Snow Days!

Hope everyone that celebrated had a wonderful Christmas! If you're celebrating Kwanza, Happy Kwanza!

NYC got hit with a major blizzard over the weekend and Husband had an extra day home from work. We spent it throwing snowballs at each other and the kids (Big A totally betrayed me and teamed up with Dad, but Little M was loyal and threw a great many powdery puffs at the both of them! Huzzah!), and chucking each other into snow banks. Much fun.

Until we had to be grown-ups and actually shovel the driveway and dig out the car.

I am back to the writing grind today and cleaning up my house in between line edits, so I will probably disappear on you again for a few days. At Sisters in Scribe we are still taking entries for our December Giveaway (international, ends Dec 31st) and over at Tangled Fiction we have our first public round table discussion, so hop over there to see wtf we were thinking when we started our tangles and to chime in with what you thought might have happened!

Happy New Year!

Hanukkah!

Hanukkah begins tonight at sundown!

The following comes from http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday7.htm

The Story


The story of Chanukkah begins in the reign of Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but allowed the lands under his control to continue observing their own religions and retain a certain degree of autonomy. Under this relatively benevolent rule, many Jews assimilated much of Hellenistic culture, adopting the language, the customs and the dress of the Greeks, in much the same way that Jews in America today blend into the secular American society.


More than a century later, a successor of Alexander, Antiochus IV was in control of the region. He began to oppress the Jews severely, placing a Hellenistic priest in the Temple, massacring Jews, prohibiting the practice of the Jewish religion, and desecrating the Temple by requiring the sacrifice of pigs (a non-kosher animal) on the altar. Two groups opposed Antiochus: a basically nationalistic group led by Mattathias the Hasmonean and his son Judah Maccabee, and a religious traditionalist group known as the Chasidim, the forerunners of the Pharisees (no direct connection to the modern movement known as Chasidism). They joined forces in a revolt against both the assimilation of the Hellenistic Jews and oppression by the Seleucid Greek government. The revolution succeeded and the Temple was rededicated.


According to tradition as recorded in the Talmud, at the time of the rededication, there was very little oil left that had not been defiled by the Greeks. Oil was needed for the menorah (candelabrum) in the Temple, which was supposed to burn throughout the night every night. There was only enough oil to burn for one day, yet miraculously, it burned for eight days, the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of oil for the menorah. An eight day festival was declared to commemorate this miracle. Note that the holiday commemorates the miracle of the oil, not the military victory: Jews do not glorify war.

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Happy Hanukkah to all those celebrating! A freilichin Chanukah! Chag Urim Sameach! And enjoy those latkes!

Intense Debate

One thing I love about lj is the threaded comments. Blogger, I adore your user friendliness, but you lack this feature, and that sucks. So I've added intense debate to my comments! If you don't have an intense debate account (but you should because it's pretty cool) and you don't want to make one, have no fear! You can sign in using open ID.

:D

Website Launch!

Do you remember my website with the cool flash animation, and the creepy desk, and flickering candle of awesome? Well, that's gone now.

*sniffle*

But! I have put up another website, a much more informative one, in it's place. I loved my old one, but flash doesn't work well for everyone, and I wanted it to be user friendly. Anywho, once I figure out how to recreate the website background in photoshop and then edit blogger, this will match a little better. I hope. But I am really terrible with photoshop so by the time I figure that out, I'll probably end up changing it all again.

:)