What a month!!! It has been fun without being so hectic except for the past week. I went to my sister's in Greensboro and Don went to Charlottesville, VA, both of us to be with family. We went on Christmas Eve and returned on the 26th.
During the month, we attended several parties and all were fun and we got to visit with plenty of our friends here in Charlotte. We also went to Nova Voce for some non-traditional Christmas music. One of our good friends from church was singing in this and it means so much to her every year. Don and I try to attend their Easter concert as well. Last year, we went to that one twice. I went to hear some more traditional Christmas music at church (not counting the regular Sunday services music) and my favorite male soloist, George Washington, III, sang several solos. One of his solos was O Holy Night and it was gorgeous.
We also went to a small dinner party at Jim and Nancy's and Ann and Bob were there too. Nancy served hot apple cider when we arrived, along with some hor d'oeuvres. Then we had lasagna and green beans and rolls - Yum. Later we had brownies and peppermint ice cream (my favorite kind of ice cream). Double yum!!!! We also played a game with some bagged gifts where Jim read the Christmas story with lots of deliberately placed left and rights in the story. Every time you heard left, you pass your package left and every time you heard the word, right, you pass your package right. When the story ends, you are holding your gift. The packages had CDs and DVDs and candy so they were not gender specific and all were things anyone could enjoy. It was great fun and we laughed and laughed as we passed things around - especially when Joseph and Mary "left right away." We also watched the Albert Finney musical version of "A Christmas Carol." We all loved that. I wound up giving that DVD to Don and to Julie as part of their Christmas presents.
I went to my sister's for Christmas. Don and I left around 11 on Christmas Eve and got there before 1. (I was a worried about Grayson, my cat, who was limping pretty badly on his right front leg. I cut his toenails just in case that might be the problem and Bertha is looking after my kitties while I am away. She will watch them pretty well, I believe. By the time I got home on the 26th, Gray was moving around much better.) Pretty soon after we got there, we had turkey and all the fixings - lots of cooking had gone on before we got there. Don and I really enjoyed the meal. It really hit the spot for all of us. Those of us at my sister's just snacked or helped ourselves that evening with leftovers. Don went out for steak and eggs to Waffle House as he had left us by then to prepare for a long drive the next day.
On Christmas morning, we gathered in the living room and opened presents. I was REALLY surprised to have received a new computerized sewing machine which I am now trying to learn to thread. I think I know how to thread it - it is a matter of hitting the right spots for some things so I hope practice makes it get easier and easier with time. I also got Carolina blue velvet curtains for one of my bedrooms from my nephew. So beautiful. My sister and I will get them hung as soon as we can. My sister got a whole new bedspread outfit including nice pillows with shams, a quilt to lay on the foot of the bed and new dust ruffle. Her bed now looks superb. Lauren and John got lots of things, some of them related to cooking, working out, or just great books for reading. They also got a small flat screen tv for their bedroom. David got a wireless router, several bluebird houses for putting out this spring, books. Daniel got shelving for his room. It has to be put together which should be a project, but the wood was really a nice color and it has glass doors in a couple of sections. I think it will look really good when it is installed. He also got games which we played and one of them was really fun and is authored by the crossword puzzle editor at the NY Times. It was Imagination TriBond by Will Shortz. Had fun with that one. We also played Scrabble which I like. I didn't do that well with the Scrabble game. I wound up with some pretty unusable letters and no vowels to attach them to. Maybe we should have gone with Hebrew spellings?!? Everyone got CDs or DVDs or books. We all had a great time. I gave Daniel a new Zelda game and a DVD of American Beauty which I wanted to watch with him but we ran out of time due to his working on the 26th.
Don and his daughter and two granddaughters drove to Crozet, Virginia to join his other daughter and her family for Christmas afternoon and evening. The drive was better than we had feared since there was no ice on the roads. However, it rained all day and that made it hard to see as well as one would like. But the traffic was light and there were no trucks on the road so that helped.
Lauren and John had been to Antigua this year and hot sauce is everywhere at restaurants there and it will be named for the owner of the restaurant, etc. So they gave David and Marlene a bottle of hot sauce called Susie's Hot Sauce but with Obama's picture on it. Apparently, Obama is much admired there so they put his face on lots of things to honor him. I'll have to find out how the hot sauce is.
On Christmas Day, my sister cooked (heated) a whole country ham. It took 2 and a half to 3 hours and the instructions were not very good. The glaze was also a challenge and something of an issue as the instructions left a clumpy looking substance on the ham. We diluted it and heated the ham some more after putting it on and all worked out really well. The ham was DELICIOUS. Although it was a lower salt ham, it was still plenty salty but so very hard to resist. The ham was bought from a gift certificate from Don from the previous year. It really was great and memorable. Smithfield also gave my sister a discount on a Paula Dean cake that had a mild peppermint icing. The aftertaste on the icing was the thing. At first you don't notice the peppermint but after a few minutes, you realize what you are eating. I loved that peppermint too.
We cleaned and cooked a LOT. But we enjoyed those meals like crazy. On the 26th, my sister and I and my niece went to a Ross Dress for Less to look for curtain rods for my new blue curtains. We found a decorative rod there. (The guys decided to come with us so we had David and John as well. Daniel was at work the day after Christmas.) We also went by a PetSmart to get some cat food with glucosamine in it for my Grayson who is sometimes limping pretty badly and won't eat the Cosequin for cats right now. So I got a bag of Purina One for Senior Cats and it has glucosamine in it. The minute I set it down once I was home that night, Milo was trying to tear it open. Must smell good or something. I gave some to both cats and they ate it right away. (Haven't seen Gray in it since but I am hoping he is eating it in the middle of the night. It does disappear.) Then we went by Target to see if something was available for John's dad's gift to make it complete. We didn't find it.
At home, we ate on leftovers and Marlene and I went back out to a fabric store to get material to make tiebacks. We got a satiny material and something to edge the material to give it a little more pop. I like it very much. We went home and worked on the tiebacks but it was taking a little long so we retired to the living room to visit with my niece and her husband. Daniel came home somewhere in here also but went to sleep pretty soon (been up since about 5 in the morning and worked pretty hard at Panera's).
My sister's dog, Biscuit, and her two cats were around us all 3 days and they were all well-behaved and fun to pet.
Don picked me up on the 26th maybe around 8 or so. We got home at 9:30 or 10 p.m. We unloaded a huge pile of stuff into my place and he went home. Gray was walking better than when I left. (Maybe the rain on the 24th made his arthritis hurt more than on the 26th when there was no rain.) Bertha said both Milo and Gray were good while I was gone.
The next day was the 27th, a Sunday. We went to church at 8:30 and Jim taught Sunday School. We went to Phil's for brunch and Jim's daughter was there with her 3 children who were great fun. One of them spotted Santa through his window on Christmas Eve and told about his mad race to get to bed before Santa came. As a coincidence, Don loaned Jim some Santa costuming earlier in the week!!!!!?????!!!!
After that, Don and I went to my place to open our presents. Julie had given me a automatic cleaning cat litter box. Don and I put that together and went to PetSmart to buy a cover for it and the right grade of litter. We also had to get batteries for it as we didn't want to use it in the house where we could have plugged it in. We'll see how that works. It took us hours to do all this but now it is set up and working fine. One of the cats used it during the night as I checked for that. I also got a blue topaz and silver bracelet from Sally and I think it is beautiful. I always love topaz and don't think I have anything made of blue topaz. Don gave me a book of pictures from the twins visit this year and a book that we will have a book discussion on in February called "Blood Done Sign My Name." We are hoping to get the author to come to the discussion and I am glad to have the book this early to read and mull over. I also got a trip to Black Mountain with a church group at the end of January. I am looking forward to it as I will be able to meet more of our church members in a more one on one way then. It is a women only trip. He has also been helping me endlessly with a new pc all year and before that he helped and helped with my poor dying pc.
Don and I also got a mat from his place and cleaned it up to put under a table to help give more stability to the foot pedal on the sewing machine. We set up the sewing machine on this table with foot pedal underneath. Of course, this entailed moving other things and especially getting cords off to the side of the room rather than toward the middle of the room. However, this did not take as long as you would have thought. Then we tackled putting together the litter box and getting it operational. That did take some time as we went out to stores to buy a few more things to go with it since we wanted to have it covered rather than the litter being out in the open. Figuring out how to put the cover together took us the longest and we succeeded more by our own wits than with the instructions (which made no sense).
I gave Don an out-of-print book called "Anatomy of a Game" which we had a difficult time finding at anything approaching an affordable price. But I managed to find a guy in Maine who was willing to sell it below the normal asking price. I am so grateful to him as this book was something Don wanted a lot and I like giving gifts like that to people I love. He said it was 5 times better than he expected and he wants to spend New Year's Day reading it and watching football games on tv. I know he will enjoy that.
I am sure there are things I left out but that seems to be the gist of it for Christmas this year.
12/28/09
12/18/09
2009.12.18 So You Think You Want to Learn Hebrew???!!!!
On December 16, 2009, Barbara and I finished the last of 10 Hebrew 101 classes at Temple Beth-El. In it, we learned the basic Hebrew alphabet (which has no vowels by the way). By this I mean, we learned the symbols and sounds associated with the symbols. Whatever speaking we did was mostly just sounding out the symbols presented with occasional information telling us what the words meant. I don't even think everything we sounded out represented a word or words. Vowels are designated by a series of dots or dashes or apostrophe-looking signs surrounding the letter. Most of these vowel designations are below the letter but some are beside or above. Also, some of the "letters" look VERY similar to other letters so you had to look carefully toward the end to see which letter is which. I liked the letter P, which looks for all the world like a little Pac-Man (including a dot that looks like his eye) from an old Atari game I used to play. The letter K looks very much like our P except the rounded part nearly meets but does not quite meet the line. One version of the letter, F, looks like the pac-man without an eye in it.
Our teacher, Dahlia, was from Israel and was very enthusiastic about her subject. Both Barbara and I thought she was a very good teacher. Many of the other students in class had attended Temple services for years and knew the Hebrew prayers that were often given as examples of words used from the letters we were learning. Barbara, another Oriental-looking lady, and I appeared to be the only three who were not familiar with those prayers so the examples were a little lost on me at least. The Oriental-looking lady was married to a Jewish guy who was in the class and who was always very friendly and nice to Barbara and me. She did not attend the last two classes and often said "Pass" when it was her turn to read a "word." I think her husband was a little disappointed that she gave up and didn't attend the last two classes.
Barbara and I had perfect attendance and neither of us ever "passed" when it was our turn. I wasn't always successful in reading the letters right but I did give it a try.
Some letters such as the M, N, F and TS sounds had two symbols - one if it were inside the word and another symbol if it ended a word. Other letters also had two symbols but had nothing to do with whether it was at the end of the word or not. I think on some of them, you just get to choose which symbol you like best - that was not really explained in any other way. The throaty "CH" (as is said at the end of Bach) sound had three symbols- one of which was a final "CH", the T had two, S has two. Two of the symbols (ayin and alef) were silent but could be put somewhere if you needed to add a vowel designation without a consonant being present.
Proportion of the letters was also important as that is the only way to tell the difference between some letters which look the same except for length or width of a line. A few letters go a bit above the line or a bit below and you need to know which ones are appropriate for that. Lamed (L) was one that went above the line, Final Nun or Nun Sofit (N) was one that went below the line as was final Feh (F), final Tzadi (TS), Kaf (K), and final Khaf (CH).
Also, the teacher made symbols on the board that did not look exactly like those shown in our book. Sometimes that could be confusing. And, vowel sounds can sometimes be silent even though they are shown as part of the word. There were six rules for this that were put on the board every week. I might get used to those rules over time but did not while I was in this class. I was concentrating on what the sounds were for all the symbols. I would have had to take this for quite a while to start adding in the rule variations for vowel sounds.
In Hebrew 102, some of the prayers are read and learned so reading is more important there and I don't feel adequate for that yet. Maybe if I took 101 again, the second time with the base of knowing most of the letters by looking at the symbol - maybe then I could move to 102 with a little more comfort that I would get something from it.
Since I don't have keyboard keys for the symbols we used, this lesson in Hebrew will do for now. I did pick up certain words as Shalom Shabbat, Torah, Alleluia, Amen, Adonai (looks like two apostrophes side by side - these symbols are called Yod and normally have a "Y" sound). The Yod is also used to turn a vowel sound into something more distinct such as an "ah" sound into an "a-ya" sound. But if you see two of these symbols together in a prayer book, the word to say is Adonai.
There are actual symbols for the sound oy (as in toy) and ooey (as in gooey). These were the last two sounds we learned in class.
Overall, I am glad I took this class and I think I will miss it. Barbara told me she practiced in front of her cats so I did a little of that too. Milo slept through most of it and Gray just left the room.
By the way, we went through Halloween, Thanksgiving and part of the Christmas season during all this and one perk is that I got to walk through Barbara's yard at Halloween. I have never seen a more decorated place for Halloween and Don and I had great fun on that adventure - especially at the head-removing witch at the end. Barbara's husband loves the holidays and loves doing up the yard especially at Halloween. I think kids all over the neighborhood must view a visit to their house as their favorite trick or treat place. We also saw the outside Christmas decorations her husband has put up after the class last Wednesday. Beautiful and complete with a countdown sign showing the days, hours and minutes until Christmas. Barbara and I ate at Izzy's Restaurant before the last two classes. The last time, we had a sandwich called the Providence which was a great chicken salad sandwich (not on the menu but available on request - at least when Barbara is the requestor).
Shalom!!!
Our teacher, Dahlia, was from Israel and was very enthusiastic about her subject. Both Barbara and I thought she was a very good teacher. Many of the other students in class had attended Temple services for years and knew the Hebrew prayers that were often given as examples of words used from the letters we were learning. Barbara, another Oriental-looking lady, and I appeared to be the only three who were not familiar with those prayers so the examples were a little lost on me at least. The Oriental-looking lady was married to a Jewish guy who was in the class and who was always very friendly and nice to Barbara and me. She did not attend the last two classes and often said "Pass" when it was her turn to read a "word." I think her husband was a little disappointed that she gave up and didn't attend the last two classes.
Barbara and I had perfect attendance and neither of us ever "passed" when it was our turn. I wasn't always successful in reading the letters right but I did give it a try.
Some letters such as the M, N, F and TS sounds had two symbols - one if it were inside the word and another symbol if it ended a word. Other letters also had two symbols but had nothing to do with whether it was at the end of the word or not. I think on some of them, you just get to choose which symbol you like best - that was not really explained in any other way. The throaty "CH" (as is said at the end of Bach) sound had three symbols- one of which was a final "CH", the T had two, S has two. Two of the symbols (ayin and alef) were silent but could be put somewhere if you needed to add a vowel designation without a consonant being present.
Proportion of the letters was also important as that is the only way to tell the difference between some letters which look the same except for length or width of a line. A few letters go a bit above the line or a bit below and you need to know which ones are appropriate for that. Lamed (L) was one that went above the line, Final Nun or Nun Sofit (N) was one that went below the line as was final Feh (F), final Tzadi (TS), Kaf (K), and final Khaf (CH).
Also, the teacher made symbols on the board that did not look exactly like those shown in our book. Sometimes that could be confusing. And, vowel sounds can sometimes be silent even though they are shown as part of the word. There were six rules for this that were put on the board every week. I might get used to those rules over time but did not while I was in this class. I was concentrating on what the sounds were for all the symbols. I would have had to take this for quite a while to start adding in the rule variations for vowel sounds.
In Hebrew 102, some of the prayers are read and learned so reading is more important there and I don't feel adequate for that yet. Maybe if I took 101 again, the second time with the base of knowing most of the letters by looking at the symbol - maybe then I could move to 102 with a little more comfort that I would get something from it.
Since I don't have keyboard keys for the symbols we used, this lesson in Hebrew will do for now. I did pick up certain words as Shalom Shabbat, Torah, Alleluia, Amen, Adonai (looks like two apostrophes side by side - these symbols are called Yod and normally have a "Y" sound). The Yod is also used to turn a vowel sound into something more distinct such as an "ah" sound into an "a-ya" sound. But if you see two of these symbols together in a prayer book, the word to say is Adonai.
There are actual symbols for the sound oy (as in toy) and ooey (as in gooey). These were the last two sounds we learned in class.
Overall, I am glad I took this class and I think I will miss it. Barbara told me she practiced in front of her cats so I did a little of that too. Milo slept through most of it and Gray just left the room.
By the way, we went through Halloween, Thanksgiving and part of the Christmas season during all this and one perk is that I got to walk through Barbara's yard at Halloween. I have never seen a more decorated place for Halloween and Don and I had great fun on that adventure - especially at the head-removing witch at the end. Barbara's husband loves the holidays and loves doing up the yard especially at Halloween. I think kids all over the neighborhood must view a visit to their house as their favorite trick or treat place. We also saw the outside Christmas decorations her husband has put up after the class last Wednesday. Beautiful and complete with a countdown sign showing the days, hours and minutes until Christmas. Barbara and I ate at Izzy's Restaurant before the last two classes. The last time, we had a sandwich called the Providence which was a great chicken salad sandwich (not on the menu but available on request - at least when Barbara is the requestor).
Shalom!!!
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