Buffalo Nickels

My company divides its employees into functional groups, known as practices. Some practices are more "convivial" than others. Mine tends to be fairly close knit, despite the best efforts of the firm to encourage our communication with others. (That is a whole blog in and of itself, and not the subject for this one.)

Most weekdays, at least some of the members of our practice have lunch together in the kitchen. Often, the conversation sinks to points that can only be referred to as "HR nightmares." Today was NOT one of those days, until almost the very end. We will disregard the reading of fortune cookie fortunes, with the "in bed" tag line. No, that wasn't what caused the laughs, it was the new nickel.

For anyone who hadn't heard, the US Mint is issuing a new version of the nickel. Thomas Jefferson's head has been redesigned into a profile a la Mt Rushmore, and the reverse side has an America bison -- an anatomically correct American bison. For those of you who are curious, take a look for yourself.

Image of Buffalo Nickel

Passover WAS very nice

It was actually fairly pleasant, as I knew it would be. Cooking is slightly more difficult, but with planning, everything is possible. Everyone was home for the first two days, but my oldest son stayed at school for the last two. We had one seder with my son's future family, the other was by ourselves.

Interesting, though. We all must be maturing. In the past, we have had seder's at others homes, but when we were on our own, things reverted to normal. This time, we all enjoyed our seder at Shosh's so much, that we incorporated parts of it that we liked. For the first time, we didn't chant everything in Hebrew together, we actually read parts in English. Actually, everyone picked the language of their choice. That's why one paragraph was actually read in pig latin! Guess which of my wonderful children chose to do that! Truthfully, I felt more involved. I didn't find my mind wandering, or find myself counting pages, and that is a very good thing.

Passover has been over for a couple of weeks, and my house is back to normal -- mostly. It is probably the fastest that has happened in years too. All in all, a very nice holiday!