My Weekend

Question: What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic?
Answer: Halfway.

It's been a heck of a weekend. My oldest son became a Bar Mitzvah this past weekend during the Succos holiday. We invited cousins of ours from Baltimore to come up for the weekend and celebrate with us. In the end, we were expecting a full house over the weekend, with over thirty friends and relatives coming to eat and stay with us. Needless to say, it was going to be a tight squeeze in our sukkah for us and the guests.

One group of family members, however, didn't make it. We were waiting for them on Friday afternoon, but they didn't show. It was getting late on Friday, and there was still no sign of them. Finally, about five minutes before Shabbos was about to start, we got a call from them. They ran into a lot of traffic on the way up. There were in Staten Island and there was no way that they were going to be able to get to Brooklyn before Shabbos started. Fortunately, they had family in Staten Island and were able to stay by them for the holiday. At least they were OK... we were all really worried about them.

Well, the Bar Mitzvah boy did fine. He read from the Torah beautifully and we all had a good time. We had a kiddush in our sukkah for the guests and the people who pray in our shul. Since the sukkah was only 12 x 16 (which is actually quite big as far as personal sukkahs go), it was quite crowded. But nonetheless, everyone had a good time.

After the holiday was over (Sunday night), the Baltimore/Staten Island contingent finally made it in. They finally made it in about 11:00 pm on Sunday night (while we were still cleaning up from the chaos of the weekend). Since I hadn't seen this set of cousins (and my aunt, who was with them) for a few years, we spent a few hours out in the sukkah talking and eating.

On Monday, we took the kids (along with my cousins, my sister and their kids) to Sesame Place. You'd be surprised how much fun a thirteen year old can have there - I was afraid he'd be bored to tears. After the day, we all stopped off at a kosher resturaunt in Philadelphia. Once there, however, my car died and would not start again. So, there I was, stranded with my wife and kids, in a city over 100 miles from home (a city, I might add, that I had only been to once before in my life) where I did not know a soul. Fortuantely, AAA came to the rescue. After a bit of a wait, they took us back to Brooklyn (to a local repair shop). We finally got back home at about midnight last night.

The end result of all this, however, is that there was no sim this past weekend. We'll try to do this tonight.

Zev