Passover and passing out

For once I will not write a vague entry (do I hear procrastination?) and will tell you about my day yesterday because it was jam packed and photo-free. It was unlike every other day of my life. In case you weren't aware, Passover started last night.

10:22 am - left the apartment to go pick up Natalie (or some other spelling) and then headed to the T. dot.

1:00 pm - pull up to her empty house and head back to my place in the R.dot.

1:47 pm - realise what a bummer it is that the folks are out of town and begin to wonder what time I am supposed to arrive tonight.

2:00 pm - 5:00 pm - I'm not sure what happened, but I definitely had a nap and an apple in that time. oh and I ironed a shirt for the first time ever. I don't want to do that again.

5:15 pm, approximately - begin to get ready at a ridiculously slow rate for the evening festivities, jamming out to some CDs from one of many amazing tupperware containers of CD greatness. (something inherent to my brother and I is to store our mounds of CDs in tupperware, you know, just so they can spill all over the car when you're on the highway)

6:45 - Depart for destination. At this point, I'm sure I'm going to be late, because it was really 6:55 when I left.

7:13 - after a few detours, I make it to the house, my dad's cousin's house. When I arrive, there are very few people there, mostly old. No one has any idea who I am. My guess is that without my parents, they have no context. In the family room where I was hanging out, there was this amazing old lady with great glasses and a great attitude.

I'm not sure what time it was when a lot more people showed up; Most of whom I knew and a lot that I didn't. I counted 28 people plus the baby. Everyone who knew me, came in and greeted me and followed up with "where are your parents?" in a very confused tone and looked around. "Israel" "Really?" "Yeah, they took my brother with them."

To the basement! We all piled downstairs and tried to find our seats, yes there were labels and someone made a switch which almost caused chaos. I sat next to my cousins Jon and Shona and across from the two old ladies who had earlier been discussing how ugly Oprah is (and how great her make up people are) and arguing about whether tons of money is good or bad. My cousin Dave was next to them.

The evening seemed to be strangely planned out. There were quite a few instances of "read the next 3 pages to yourself...ok now we're in the middle of page 15" No one actually read them. Also, everyone seemed to be annoyed whenever questions were asked. In the past, it was not unusual to start dinner around midnight due to questions and discussions. Thankfully, I didn't get called on to answer questions or anything.

An evening with any relative of mine is apparently incomplete until someone makes a Simpsons reference, Jon was the perpetuator this time, during a song he called out "mono" after every chorus. Usually I don't get to talk to Jon much, but I did this time. He told me all about his teaching gig at the university. I asked him if he ever messes with his students:
"You mean that if they come and ask me for advice and I give them advice and then they come back after they've done the procedure and I ask them what they did and they tell me. Then I'd say, 'what the hell did you do?! I can't believe you did that!' ?"
"yeah"
"sometimes."
Jon is awesome.

Dave compared Judaism to the Matrix. We called him neo for a while after that and oh yeah, we laughed at him too. You know a comment is heading in a good direction when it starts, "I guess the only way this will make sense is if you've seen the Matrix." After dinner, he told me about his baby and what it's like to be responsible for another human being, while the baby passed out in her great-grandma's arms, after everyone else tried to get her to sleep, that was pretty awesome. There are like 400 photos of that, none of which are mine. Dave also cheered me up about the whole getting ditched by my family, his entire family went to Costa Rica once without him. I asked him why and he said that they didn't want him there. He also had exams.

My cousin Rob left pretty early, so I didn't get to talk to him much. My conversation with Andrea was pretty short too, as was with Josh. Andrea and Dave's wife were talking about names and I have a very limited knowledge of names, I offered "Jonas." Josh asked me about an assignment we had gotten back the day before. He definitely thinks that I'm a lot smarter than him, which I guess I am, at least in that class.

Shona's boyfriend showed up at some point. I've known him for about 10 years now (yikes!), but don't see him much these days. He used to be best friends with my brother - to the point that they were roommates in first year. They've definitely gone separate ways. All he could say to me was "it's nice to see you." Andrea pointed that out.

In any case, the evening was a lot better than I had expected it to be. I wasn't as uncomfortable as I would have thought...Then again I was with family and I've known them for a while. Also being on my own forced me to represent properly. Anyone who knows me, knows that if I'm by myself, I tend to not be social at all, so I've really socialed myself out. Also, my dad's cousin gave me a whole whack of food and a ton of "tzimus" or something, which she insisted is the greatest thing ever. I don't know if I agree with her.

Today, I woke up and eventually headed back to London Town and stopped off in Mississauga to meet up with Ker. She had to drive something to Guelph, so I picked her up, we went to the parking lot and switched cars and headed half way to London from Mississauga. It was cool to see her since I keep missing her and we'll be sooo far away from each other this summer (mostly my fault). Then it was on to London, where I almost got smushed by a truck, but I made it alive.

I hope you enjoyed this intimate look into my life and my crazy enormous family.