games people play.

every so often i meet some joker who asks me to guess his age. its always "his age" because most women are usually trying to get everyone to forget how old they are, so they wouldnt suggest this game. usually when someone decides to pose this question i plead the fifth. after all, i dont want the next age guess to be mine. usually im a pretty good age guesser as well which irks the individual who has asked me to estimate his age. they usually think ill guess younger. guess again. and like i said, i dont really want to start guessing in the first place. why is it so important i know this particular guy's age? if he wants to tell me his age, why all the drama?
once when i was at someone's shabbos table an elderly gentleman started talking to me. i thought to myself "how nice this elderly man just wants to be friendly" not realizing that this "nice little old man" was really hitting on me. anyway, this senior asked me to guess his age and of course i refused. but he kept bugging me . finally i told him that he really didnt want me to guess his age. and then he insisted. well , finally i said that i thought he was seventy. well, as im sure you would guess he wanted me to guess again so i then guessed 69 and 72. this man looked older than my father!!! and wouldnt you know he tried to tell me he was really much younger than seventy, and that somehow he manages to date only women under 35. well just because he tells me hes younger than seventy doesnt mean he is. and the age he said he was , was way above my dating age range anyway. he was quite upset that i guessed such a high number, but i thought,what a fool? why ask a question you dont really want an honest answer to? i had told him that i didnt want to guess his age to begin with. it was irrelevant. furthermore, i think that one is probably better off lying and saying one is older because then people can tell you how young you look and how they would never guess your age!! because unless you truly look younger that your true age , everyone is going to know you are older anyway. or they are going to think you look really awful for the younger age you say you are.
actually, im all for avoidance. dont say your age at all. that way you arent lying. thats my preference. truthfully , if someone really likes you it wont matter how old you are. or at least they will like you for the age they think you are be it older or younger than you really are.
and you know what , for the seventy year old zaidehs there are always the anna nicole smith wannabes... although we all know what happened to her...poor soul.

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???