Chanukah Chappenings

[dorchadas]

I refuse to spell it "Xanuqa" even though that was the second-most-popular spelling at my party.

Sunday night was the first night of Chanukah, and after coming back from my date with debkaltman, I went home and told thosesocks that I had finished things up with enough free time, so she once again invited herself over to play Untitled Goose Game. We did most of the bar, stealing silverware, breaking glasses, and performing for a couple women so they would give us a flower, and after I lit the candles she excused herself since I had evening plans. I was going to two parties, one called "Yule Ghoul" hosted by jules_darling_art and one at Longman and Eagle for lisekatevans's birthday. Unlike last year's birthday extravaganza, this year was just a small gathering, so I spent about an hour at Yule Ghoul--long enough to witness, but not participate in, the white elephant gift exchange--and then ended the evening at Longman and Eagle before worldbshiny drove me home. Her passenger seat actually had room for a passenger!

It's a good thing I only had one drink, because the next morning I woke up early and walked down to Svea in Andersonville for the fifth annual Treifathon:

Yes, that's ham.

I posted this on Facebook and thosesocks texted me to ask what on Earth I was doing, which is a fair question. I usually say that I keep half-assed kosher, which is to say that I don't eat forbidden foods and I don't mix milk and meat, but I don't have separate dishes and I don't demand all my food be prepared by observant Jews. But yearly Svea brunch with aaron.hosek is a tradition that predates me becoming more observant in that way, and I find it valuable enough that I want to keep doing it. So once a year, I order the Svea Christmas Plate, with all its ham and sausage and cheese on the same plate, and I eat it.

What it reminds me is that I don't actually like ham and have no feelings about not eating pork. That korv sausage is really good, though. And I'd go for the conversation regardless, though we didn't do a lot of our usual videogame talk because I've barely played any games in the last two months. We talked about how great Untitled Goose Game is, talked about our jobs, he told me about his girlfriend starting up a new comedy show, and just caught up in general. For living three blocks from each other, we almost never see each other.

After brunch, I went back home and then caught a train out to the suburbs, since my sister wanderluster_kp had a brief moment of free time and was down from Michigan, so we all went to my parents' house and had dinner. We didn't watch A Muppet Christmas Carol like we usually do, we didn't play games, we didn't really do anything exciting. We talked a bit, then wanderluster_kp went to bed, then I went to bed, and in the morning I left on the 10:30 a.m. train so I could make my brunch time at Hanabusa Cafe with worldbshiny. I ended up being late because the train was late and I wanted to go up and drop off all my luggage--including all the chocolate and leftovers my parents had sent home with me--then go back downtown and I ended up being half an hour late. But worldbshiny was extremely gracious about it! After pancakes she suggested we walk over to Christkindlemarket to look around, she bought me kartoffelpuffer with sauerkraut since I had bought her pancakes, and at almost the last shop we stopped at, I was tempted by a carved wooden tree of life wall ornament, and after some debate I bought. I love tree of life imagery for a variety of reasons--among another things, it's a metaphor for the Torah based on Proverbs 3:18, עץ חיים היא למחזיקים בה ותמכיה מאשר eitz chayyim hi l'machazikim bah, v'tomachehah me'ushar, "She is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her, and all those who grasp her are happy"--so I took it home and hung it up right at the top of the inside stairs.

After Christkindlemarket closed we kept on down to Chinatown, where we got mango ice cream dessert at Mango Mango (appropriate name) and wandered around looking at some of the stores before the most wonderful time of the year finally came.

Of course, I mean the traditional Erev Christmas Chinese food outing:

With a few months of hanging out with koppel under my belt I felt more confident inviting friends, so worldbshiny and thosesocks were there on my invitation (I had invited britshlez, but she was having her own dinner with her family that she had invited me to, and due to lack of co-location and my long-standing custom I went with the first invite I had accepted). There were twelve people there this time, and I sat between worldbshiny and tom.hen.12, the latter of whom tried to sell me on Dead Cells. We all got into a big debate about the particulars of Jewish law (of course), focusing on whether unicorns or dragons are kosher--unicorns probably yes if they're the medieval goat-like depiction, dragons yes if they're aquatic and have fins or if they're aerial but vegetarians; and then ended up side-tracking into slightly-related concerns:

"The high priest has broken his leg, the assistant high priest is trapped in the bathroom by a goat, a horrible goose has invaded the Temple — help us Talmud, what do we do?"
-koppel

It was delicious! There was plenty for me to eat and all of it was good, especially the duck and the egg custard buns that tom.hen.12 ordered, and we went out for bubble tea afterwards before dispersing for the evening.

Unlike last year, this time I did do something on the 25th. thosesocks had asked me if there was a quiet day to get together and read or otherwise be more introverted, and when I asked koppel about it he said he'd be happy to host. So I went over after lunch, made myself a White Russian to catch up to the people who had been drinking since noon--more people to teach about 駆け付け三杯 kaketsukesanbai--and sat down to read. I didn't actually get that much reading in, sadly. Not sad because of the conversation, which was good, but because I'm almost at the wire for my Goodreads goal and I was really hoping to finish reading Blood of Elves that day.

thosesocks got in some valuable cat time:

Visible also at her instagram.

They asked me to lead the blessings when we lit the Chanukah candles, and I did--but everyone there knew a different melody for the prayers, so when we all tried to pray there was a horrific cacophony.

I left around 5 p.m. so I could get home and eat dinner before going on to my next event--meditation. Mishkan holds meditation sessions every Wednesday, and since I'm doing so much normally I haven't ever been before. This was right in the middle of my two weeks off, so I had plenty of time. It was quite a bit different from the the meditation sessions held at the AMA, which are only 15 minutes long and jump right into the meditation. The Mishkan meditation had a bit at the beginning where we all mentioned what was on our minds, then the facilitator talked about the weekly parashah (וישב vayeshev, "And he lived (in)," the parashah about Joseph and his coat) and how Joseph received the coat but never asked for it, and the Torah doesn't actually tell us how he felt about it. Was Joseph resentful of the gift for the rift that it drove between him and his brothers? Did he only wear it because his father gave it to him, or did he constantly wear it and dangle it before his elder brothers as evidence of his father's favor? We simply don't know, and similarly, we don't know what others' attitude toward the blessings in their own life is.

After that, we meditated for about twenty five minutes, then we closed out with a few thoughts about when we had done, and then I left. Over to thosesocks's apartment, since she had invited me to come over to watch Samurai Champloo with her. It was something she loved when she was younger, but I had never seen it--I remember that t3chnomag3 was into it, but I just never got drawn in. And then the title cards came up and I realized it was by Watanabe Shin'ichirō, the director of Cowboy Bebop, and it made me wonder how I had ever let it slip by.

We only got three episodes in, because thosesocks had to work the next morning, but that led up to a cliffhanger where Jin and Mugen, the blue oni/red oni duo who are currently bodyguards hired by Fuu to help her find the samurai that smells of sunflowers, were both hired by rival clans of Yakuza and are set to fight each other. After two episodes I was like, "This is really good," and I'm glad that she drew my attention back to it!

Thursday I didn't anything very deliberately, though I did have a fun incident at the hair salon. Usually my hair is cut by one of the Latina women that work there, and they're pretty chatty and spend the whole time asking me about my day, what I do for a living, Japan, and so on. This time my hair was cut by an Eastern European woman and other than asking me to move my head a bit, she cut my hair in total silence. It was so stereotypical I had to laugh.

Friday koppel had invited a bunch of people to King Spa, a Korean-style public bathing/spa facility out in the suburbs, so I signed on to that since there was a Groupon. I didn't find it as relaxing as I might have--we got there at 10 a.m. and I didn't leave until 3:30 p.m., and there were some things I wanted to do that afternoon before I went to services that night. I spent most of it reading Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg and occasionally dipping into the ice room to cool off. I didn't eat at the food court--not only due to kosher concerns, but also because I'm already over budget on restaurants this month--and didn't do much else other than briefly play Street Fighter II with meowtima, where he repeatedly schooled me using basically every single character he picked. It was still relaxing, though, since it was just a friendly match. And I did win when I picked Ryu, but otherwise my performance was dismal. I guess it's time for me to go home and be a family man.

I didn't know anyone at services, but it was nice to attend an entire service from start to finish and at the oneg, when I was sitting by myself, a couple pulled me in to come over and talk with them. They asked me a bunch of questions about Japan as soon as I mentioned it--almost no one is moderate on it, they either ask me a couple polite questions or the entire conversation shifts to be about Japan--and then we were sitting at the table next to where one of the rabbis picked up a guitar and decided to sing some Chanukah songs, so I got caught up in that. I didn't leave until 9:30 p.m., and I walked out to a text from thosesocks asking if I got home okay. She had suggested me coming over to hang out/watch more Samurai Champloo, but when I did get out it was too late for her, so I went home and went to bed.

Saturday was mostly relaxing and shopping. I ate lunch, bought a bunch of supplies, and then came home and started cooking for my Chanukah party. I was originally planning to make keftes de prasa, mochi latkes, and sufganiyot, but I only ended up making the former two. And by I, I mean "I and meowtima", who offered to come over early and help me make food, and he delivered in spades. Almost all of the mochi latkes were his doing:

I didn't have time to make sufganiyot, so cjkarr brought jelly donuts.

The mozzarella sticks are due to a tradition of eating cheese at Chanukah, based on Yehudit killing the Assyrian general Holofernes by getting him drunk after feeding him a bunch of salty cheese-based foods and then beheading him while he slept. And they're mozzarella sticks because they're fried, so that way I could combine the eating fried foods and eating cheese traditions!

People filtered in over the course of an hour or so. Most of the latkes were gone within the first hour, so I'll view that as a success--though other than the test latke and kefte de prasa that I ate to make sure they turned out well, I didn't actually get a chance to try either of them! I didn't try the matcha salt I made for the latkes either, though I saved some of it in my fridge. I'll make potatoes and put it on them or something.

After most of what I thought would be the attendees had arrived, I said it was time to light the candles, and once again I led the blessings, though this time I sang alone so there was no dissonance at all:

My menorah on the left, britshlez's that she brought to the party on the right.

I got compliments on my singing, too.

The one disadvantage of my home is that since it's an open plan with a wood floor and (currently) no carpet or really soft furnishings, it can get pretty loud. I need to get some sound-deadening decor or otherwise plan for that better. The party wound down after a few hours, after almost all the food had been eaten, and left me plenty of time to clean everything up and get to bed with plenty of sleeping time to spare.

I took a vote about the best way to transliterate חנוכה, and this was the result:

1. Chanukah: 7 (Lawful Good)
   
2. Xanuka: 4.5 (Chaotic Evil)
   
3. Hanukkah: 2 (Neutral Good)
   
4. Chanuqa: 1.5 (Lawful Evil)
   
5. Hanukah: 1 (Chaotic Good)
   
6. Hannukka: 1 (Neutral Evil)
   
7. Chanuka: 0 (Lawful Neutral)
   
8. Hanuka: 0 (Chaotic Neural)

The alignments are from a chart posted by ChiTribe, where True Neutral is, of course, the Hebrew. "Chanukah" is my preferred spelling, but I'm not surprised that Xanuka came so high. And multiple people asked me why Xanuqa wasn't on there, but I wanted only eight choices (for eight nights, of course).

Sunday morning I woke up and went to the Loop for brunch, because miranda.perleberg.1 and her husband were in town! They had gone to Minnesota for a wedding, and on the way back to Colorado they had a couple days, so they stopped into Chicago and let me know they were there! It was great to see her--I only get the chance every couple of years, and even though I only had time for lunch due to all the other things I had to do that day, I was happy to be there. The rest of the day, I read and did chores.

Today, I woke up early again, but this time I didn't have to make it downtown until 1 p.m. I went back to Hanabusa--making this the third time I had been there during Chanukah--to meet worldbshiny for pancakes and a museum visit! The Chicago Design Museum had an exhibit called "Setting the Stage: Objects of Chicago Theatre" that she had been wanting to go to for months and it ends in January, and this was the first time that we were able to make it. She bought lunch--I bought her lunch back on the day we went to Christkindlmarket, so I'm now in dessert debt--and suggested a savory/sweet combo, so she got a tamago sando and bought me a gyūdon bowl, and then we split a chocolate soufflé pancake before walking over to the museum.

The exhibit was props and set designs from various productions of theatres around Chicago, some of which worldbshiny had seen and none of which I had. I got some of her comments on the shows she had seen as we walked around the one-room exhibit and looked at the props:

B knows what they did.

And when we were done, around 3 p.m., we got on the Red Line and went home.


Tonight I'm going over to koppel's place to watch Zardoz, which I introduced to him at the quiet hangout I went to on the 25th, and which fired him up to get people together to watch it. It seems like a great way to usher out the old decade, with a bunch of ridiculous 70s imagery to purge all the venomous nonsense from the last year. And there was so much venom, but I feel like all the candle-lighting I've done lately has helped.

The year and the decade are almost gone. Let them go.

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."
- Alfred Tennyson, Ring Out, Wild Bells