I just got home from the grand three-week American tour, and my next-door neighbor greeted me with cookies and milk. I'm gonna try to go straight to sleep after nibbling these treats.

I thought I would write some diary entries while I was in the US, but I just got too busy. The short summary is that the trip was a great success. I got to spend some really good time with everyone that I wanted to, and I had a blast.

Sorry to jerk you guys around, but recently revealed scheduling conflict means that we're throwing the party on the night of the 21st and morning of the 22nd, not the 14th and 15th. Hope y'all can still make it.

I'm leaving for the USA tomorrow. If you are reading this and you will be somewhere in the Baltimore area on the night of Saturday, 14th 21st of January, 2006, then you are hereby invited to the official reunion party of the American Society of Daniel's Friends (ASDF '06). The site of the festivities will be just off Nunnery Lane in Catonsville at the home of Steve Killen, Rebecca Stephen, and Libby Norris. Email me if you need a more precise address or directions. You can start showing up after about 7pm. Please send RSVP to The Steve so that he can get a feel for how many people to expect.

If you are among the less nocturnal contingent and prefer a morning matinee over a sunset soiree, we'll also be hosting brunch on the following Sunday at around 10am-ish.

Hope to see you there!

/me does excited happy dance

Update (at 19:34:01 IST): Note that the date of the party has been rescheduled one week later to the 21st.

This past weekend revealed irreconcilable differences between me and Itai. We both enjoyed and appreciate the time we spent together, but it is not to be.

Right now, I'm reminded of the most important story my mother ever told me. As a little girl, my mother was once with her mother in a grocery store. When they got to the check-out line, the clerk at the register glared at them with a nasty scowl, replied to my grandmother's questions with curt, resentful answers and sharply impatient gestures, and responded to any attempt at friendly conversation with a vile sneer. As they were leaving the store, my grandmother turned to my mother and said, "Poor woman. She stands up all day. Her feet must be hurting her so terribly."

The most important rule for relating to your fellow human beings is to expend every possible effort to see them as ultimately good at their cores. Dan et kol ha-adam l'kaf zechut. דן את כל האדם לכף זכות.

Vanilla. And it's delicious. I was grocery shopping a few days ago and I just saw it sitting there on the shelf in a big plastic jar labeled "instant pudding" transliterated into big Hebrew letters. A whole kilogram of creamy yellowish-white powder just waiting for five liters of milk to mix with. I couldn't resist a dare like that.

But, no, I haven't exhausted the entire jar full of pudding powder all at once. I used but a fifth of the mix this eve for three reasons. First, I had only a liter of milk in the fridge available for this endeavor. Second, I don't have a bowl big enough to contain all the pudding that would be possible. And finally, don't I think that even I am eccentric enough to consume such a quantity of pudding in the time period available before it would spoil.

Most of today was spent helping Becca look after Ashira. I played with Ashira around the house while Becca worked hard on winnowing and threshing the thousand-plus photographs she's taken since the baby was born, selecting and preparing a collection to be printed out to bring to the family in America. Later, I carried Ashira around while we went out for a walk and a pizza lunch and groceries.

Itai's been sick with the flu all week, and he's still not yet fully recovered, so we'll take it easy and spend this Shabbos apart. But sometime in the middle of next week I hope to swoop down into Tel Aviv and light Chanuka candles with him and subsequently take him as my date to the wedding of my friend Alex Margolin and his betrothed, Lisa Gold. Mazel tov!