The rest of my weekend

Last weekend was one of those weekends where you feel like you need a weekend to recover from the weekend. But mostly in a good way.

Wednesday was mostly ordinary, except that the previous week a real phishing attack happened to hit us at exactly the same time as an IT-initiated phishing exercise. Some people fell for the former, so IT pushed a company-wide password reset. So I reset my password, left, and prepped for a four-day-long weekend.

Thursday was theoretically going to be mostly cooking the Seder dishes that would keep, like the flourless choco cake or the kamaboko, but what I actually spent most of the day dealing with was the plumber. I put in a maintenance request for a leaky faucet and a non-functional sink stopper on Monday, and on Thursday the plumber (unexpectedly) arrived, so I guess it's a good thing I was home. He inspected things, stepped out to get parts, then came back and spent a couple hours working on the pipes. He replaced much of the visible kitchen sink piping and bathroom piping, installed new faucets, and then left. And when I went to take a shower, I discovered that he hadn't actually attached the bathtub faucet and the pressure of the shower stopper forced it off of its pipe.

I told the handman, who reported it to the management company, who told the plumber. After an extremely uncomfortable and awkward shower, I went shopping for my Seder ingredients, and about fifteen minutes after I got back, the plumber showed up again and finished the job. That meant I had time to eat dinner and go to therapy and then only a little time to do the cooking, but I did finish the charoset and the flourless choco cake, so at least I got something done.

Friday was Seder prep and my Seder.

Saturday I woke up early, went back to sleep, and then woke up again later and spent the morning watching anime and otherwise taking a bit of time to decompress. Then in the afternoon I went to gothiklezmer's Seder out in Avondale, which was lovely. gothiklezmer asked me about what was different between her Seder and mine, so for posterity I'll record it here: there was a lot more discussion during my Seder, probably because my Seder had more people who had never attended a Seder before and her Seder had a child in attendance; my Seder was on the floor in a circle and hers was at a table, as is more traditional; and her Seder had more vegetarian-friendly food. Like me, though, she also made her own gefilte fish , though hers were due to her family's long residence in the Pacific Northwest, so it was made with salmon and cod (substituted for the original halibut). I ate a half-dozen of them, and more like a dozen of the deviled eggs. There were maror-themed versions, with pickled ginger and wasabi, and charoset-themed versions, with nut butter, and both of them were fantastic. As was the homemade ice cream for dessert, especially the matcha flavor.

As I mentioned before, though gothiklezmer had built her own Haggadah using Haggadot.com, and a couple times during the reading--we went around and read in turns, of course--I read part of the Hebrew that's usually sung, because I'm so used to hosting Seders now where Jews are in the minority and if there's any singing of Hebrew, it's just us doing it.

I don't often get to attend First and Second Seder, but this is two years in a row it's happened. If I had attended even one Seder, it would have been enough (), but I'm certainly glad I got to go to both.

I left almost immediately after the Seder ended, turning down the offer of leftovers since gothiklezmer and I both knew my fridge couldn't handle any more food, because I had another obligation. lisekatevans had invited me to an Easter Vigil suite of events starting at four o'clock--pool swimming, dinner, the vigil, and a gathering in her hotel room--but she had done it at 3:15 p.m., just when I was leaving for second Seder. I told her that all I could probably attend was the party in the hotel room, but I specifically made time to go to that. I was only there for an hour or so, since the reason she and some people from her church had gotten a hotel room downtown in the first place was to more easily attend the dawn Easter service the next morning, but it was lovely company, even if I couldn't eat the homemade brownies, cookies, or other treats available.

I also learned that Easter begins at sundown, which was new information to me.

Sunday I woke up early, fell back asleep, then woke up again and read a bit before it was time for meowtima's birthday celebration! I could only attend a bit of it, the opening lunch at SUBO Filipino Kitchen in Albany Park, but the food was delicious once I took a bit of time to navigate the menu and avoid all the treif and chametz it was covered with (no lumpia for me, sadly ). At one o'clock everyone got up to go to a nearby park to break open a piñata, but I had another obligation, so I said goodbye and walked down to the Windy City Playhouse to attend a performance of Noises Off with liszante.

I had never even heard of Noises Off before liszante invited me to it, but nearly everyone I told about it told me how much they loved it so I guess I'm just out of the loop. It started slow for me, because while my parents love watching shows like The Vicar of Dibley or Fawlty Towers or Keeping Up Appearances, I've only seen them in passing while at their house, so I'm not familiar with the tropes of British comedy. Once we were moved backstage, however, and we saw the deteriorating relationships among the cast members while they were still trying to perform to the "audience" out in front, that was when I really got into it. By Act III, when we moved back to the front and the third run of the play-within-a-play disintegrated into chaos, I was laughing as hard as anyone else. It's already been extended--liszante originally saw it in January and she said the entire cast is different--but I highly recommend it.

At that point I had to run to finish my chores, so I went home after a stop at Whole Foods and spent the rest of the night doing laundry and cooking. Today is more laundry and hopefully nothing else. This last week has been amazing, but I need a day to just sit. Starting Thursday and going right through Sunday, it was like Clock Town Day 3 from Majora's Mask was just playing on loop in the back of my mind.

Here's to a day that's not just . And I hope you all had a great weekend too!