologies needed to be big public apologies.  At that point, they didn’t need to satiate one angry Bloggess, but a few thousand (if not hundred thousand or million) folks.  There are many lessons to be learned from what happened between TheBloggess and Brand Link Communications, one of the big ones is how *not* to apologize.

Growing up, we would go to temple on Rosh Hashana morning.  Then, we’d come home for lunch before heading back for the afternoon/evening services.  During this gap, there was little to do to fill the time.  I didn’t watch TV, use computers or, in fact, use any electrical device.

The tempting thing to do was get a nap in.  My mother would always nix this idea, though.  She had a superstition that how one spent the Jewish New Year would reflect how the year to come would be.  If you napped on Rosh Hashana, you might be setting yourself up for a lazy year.

So what kind of year did I set myself up for?

I began by getting the boys and myself ready for temple.  B didn’t feel like going, so I took the boys by myself.  I’ll admit that I didn’t get to spend as much time praying as I’d have liked.  Instead, I was making sure that the boys were quiet, well-behaved, entertained and fed.  (We brought quiet toys, books and snacks with us.)

When we got home, and after we ate lunch, I began to think about what I wanted to do.  I began thinking about my “surprise” for B when she returned from SheStreams.  I had done some cleaning in the front room to get rid of and/or organize clutter.  Still, it felt like the job wasn’t completely done.  There were sections of the room that hadn’t been dusted in awhile.  Hard-to-reach, out of sight sections, but still sections I hadn’t touched.  I dove in with the vacuum at hand*.  I cleaned, dusted and vacuumed.

When I was done, I went for the boys’ room, seeking out the obscure corners that seemed to perpetually hide from the vacuum.

The next day, the boys and I headed back to temple.  This time, instead of spending our time in the temple services, we took advantage of the kids’ services.  Again, this meant less time for me praying, but it meant that the boys enjoyed the experience more and, to be honest, I think this was more important.

When I got home, I decided to tackle another room.  This time, it was the kitchen.  Again, my target was mainly the obscure areas that tended to get passed over every other time I cleaned.

So, if we were to go by the old superstition, how is my year going to go?  Well, I think it means I’ll be spending quite a lot of time with the boys and I’ll pay attention to small details that are usually overlooked.  Not a bad way for the year to go!

* When I was younger, I didn’t use any electrical device.  Since then, I’ve re-examined my religious practices.  Now I follow the “don’t work at your occupation” rule.  Anything that could be used to do work for my job is set aside.  This includes computers, phones, and writing.  Luckily, I don’t vacuum for a living, so that’s allowed.

Today, marks the new year on the Jewish Calendar.  On Rosh Hashaha, we celebrate having a sweet year by eating apples and honey.  This year, we’ll be eating plenty of that since B and JSL picked 19.5 pounds of apples!

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What is your favorite recipe to make with apples?

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 linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #107