Last week Tamara and I found ourselves taking a last-minute trip up to Washington State. We had to take care of some family business so I wouldn’t call it a real vacation but we did manage to squeeze in an extremely fun day trip to Seattle. I’m not going to go into great detail with this post because Tamara’s already beaten me to the punch and I might add done a great job. However I will say that being in Washington felt a lot like home and made me realize a couple of things. One is that what passes for green here in Southern California really is brown and it would seem, that the further north one goes, the deeper blue the sky becomes. Secondly, I truly miss clouds and the rain and I mean truly miss clouds and rain!

But seriously all things considered I think we had an excellent trip especially our time in Seattle, which was fun and surprisingly inexpensive. I think that keeping kosher actually really helped keep the cost down because we avoided restaurants opting instead to pack and carry our own kosher food. I suppose that what we did might be called urban picnicking and it was a blast. By the way Pepper Tofurky is freaking awesome!

Anyhow we were staying a little over an hour outside of Seattle and instead of driving into Seattle we decided to park the car and take a ferry. I think it was a smart move because both of us to really enjoyed the ride and we managed to snap some excellent pictures. There were a flock of seagulls that followed us all the way to Seattle. On the way back they were with us again and this time people were feeding them, which was a pretty amazing thing to watch. The birds spent more time gliding than flying and literally seemed to float over to people’s hands, where they elegantly plucked food from fingers and then just floated away.

If you’re interested in seeing more pictures from this trip you can do so by clicking here.

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I got up at 6 this morning and watched all three amazing parts of this series and I (of course) highly recommend them!

Oh and BTW Winston is practicing Jew and Scientist, which makes this series all the more interesting to watch IMO.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to do a proper post but I will mention that Winston at one point in part 3, interviews Richard Dawkins and IMO does a great job of keeping him in check.

Anyhow enjoy and if you do watch feel free to share your thoughts on the subject.

From the BBC Press Release:

Robert Winston presents The Story of God

Professor Robert Winston presents a definitive three-part documentary series on the history of mankind’s quest to understand the nature of God.

The Story of God is an epic journey across continents, cultures and eras exploring religious beliefs from their earliest incarnations, through the development of today’s major world faiths and the status of religious faith in a scientific age.

Read the rest of the press release here

The Story of God part 1 of 3

The Story of God part 2 of 3

The Story of God part 3 of 3

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This past weekend was crazy busy for me (which probably equals regular busy to most people) but it was a lot of fun.

Here’s the short version of what went down.

Friday Night

• A lovely Shabbos dinner with friends over at their place.

Saturday

• Tamara and I went for a 5 & 1/2 km Shabbos walk including a lovely visit with friends.
• Tamara made me what is probably the best homemade sandwich I’ve ever had in my entire life (no joke).
• A last-minute coffee date with a buddy to talk about Kaplanian Theology and gelato.

Sunday

• An Early Sunday morning trip to San Diego in order to attend a headstone unveiling.
• Two power stops at what I’m told are San Diego’s only two Judaica stores, where I bought Shabbat candles and a book.
• A power drive to Orange County from San Diego in order to spend Father’s Day with some of Tamara’s family.

Monday

Tamara decided not to go to work so we made it a fun day!

• Went out for a kick ass Israeli style kosher breakfast at a great little restaurant in the valley called Cafe Eilat.
• Checked out a few kosher shops in the valley where Tamara picked up some of her favorite kosher gum.
• Spontaneously decided to go and check out VBS which is one of the finalists in our current shul shopping as a couple thing.
• Found this kosher meat restaurant where we proceeded to buy some take out vegetarian lunch.
• Drove down to the La Brea Tar Pits where we enjoyed a picnic style lunch and then toured the park.

I realize that it doesn’t look like that much but it sure felt like a lot to me. I mean I’m a guy who spent the last eight months or so trying to go out no more than once or twice a week. I’m not complaining rather just sitting here thinking, wow I did more this past weekend and I normally do in a week back home. All in all it was very fun and I look forward to doing more of this kind of stuff with Tamara. It really is great that we are finally together as a couple.

Anyhow that’s about it for now, so ttyl.

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As I mentioned in my last post I’m here in LA and getting settled in quite nicely I might add. But before I get into what’s new down here, I would like to catch up on a few things that I missed in the hustle and bustle of getting ready for my trip to Los Angeles.

First and foremost sometime on May 28 (or May 29 depending on my mood) I hit my three year sobriety mark. Unfortunately despite the fact that I, my family and Tamara all knew it was coming up we all managed to somehow forget about it when the day actually came. To be honest I’m disappointed that I forgot but it’s not a huge deal to me because I’m a little divided about this whole recovery thing. At this point I just don’t identify a whole bunch with the idea of being an alcoholic. That’s not to suggest that I think I could handle taking booze on again as a hobby because I know I’m a person who should never (and I mean never) start drinking again. It’s just that I don’t wake up every morning and think to myself “Hello my name is TikkunGer and I’m an alcoholic”. I also haven’t been to a meeting in probably a little over a year and a half now. I guess I just kind of feel that it was an issue at one point and I’ve handled it so why try to force myself into an environment I no longer need. Things might be different if I hung out with people who were habitual drinkers but I don’t. Of course having said all of that I know that if things ever got rough and I began to feel the urge to start up again I’d certainly start hitting meetings again. But I’m pretty optimistic that that’s not going to be happening anytime soon. I guess the bottom line is that in my mind three years deserves a little bit of recognition and so it would’ve been nice to have done something, but oh well life goes on.

Something else I’ve wanted to blog about I haven’t is that over last couple of months I’ve been actively working on part one of my final (= honors thesis) project for my bachelors program. It’s spread out over three courses the first part being a research project, the second being a project/program design course and the last being a project/program implementation course. I’ve completed my research proposal as well as my literature review and managed to get A+’s for both of them which has me quite happy about school at the moment. All that remains for part one is to complete a 25 page final research report. I’m actually doing it on a Jewish topic so I’ll probably be doing a fair amount of blogging about it in the not-too-distant future.

As for preparing to come down to Los Angeles it was stressful but it went unbelievably well from start to finish. I mean there were problems like it taking well over two months to renew my passport but everything got dealt with in a completely reasonable manner, which is not something I’m accustomed to. Probably the most difficult thing was giving away and selling off pretty much everything that I own. I didn’t own all that much but I certainly did have a well furnished one-bedroom apartment. I managed to make about $1200 but I gave away thousands just in books (no joke) and hundreds and hundreds of dollars in art that I had been collecting over the years. I basically came down with Judaica and education/psychology books, a few pieces of Jewish art, some electronics and clothing but that’s it. I actually have reduced my material possessions to about four boxes and two suitcases worth of stuff and it was an extremely painful process. Don’t get me wrong it was completely worth it but it was just hard to go through, I’m sure many of you can relate.

Anyhow this post has gotten a lot longer than I expected it to, so I think I will wrap up for now.

Be well.

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Just a quick note to let those of you who are actually curious about my whereabouts that I have in fact landed in Los Angeles and am well into unpacking and getting comfortable with things.

I?m a little bit tight on time so no real posting just yet but I wanted to get a quick note up for those of you who are interested. I am now indeed in Los Angeles and settling in quite nicely. It?s great to be here with Tamara and once I?m a little bit more settled in I?m sure I will do a proper update for everyone.

Until then take care

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Well I’ve learned a couple of things in the past week including the following.

One: It’s really hard for me to get around to doing proper posts when Tamara is here.

Two: Apparently people aren’t really interested in commenting on my Jesus related posts, LOL.

Anyhow Tamara is still here but I’ve managed to carve out a little time for myself in order to do a post or to and catch up on blog reading. So stay tuned for more blog posts later today and tomorrow.

It’s nice to have Tamara here and things are going well we’ve got a car, so we are able to get out and about despite the snow. Now speaking of the snow it’s actually been relatively mild and tolerable this past week. The weather has actually gone above zero several times and so Tamara hasn’t been overly traumatized by the Arctic climate that is Ottawa in March.

We’ve managed to check out the Museum of Civilization, which we have both already posted pictures from. While at the museum we also had a chance to see an IMAX (actually I think it was Omnimax) film which was probably my first in over 10 or 12 years. I can’t remember what it was called but it was about six beautiful natural environments including Tibet and Greenland. The cinematography was breathtaking and with that domed screen you literally got pulled into the images. It was truly amazing.

We also went to the movies one day and saw the Last King of Scotland starring Forest Whitaker. Wow, what an incredible film albeit a disturbing one. Forest certainly did a brilliant job playing Idi Amin it was truly chilling.

We got to spend an afternoon with my mother and stepfather which was quite enjoyable and we feasted on vegetarian lasagna that had corn in it. I love corn!

We also ran around and did errands which was fun to do as a couple.

Lastly and probably most importantly is that we managed to watch (thus far) 2 1/2 seasons of BattleStar Galactica. I knew that Tamara would like BattleStar Galactica but she’s actually really, really, really liking it, which is cool.

Anyhow that’s about it for now but I will be back.

Oh PS Thursday night I also got to spend a couple of hours revamping the blog and as you may or may not have noticed I’ve changed the look.

Okay well that’s it for now.

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