Hamavdil Bein Kodesh L'Kodesh

After the post I'll let you all decide if there's some deeper meaning behind the title. It'll be like how people think J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings as an allegory of World War II even though he strenuously denies that claim. This is an entirely uninteresting line of discussion; let's just move on.

On Sunday night, for the first time, my family had a Passover seder at my brother's apartment. He makes one every year and invites all of his friends who are around. Now, I mentioned in my anti-Passover rant last year (More Road Rage, April 11th, 2007) that one of the reasons I dislike the holiday is that everyone always spends it with their families so there's very little variety from year to year. Az this year was a little different. My brother started at around 7:00, az I started off over there, went across the street to synagogue, came back for half an hour, went back to synagogue, and then came back to my brother's and caught up to them. Now some of you are probably wondering about a few aspects of the story. For those of you who aren't, I'll supply the questions:

a) Why would my brother have friends who are around? Why wouldn't they be having the seder with their families?
b) Why did they start so early?

Well, most of my brother's friends are not of the Mosaic faith. However, many of them have been going to my brother's seder for several years. He asks that they each bring a bottle of wine (Kosher for Passover of course), and a "dvar torah." By that I mean that they each bring some kind of reading from a newspaper or a book, or something they found online that is somehow related to Passover or freedom. When they reach the point at the seder when each person's reading is appropriate, they read. And six hours later they're done. This absolutely blew my mind. I don't even think I could get my JEWISH friends to have a holiday meal with me for that long, especially if they each had to bring wine and a dvar torah. I find that troublesome. I guess that being observant these past eleven years can maybe desensitize me from the beauty and wonder of Judaism. I have to remember that there's a reason we do all of these rituals and follow all of these rules. Hopefully next year I'll be looking forward to Passover instead of having my usual sense of foreboding. Props all around to my big bro, his wife, and his friends. Best Passover I've had in a long time.

Here's a slightly amusing anecdote from yesterday. I had to e-mail someone at work to get some data from him, so I looked him up in the directory. Let's call him Bloggy McSchmuttface. So I see a Bloggy C. McSchmuttface in there, az I sent him my request. He e-mails me back and says he's the wrong person. I apologized to him, and then about a minute later a get another e-mail from Bloggy McSchmuttface with an attachment, asking me if these are the data I need. Meanwhile, I went to ask my boss how I can contact the real Bloggy McSchmuttface. She finds his e-mail address, and it turns out that his actual name is Curtis B. (Bloggy) McSchmuttface. Great, az I go ahead and send my original request to Curtis. A minute later I get a phone call from Bloggy McSchmuttface telling me that he sent me an e-mail with an attachment, so why am I calling him now? I'm not gonna go through the entire embarrassing discussion where I ask him which Bloggy he is, but to make a long story short, the first Bloggy that I e-mailed ended up forwarding my request to the real Curtis Bloggy, so he's the one who sent me the attachment in the first place. I understand that was a confusing story, but imagine how confusing it must have been for me while it was happening!

I was doing my usual baseball blog reading yesterday when I came across an article that listed all sorts of different statistics that random writers/bloggers/statisticians presented over the years. They all involved some kind of measurement of bases as compared to at-bats, plate appearances, or outs. It turns out that a man named Bill Gilbert came up with a stat called "Bases per Plate Appearance" several years ago. He calculates it differently than I do, but it would still be unkind of me to use his title without showing the proper credit. Now since the purpose of my statistic was to determine if it's worthwhile to always walk any batter in a certain situation, I did not include double plays, stolen bases, and caught stealing in the formula. I will continue to use the same name in any future research, but I just thought I should mention that the name is not exactly original.

Many of you have read in this space about my (mis)adventures in driving. I contantly complain that drivers are too wrapped up in their own selfishness to be courteous to other drivers. A lot of people have told me things like "well if it bothers you so much when people do that stuff, why don't you just do it yourself?" You know, like when everyone is exiting from the right lane, so it's all backed up, and then someone speeds in from the center lane and tries to cut in front of all the cars that waited patiently in the right lane. I've definitely mentioned that before. Another thing I hate is when you're driving southbound on the Harlem River Drive the right lane becomes "exit only" at 135th street, but some people will drive on the shoulder to avoid the inevitable congestion that results from three lanes merging into two. Somehow those people never get caught, but I know that if I ever do it I'll get caught. You know what I mean. Here's one more. When you get off the George Washington Bridge's upper level and exit onto 178th street you can either make a left onto Ft. Washington Avenue or continue straight towards Broadway. You cannot make a right onto Ft. Wash because there is traffic coming off the Henry Hudson Parkway. Similarly, if you are coming off the Henry Hudson Parkway, you can either make a right onto Ft. Wash or continue straight towards Broadway, but you are not allowed to make a left onto Ft. Wash because of the aforementioned traffic coming off the bridge. So last night I was getting off the bridge and an SUV that had come from the highway cut me off and made the illegal left onto Ft. Wash, something I've wanted to do many times. And a cop TOTALLY nailed him! It was awesome! Booyah! He was DONE! He was SO DONE! Now don't think I'm reveling in that person's pain, far from it! What I really gained from that experience was the knowledge that not everyone will get away with screwing other drivers. If you drive selfishly you will inevitably pay for it. I can now sleep soundly knowing that the system, while not perfect, works.