Recent excitement

1) A man on the bus in Brooklyn believed my mother and me to be sisters. Not the first time this has happened. Then it was that I'm clearly the mother and my mother the daughter, adding a whole new dimension to the whole "Jewish-babies" discussion, in that I've apparently already had one, before even myself being born. Not even the most ultra of the ultra-orthodox could beat that. The man then began discussing his abscess and how it needed to be drained. No segue or anything. Brooklyn-bus-avoidance: yet another reason to hope for a less snowy rest of April.

2) My mother and I fully exploited (in the inoffensive sense) all that gentrified Brooklyn has to offer. We got Belgian lunch, American Apparel, and Lebanese groceries. I noticed that some marzipan Easter candy was marked "Parve," suggesting that I'm not the only Jew to appreciate the culinary aspects of the upcoming Christian holiday. Easter strikes me as infinitely more appealing than Christmas, the holiday Jewish children supposedly yearn to embrace. Who needs a tree when you have permission to play with matches for eight whole nights? But in the chocolate eggs vs. horseradish contest (a sort of interfaith Latke-Hamentash debate), the winner is self-evident.

3) This evening, I had to leave a talk a bit early at which one of the panelists was either a founder or the founder of the "gender" approach to history, a talk largely about feminism and women's roles and such, due to some pressing difficulties involving my laundry, which, if not dealt with immediately, would have led to me losing my clothing. Not a petty concern, not a dire emergency, but nevertheless ironic.

4) This made my week. Depending how you and your officemates feel about German children's music, you might want to turn off your computer's volume before hitting play. But then you'll kind of miss the point. Headphones, then...