19-June-99
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Yesterday I figured it was time for a new razor blade, but I couldn't find a Sensor cartridge so I got my old Atra handle and put a cartridge on it. The logical place to put it away was on top of the other razor, blades at the same end. Now it looks as though my razors are trying to make babies. My question is, what will the offspring be? Bic disposables? Spare Xacto #11 blades?
Say, I filled in the stories my sister told in the 6-June entry, so you might want to check that.
We went to Bay State Beauty Supply after going to the post office. It was about 11:45 and turned out that they were going to close for good at noon. The shelves were mostly bare except for a couple of cartons of some hair color concentrate that might have been just the ticket if a tour bus stopped at your beauty parlor on its way from a retirement community to Atlantic City. The floor was littered with styrofoam packing peanuts. At fifteen minutes to closing, they weren't fooling around with prices. Arlene got all they had of some big styling combs at 10 cents each to bring to her art room for kids to use in weaving.
At some point I went out and mowed the back yard. I hate to admit that I need a power mower to do a good job, but now our back yard looks like lawn instead of our own little corner of the Amazon jungle.
A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the kitchen minding my own business when I heard a sort of POOF! noise from the oven. I opened it to check, and one section of the bottom heating element was glowing extra bright yellow-orange -- but just one two-inch-long section of it; the rest was dark. It didn't look normal! I turned the oven off and said to myself, “I bet that's burned out!” but then sort of forgot about it. The other day Arlene was heating a frozen pizza, and the oven seemed to take an awfully long time preheating; and likewise, when I made my rhubarb pie the other day it took a long time to get up to operating temperature. Finally today I decided to act as though the stove needed repairs, and phoned around. I unplugged the stove, unplugged the heating element (sure enough! it was broken where that section had been glowing), and took it over to a place in Waltham. I've driven past that place and seen their sign a hundred times -- it used to be on the way from my apartment to Brandeis when I was in grad school -- but I've never gone in. As soon as the guy described the location I knew -- right across from that church that looks like a giant watermelon. But they didn't have the part in stock. I'll have to phone on Monday and have them order it.
Millie and Joel were here because of Jennifer's wedding. Jennifer is the daughter of Arlene & Millie's cousin Elaine, and she has been very close to M & J's daughter Gena for the last several years. Gena had driven up by herself and was busy helping with wedding preparations.
The wedding was at the Saphire Manor, another old resort hotel off the shore of Masapoag Pond in Sharon (around the corner from where we had done a crafts sale on May 8). Joel drove and I navigated, and we gave a ride to a somewhat older woman who's another relative of the bride's mother. Saphire Manor was a lovely setting, outdoors with a bridge over a little artificial stream leading to the seating area and a little structure with four sturdy columns and a permanant roof standing in for the chuppah. The ceremony was basically Jewish, with a basket of kippot (yarmulkes, skullcaps) for those who wanted one (I figured if they had bothered to get them printed with the names I should take one) and a cantor in a kippah and tallit officiating. On the other hand, you don't do a real Jewish wedding while it's the sabbath, and it still was daylight. The cantor chanted a couple of blessings in Hebrew but also said, “A couple of thousand years ago someone wrote a letter to some friends in the city of Corinth,” and read that passage about love from I Corinthians ch. 13, and mentioned the wedding at Cana. I wondered how many people on the bride's side recognized those as NT things. At the end of the ceremony the cantor showed the glass that was going to be broken and said it was a glass, not a light bulb, and that when it was broken everyone should shout "Mazel Tov!" At Ilana's wedding a couple of weeks ago, they got a "Mazel Tov!" whether they wanted it or not. Sure enough, stomp! Mazel Tov! and then from the cantor, “Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Scully!”
We were seated with Arlene's siblings and their spouses, that would be Millie and Joel, and Ira and Greta, a couple more cousins, Barbara Merry and Betty, and a man who's a cousin of the bride's mother on the other side. By now we count as one of the fogey tables, but Arlene and I danced a fair bit, and I got Barbara Merry to do a cha cha too.
One relative who has just discovered e-mail told me about opening one e-mail that must have been spam from a porno web site: “I just clicked on it and there was this picture of a big penis!! With sperm coming out!! And then people having intercourse!! I don't know how it happened!”
Oops! Will I regret having recounted this? What will the search engines and child protection software do to my site from now on?
The DJ played one short “hava nagila,” which I danced enthusiastically, and then called for some chairs so the bride and groom could do a handkerchief dance. In a really traditional Jewish wedding the men and women dance separately, and the newlyweds are held high on chairs and hold opposite corners of a handkerchief. The ceiling at the Saphire Manor was pretty low, and there's a story of someone in Arlene's family losing an eye on a chandelier when doing that at his wedding, so I might have done more to pull the groom's chair down than to help carry it.
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