friends to the end

when i was a kid and we were learning how to spell my teacher had a saying to help us remember how to spell the word friend. she used to say 'friend to the end ' so we would remember that it was ie not ei . of course as an adult i realize how much weight this mnemonic device held. turns out that not many friends are truly friends to the end. and thats okay. some friends are just situational friends. you're single , they're single and once they get married pouf ! they disappear. other friends are friends for awhile until you have a falling out. like perhaps one of you was always ignoring certain fallacies in each others personalities until one or the other couldnt ignore it anymore and then bye-bye friendship. or perhaps someone moves away and at first you keep in touch and then you occasionally keep in touch, and then you finally see each other again and then you realize you are just different people and really now turned out to be situational friends. other friends you just grow out of even though you may have been really close at one time. there are other friends that no matter how long you might be out of touch with them you can always pick up with them where u left off. they could be married and have loads of kids and you could still be single, but still you are true friends. friends to the end.

trader joe's

one of my favorite places to shop is trader joe's in union square. they have an awsome variety of kosher cereal, some that are even their own brand. they also have these very unique totally parve rice and seaweed crackers that taste like sushi. their frozen latkes are tops. they also have a unique variety of kosher cookies and candy. since the store is near nyu , alot of students who appear to be from out town work there. the employees wear these funky hawaiian shirts. the lines are always way long, but to me it adds to the experience. as long as the line is, it tends to move pretty quickly and its very organized. and since generally im not a fan of long lines and crowds, it says alot. the other great thing about trader joe's is that you can purchase all these "exotic" foods for a very reasonable price.

another cool thing about trader joe's is that they incorporate caring for the environment in to their business practices without making it preachy. for example: if you bring your own tote bag for your groceries instead of using their bags, they give you a raffle ticket for the next week and you are entered for a drawing for a bag of groceries . i think this is an ingenius ploy on their part. they make being ecological fun!! they save money on bags as well as saving the evironment!! i think its so cool how they just sneak it in. if other stores did this i think it would really cut down on consumer waste. hooray for trader joe's!!!

sheitle shenanigans.

being single i never had reason to pay any attention to sheitle stores. all of the excitment over the coney island sheitle store down the block from chaim berlin has actually made me have an interest . of course not an interest in sheitle stores so ill be able to know what the bargains are once i get married. my interest in sheitle stores as of late is a product of missing sixth grade games of boys versus girls.



the alleged photos of women's heads wearing wigs has indeed been trumped. there are no more pictures of women's faces, but the picture that is now up is far worse. the picture is taken from the back of a woman wearing a long blond sheitle in a long-sleeved, long black dress. the photo to say the least really accentuates the woman's form....obviously the store owner is trying to rile people up. its too bad the owner has stooped to such stunts. she should have left her original headshots up .

from what it seems like to me is that those who banned the store should have left well enough alone and just have told the bachurim to stay on their side of the street. now that would have been good chinuch. the store window was quite tame to begin with. this sheitle store window should have been a non-issue.

i think that if the yeshiva was so concerned that the stores on the block may be objectionable, they should start buying all of the bldgs on the block when they become available. actually, the space that the sheitle store is in always has seemed to be changing ownership. the yeshiva lost its chance.

all of this "frumkiet " with the sheitle store is idiotic anyway. there wasnt anything wrong with the store window to begin with and why arent people more concerned with bayn adam l'chavero issues?

last of all, i didnt like the dynamics of petty sixth grade boys versus girls games when i was eleven ,and i certainly don't want to experience them when im biologically old enough to be the mother of a sixth grader.

the band's visit

i saw the israeli movie the band's visit on sunday night. it was cute. it was an israeli movie about an egyptian police band who get lost and end up in an israeli town . they have to stay overnight because by the time they get there there is no more bus service to the town they really wanted to go to. i liked it because it felt like a real slice of life of two different types of people who are forced to spend a little time together and how they manage to co-exist. what i liked about the movie is that instead of actually spelling out to you that israelis and egyptians have differences, it just presents it as a given, but delves more in to the fact that are from peoples who are different from each other in a general sense but they never spell out specifically WHY . to me this is why the movie works. its about people as people being different, but not in a global political way. of course when i read a review of the movie in the angelika's movie theater flyer, it makes the movie seem like it deals with the politcal differences between egyptians and israelis. this i find so humorous. if i had read their review before viewing the movie i probably would never have gone to see it.

time out at starbucks

for all of u starbucks lovers, all starbucks across the united states will be closed from 6-9pm on february 26 for training. so make sure u get your caffiene fix in advance.

welcome to new york

every city has their own jargon nyc included. carbonated beverages are soda not pop , gym shoes are sneakers , people stand on line not in line. frumspeak has a life of its own here. growing up out of town when someone decided to be "frummer" they would affect what i would call a " new york speech impediment" so they would sound more frum. now in nyc its okay , because that's how people here actually speak. out of town...well..its a different story. here instead of eating a meal at someone's house, they eat by their house. this term would always confuse me especially when people would say they were going by so and so's house that day. i wouldnt understand why they were just going to pass by the house instead of actually visit them. another puzzling question i would get was " how long are you here?" at which point i would look at my watch and say "ten minutes, why is this so important?" what they actually meant was how long had i been in ny. who knew? my other favorite is when people say they are looking for a guy who learns. don't they mean a guy who studies as in torah? and the list goes on. actually i probably would be doing myself a favor if i myself affected the new york speech impediment and picked up the jargon instead of adhering to more grammatically correct english. less people would speak to me as if i was BT, because after all, don't all frum jews have ny accents???

dating doldrums

loshon harah and dating is always a difficult one . one thing for sure no one is going to tell me what i need to know, but you can bet on the fact that someone is going to tell someone something about me . and this my friends is why i believe that there is a special place in hell for shadchanim. for all of the ways they twist the truth just for their own pocketbooks, nothing else. the only way a shadchan is going to make a shidduch for me is by accident, and they would have to be paying me for my tzar in having to deal with them. once long ago someone set me up with a guy so fat that the moment i looked at him my face fell. i didnt mean to do this, but if someone would have just warned me i would have been prepared. then i wouldn't have had such a strong reaction. maybe i would have met him anyway(probably not, i admit) . was it fair to him to have to meet someone with such a negative gut reaction? and i actually checked him out, but no one managed to tell me this. when i mentioned to the shadchan that i would have preferred someone slimmer the shadchan said "well he used to be even fatter". i would be more upset with this woman, but i heard years later that this noble shadchan is divorced. not that she deserves to be, but now she can get to know what it feels like to be set up.

my all -time favorite is the person "friend" who says you are too this or too that,but they won't tell you who said this so you could maybe understand the context. of course i always wonder why the authority of this anonymous friend is taken so seriously and my supposed friend is taking their side and not mine. whose friend are they anyway? a variation on this theme is the guy who i dated who told me he heard i had nerdy friends in high school. at the time i was 26. high school was a million years ago even then. aside from the fact this particular guy wasn't so cool ever. ive always been an individualist . im friends with someone because they are my friend. friendship with me never depends on a coolness score. at the time i told him that my friends were great, and i didn't know what he was talking about and who told him this anyway? and to this he replied ' i cant say' baloney!! don't insult someone and not let them be able to defend themselves.