SerandEz on the Road: From BeyondBT & Graffiti to Weddings, Showers, & Way Too Much Driving

[Rabbi A: This one's for anyone, but I think you'll enjoy it more. :) ]

Blogging will be particularly light this week, as we have 3 weddings and a sheva brachos [and for Serach, a shower] to attend over the next few days, and we've taken over someone else's house in Monsey for a while as they go to the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. [All of the smachot are closer to or in Monsey.]

Of course, this means that after the really nice, pleasant, fun BeyondBT Shabbaton, where we met a number of other bloggers including [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], the super-anonymous [redacted], and how could I leave out [redacted], we're on the road all week. We left the BeyondBT melave malka at about 11:30, while a few dozen people were still there, and finally hit the road at 12:40, arriving about 1:45 and finally getting to sleep about 3:30 - only to wake up at 6am to drive to and from Newark airport, a good 1:45 of driving. [I'm not sure if I will actually get to a point in this post... read on and see!] Next, we take poor little Elianna - who, though quite sick, has been such a good baby and hasn't even cried - to the doctor to see what's wrong. :(

From there it's off to Passaic to drop Serach at Kickboxer's shower, while I go visit some other friends and/or relatives in Joysey. Then it's back to Monsey, get ready, and head up to Anthony's Pier for wedding #1 (while missing another in Brooklyn).

Then the real exhaustion sets in - a 4:30am pickup from JFK of a friend who is on the way back from Israel, which is a good hour and a quarter or more away, then driving back to Monsey. Here, the person specifically made their ticket to JFK and not Newark in the hopes that I would pick them up, and since JFK is the closest airport to our apartment, this would be convenient. Only... we don't normally have a car, and they didn't actually bother to tell us this. But, since we love them anyway, I'm not only wasting 3 hours in the middle of the night when I haven't slept to get them, we're actually giving them the car we have for the week while we go to our weddings. Yes, we're brilliant [suckers].

Meanwhile, a good friend of ours took the keys to our apartment, which has [somewhat working] air-conditioning, and has the option of staying there instead of their apartment, a basement with two boilers and no air conditioners. This is primarily because while we made enough food for about 8 guys for Friday night, we were only 2 guys and 5 girls. This resulted in there somehow being more food leftover than there was served, even though everyone claims they ate "a ton". So... our friend has a refrigerator stocked with enough stuff to keep them going for a while, which may be good in case they decide to hole themselves up in our apartment while the police continue their investigations of what keeps happening in our building: The latest two incidents being maple syrup poured all over the mailbox area and "Muslims Hate Jews" graffiti on the wall. The good news is our friend is a really good shot; the bad news is they can't carry in this country (yet).

ANYWAYS... so yeah, blogging will be a bit light this week. Perhaps the other contributors will step up this week in my stead [AHEM] and treat you all to their wisdom; "I'm getting married tomorrow!" is not a good excuse. ;) If you're at one of the same weddings this week, feel free to come by and say hi [if you're the chosson, this is not what you should be doing].

:::sigh::: Let the driving - and parties - begin!

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