Lots of religion in this accounting of my life, and for once, it's not just Judaism!

Wednesday, I had what I'll call an "omurice party." A month ago, I posted an article about how great omurice was and a bunch of my friends commented and asked me to make it for them, and since there were enough of them to have a dinner party, that's what I did. Eight people came over, I spent an hour churning out omurice in spicy and sweet varieties for everyone, people got to try as much omurice as they liked, we drank wine and gin and sake, and when the food was done, we sat down and played Fluxx and then Chrononauts, and then everyone left.

I didn't get a picture of any of the omurice I made, but I did take a picture after britshlez took over and made one last omurice for me with only minor instruction:


I didn't really use a recipe, but I can kind of provide instructions if you want to try making your own:

• Fry up some rice--I used olive oil, rice vinegar and soy sauce as the base
  
• Add flavoring--for spicy I used lemongrass sriracha I got at the local Asian grocery store, and for sweet I mixed together 3 tbps ketchup, 3 tbps tomato sauce, and 2 tbps water. Save a little flavoring for later.
  
• Mix together three eggs and pour them into a pan.
  
• When the omelet's bottom is firm but the top is still a little liquidy, put the fried rice in it and then flip it over onto a plate. I'm not very good at this so I usually put the plate onto the pan and flip them. You could also put the rice on a plate and flip the omelet onto it. Whatever works.
  
• Add the rest of the flavoring to the top of the omelet. Eat immediately.

It's great comfort food, especially in the winter. We had it with some salad that britshlez brought and some peppers that courtney.mcnally.9 sliced while I was cooking, and everyone had enough food and told me it was delicious.

Turns out I'm a good cook.

On Thursday, I went out to the Art Institute with a friend from Anime Chicago briefly--we stopped in to look at the Arms and Armor exhibit and the Chicago architecture around the top of the main staircase, and then I left to go out to the Chanukah pop-up bar again for a ChiTribe happy hour, this time with lisekatevans. She had some work to do so I arrived about half an hour before she did and stood around in the main room which was even more incredibly crowded than it was the last time I was there, until one of the hostesses encouraged us to go to the back room. That was a lot more comfortable, so I bought a Mazel Tov (gin, rosemary syrup, ginger ale) and chatted for a bit until lisekatevans showed up. We had a couple drinks, ate vodka jelly סופגניות sufganiyot--lisekatevans said she wasn't that hungry, but I ordered two, and as soon as she took a bite she committed to finishing her sufganiyah--and talked to other people around us. One man showed a lot of chutzpah when he walked up to a man and a woman talking together (us) and entered the conversation, and that attracted others, and pretty soon there were five of us chatting and toasting. After the L'Chaim, we realized we needed something to toast to so we looked at each other for the moment and then the man who had first walked up to us said:

"Death to our enemies!"

...which is sadly pretty relevant nowadays.

After a gelt martini (milk chocolate liqueur, vodka, creme de cacao, gelt garnish) each, we left and went our separate ways.

Friday was another performance of LIVE, this time Christmas-themed (of course). The first serial was based on A Christmas Story, with the tightfisted asshole boss of "Generic Hospital" learning to appreciate her employees and to be a good friend and companion, and I'm sure it'll definitely carry over into the next episode. The second serial was my favorite, a crossover between It's a Wonderful Life and Die Hard, that started with Mediocre Mel (the titular character of the serial) finding a man named Jimmy who assumed that the world would be better off without him and ended with Jimmy and Mel having to infiltrate a bank and fight off a German bank robber named "Hans Alanreichman" and his gang. And we learned that Mel's dog is canonically Jewish! ✡️ It was amazing and I'm so glad I went, though this week it was just me in the audience.

I mean, worldbshiny and I went out for ice cream afterward as is our custom and I was really glad I got to see her, but no one else came to the show with me. Everyone I knew was part of the show.

(I wore my fitted long coat and peggy.helen.9028 said my aesthetic was "dark elf," so )

Saturday I thought was also going to be packed full, but mutantur's work scheduled him despite his initial request, so the board gaming (or possible DELTA GREEN game) we were going to do was cancelled and instead I had time to read a book, go shopping, and relax before the time came for the evening's event--"Bad Latkes and Silver F**king Bells":


It took place in the Davis Theatre, the same place where I went to the Purimspiel back in March (was that really only in March?), and it was similar. Twenty dollars got two drink tickets, food, one popcorn, and the stories. I showed up and checked in, and then when britshlez showed up and I went out and got her, checked her in, and we had a drink and some food before, she got us both popcorn, and then we went in to make havdalah and listen to the stories.

The interfaith part was because we were in cooperation with Gilead, a self-described "queer bar church," so they provided stories from a Christian perspective and Mishkan provided Jewish stories. Weirdly I can't remember my favorite story--I mean I literally cannot remember the contents of it --but my second-favorite story was about how after a separation, the storyteller's mother moved in with her divorce lawyer because they had grown so close (in a friendly way) during the proceedings. The lawyer was a no-nonsense New York second-generation Italian immigrant, and the storyteller did the appropriate accent and mannerisms from memory. My third-favorite story was about the storyteller decided she really wanted to put in effort to make a Jewish home, found a guy on OK Cupid of "no religion" that she was sure was Jewish only to find out that he was a lapsed Catholic and that, in her words, his parents' religion was Christmas. The story was their first visit to his parents' home for said Christmas.

After a few more songs, we went back to the bar to get more drinks and food, I stole some dark chocolate gelt on the way in:

britshlez: "Is it okay to take that?"
Me: "What are they going to do with it if no one eats it?"

we toasted once again to the death of our enemies, and I noticed that a woman I'd been talking to on Hinge for a few days (only like one minutes' worth of actual conversation--she'd only message once a day ) was in the room too. britshlez suggested I go talk to her, and I said I would in a bit:

Me: "She's over there talking to her friend now. I'll wait until she's done."
britshlez: "You're over here talking to your friend."
Me: "...fair enough."

So I downed the rest of my drink--deliberately, for the theatricality of it--and went over to talk to her in the guise of getting more cookies. And I said hi, and she introduced me to her friend, and then said that they were having a conversation and she'd come find me later, so I left. britshlez was like "Did you talk to her?" and I explained what happened and she was like "...that's weird." And it was kind of weird. I have no idea what she and her friend were talking about or how serious it was, but at least if it were me in the same situation, I would have excused myself from talking to my friend for at least a few minutes. You only have one chance to make a first impression.

britshlez and I ended up talking to the woman who told my third-favorite story and her husband, who I had met back at the Mishkan Sukkot event and kept running into at Mishkan events. Apparently he had told her about me by saying, "I met a Jewish goth," so I told her about my ideas about a Jewish goth aesthetic and we got increasingly excited:

Me: "So Noah sent the raven out, right? And there’s a midrash about why it didn’t return."
Her: "I’m here for this."
Me: "It didn’t come back because it was too busy EATING THE BODIES OF THE DEAD!!"
Her: "FUCK YES!! ...oops we’re shouting."

We talked for about an hour, drinking the extremely-strong boozy apple cider ("Original Sin") the bar was serving. Eventually the woman did finish her conversation with her friend and came over, but again we only talked very briefly. She just said that it was good to finally meet in person, we should meet up later, and that her friend was leaving so she had to go. It left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, honestly. But the rest of the night was great--we closed down the place such that almost everyone had left before we did, britshlez and I walked part of the way back, and then I walked home because I had just missed the bus and walking was faster.

On Sunday I got up early because thosesocks had invited me to a service at her (Unitarian Universalist) church since it was "Music Sunday," when the choir was going to perform the piece they had been working on for a while, and also they were holding a bake sale. So I arrived early--after she came to Shabbat morning services and saw people still trickling in an hour after the service began, she was very careful to tell me to arrive on time--sat down in the seats, and waited for the service to start.

It was...very different than Mishkan's service. I feel a little guilty saying it, but it felt much more staid than Mishkan, with kind of reserved singing and none of the hand-clapping or enthusiasm. There weren't really any prayers as such, more affirmations, so I felt fine participating in those. I did not sing along with most of the songs, though, since they were Christmas-themed. I wavered a bit on "Deck the Halls," but decided not to sing (which thosesocks commented on later):

Me: "I looked at Coffee, Coffee, Coffee and I was like, 'Is this idolatry?' "
thosesocks: "Uh..."
Me: "That's a joke."
thosesocks: "I guess your religion does care about that."

Though I learned just now that "Deck the Halls" is based on an old Welsh New Years' song called Nos Galan, and that I wouldn't have minded singing.

And the choir concert was beautiful. thosesocks said they'd been working on it since September, and it showed.

Afterwards I had another eent in a couple hours, so rather than go home I wanted to eat lunch nearby. thosesocks was going home to take a nap but recommended Milt's Barbecue for the Perplexed, a nearby kosher barbecue place that I had walked by one but never been to, so I went there and her recommendation was definitely a fantastic one:


Then I walked over to Next Door Cafe for the Anime Chicago 千と千尋の神隠し / Spirited Away discussion, bringing some cookies that I had bought at the bake sale. There wasn't actually that much discussion about Spirited Away because we all agreed that it was a masterpiece, so after the first half-hour or so we veered off and started talking about Studio Ghibli as a whole, and then about other movies. One of the attendees was really into a movie called 薄墨桜 -GARO- / Usuzumizakura -GARO- which looked really good, assuming I can find it anywhere. Then we broke a little early, and I took the Brown Line to this month's sea shanty singalong.

britshlez had been excited about it, but on Friday she started a job at a bakery and on Sunday she had finished work at 2 p.m. after working since 7 a.m., so she got home, sat on the couch, and wasn't getting up to go sing. thosesocks had warned me that the December shanty sing was usually more Christmas-themed, but due to the proportion of Jews in the audience we actually sang more Chanukah songs than Christmas ones. "Sivivon Sov Sov Sov," "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel," and even מעוז צור "Maoz Tzur," which I thought was a little odd because it's an explicitly religious song until I noticed that "Angels We Have Heard On High" was in the special holiday-themed lyrics book.

We ended slightly early and I went home, did a bunch of chores, and then went straight to bed. Another successful weekend accomplished!


One more week of work and then I have two weeks off for the New Year! I'm really looking forward to having a long vacation. Maybe I'll even play a video game--it is time for me to finally get to Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness.