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Thursday, October 30, 2008

Calendar Roulette

December sucks.

Let me immediately clarify, loudly and for the record, that I love the holidays. LOVE 'em. I love Christmas, I love Hanukkah, I love entertaining and gift shopping and baking and feasting and holiday cards. I love the excess and the frenzy (most of the time) and the warmth. I love hearing from people who I only hear from once a year, and I love seeing friends who we don't see nearly often enough. I love hanging out in my Mom's kitchen on Christmas eve and I love the local Santa who makes late-evening visits to thrill the kids and I love decorating the tree and I love lighting the menorah candles.

But nonetheless, December sucks. We have so many scheduling minefields to work around it's giving me an ulcer.

Every year we have a Hanukkah party for the cousins on Michael's side of the family. In scheduling, we must work around the cousin who is observes the Sabbath and therefore won't come to our house on a Saturday; cousins who are season ticket holders for the Iggles which usually knocks out 2 potential Sundays when the Iggles are at home; and the kids of cousins who play basketball and have their team tryouts on a Sunday in early December. This date in particular seems to get scheduled at the last possible moment, making advance planning very difficult.

The annual open house is easy by comparison. Every year we have a holiday open house for all of our family, neighbors, and friends we hardly ever see anymore (LOTS of theatre friends). Because of the sheer size of this open house, it has to be on a Sunday, so that we have Saturday to prep. Our local theatre has load-ins on one Sunday each month, however, and for the last several years we have completely hosed lots of those friends by inadvertently scheduling the open house on load-in day. I really want to make up for the historic hosing this year if at all possible.

Do you think I can get away with having a Hanukkah party on November 23?...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sure, but it should be as close to 25 Kislev as possible.

Wait, I did not know the husband was of tribe!!!!

Um, hello?!!! AG is a single tribette and the Jewish girl his mother is seeking. Help a sister out here.

RuthWells said...

Sorry, AG -- Michael has 2 sisters, no brothers. There is one recently divorced male amongst the cousins, but I don't think he'd be up to the AG challenge! ; )

AnnL said...

What's a load-in day?

RuthWells said...

Load-in is when you take out the set from the show that just closed and build/install the set for the next show. Big, big work day with all hands on deck.

Anonymous said...

Surely his sisters must know a nice Jewish boy.

Funny story, I got tipped off on a nice one last night. It is very promising and we're being introduced soon.