Not so happy cheese day

So, eight months seems to have passed me by without anything worth writing about happening in my life. Well, that’s what one would be forgiven for thinking were they to be a follower (ex-follower more likely…) of this particular blog.

It’s not true though. Plenty of things have happened. I’ve had various amazing visitors come to play with me in the Holy Land (including His Holiness, the pope), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made umpteen threats about his nuclear program, there have been a bunch of wars all over the world, my hair has grown significantly, the weather has gotten colder, and then hotter again, the US elected a black president and Israel elected a flawed prime minister for a second term, and I got a new computer.

So why then, one may ask, have I been so neglectful? Am I uninspired? Unmotivated?

Maybe so.

Or, maybe not. Maybe I’m just busy.

More likely, I think, is that the last shreds of the novelty of living in this ridiculous place have finally worn off.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that I’m over it – far from it. Everything’s just… normal. People come to visit from overseas and I get inundated with ‘Look at the size of that gun,’ ‘Wow the food is oily,’ and ‘Oh your Hebrew has improved,’ and I’m like… okay. Shrug. What do you want me to do about it? The day-to-day here doesn’t surprise me anymore, doesn’t make me want to share absurdities with the world.

As such, it seems, this is a nothing post, a Seinfield post, an attempt to get myself writing again. Writing something other than news stories, and scrawled semi-drunken rants which hopefully no one will ever see, at least not while I’m still alive.

Perhaps I’ll stop writing before this becomes a rant then, and leave you with this thought:

Most Jewish holidays are based around food, and most holidays based around food are based around meat. Piles of meat, of assorted types, which I do not eat. As a result of Jewish dietary laws keeping meat and milk separate, I end up eating lots of carbs and veggies, which though I prefer over ingesting murder, gets kinda old.

There is, however, one Jewish holiday, for which a tradition has evolved to make a milk meal. Shavuot. Oh Shavuot. The one vegetarian holiday.

Now, though this festival may well have been invented by Tnuva (milk company) like Valentine’s Day was invented by Hallmark, and really marks the Jews receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, which I couldn’t really care less about even if it did ever happen, I’m a fan. I’m a fan of pasta with cream sauces and cheese balls and cheese cakes and blintzes and the like. I can say ‘I love cheese’ in 14 different languages. Dairy products, though also questionable ethically, I must say, are of my favourite things in the world.

So you’re thinking I’m happy right now, yeah? Because after all, today is Shavuot.

But no, no. No, I have to work. Lame, I say. Lame.

Happy cheese day indeed.