In much the same spirit as Chrismukkah, I enjoyed my first ever Passover Seder on Monday night with Randi, Carrie and Jason. The Jews guided the gentiles through the dipping of wine, the dipping of herbs, the dipping of spirits as another lengthy prayer is encountered and the basic discourtesy shown to the group by the Prophet Elijah. (Actually, my main complaint was not the length of the prayers but how unevenly the reading is distributed. Many times I readied myself to recount some plagues with suitable drama but was given only one line! Apparently this is a also common issue for young children.)
The highlight of the evening – apart from the delicious food provided by Randi and Carrie – was the hunt for the Afikoman (a half-piece of matzo bread) which lasted a full 22 minutes before I narrowly clinched victory over Jason. In return, on Sunday I presided over an Easter Egg hunt in our back garden for the rest of our intercultural gang. (Many thanks to my mother for providing authentic British Creme Eggs to use for this.) The team were largely successful although we are still missing one plastic Darth Vader egg filled with sweets somewhere out there. I have alerted the Slack channel for our apartment block.
Passover Seder
Easter Egg Hunt
A montage from our extensive video footage of people looking for things
The Cubs didn’t lose because of a deficit in my support
Inbetween our celebration of rival festivals, this weekend we welcomed Randi’s dad to Chicago and went to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game against the Pirates. The last time I saw these teams play, we watched the Cubs build up an early lead and then narrowly avoid squandering it all by the end. This time, we watched the Cubs build up an early lead and then conclusively squander it in the seventh inning by letting five runs go by. Still, it was an enjoyable and high-scoring game, and I guess I can now cross off “watching the Cubs lose a game at Wrigley Field” from my bucket list.
I can’t believe I’ve let three seasons of Catastrophe go by without mentioning it yet on this blog, but better late than never. Catastrophe is great! Tonight we also concluded the second series of the revamped Robot Wars, which makes me wish I had done better in DT and had the engineering skills to build my own fighting robot. Although it’s worth considering that once the machines achieve sentience and enslave humanity, they are probably going to look very sternly on this programme.
Randi with her dad at the game
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