Omaha

Our trip to Omaha last weekend had been planned for several months, ever since Mom was asked to deliver a talk at services Friday night. The series consists of short talks given by members who describe a range of personal experiences, etc. relating to their particular relationship with Judaism and/or Temple Israel. So far it's been pretty interesting--I've been able to see a few of them on the Temple website. She asked me if she should accept, and I told her of course she should; I said we'd travel with her.

When Mom agreed to give a talk, she and I immediately began preparing, working out what she would say. I edited, she worked on it some more, I edited some more. In the end, it came out really well. We were all set to leave very early Thursday morning.

Wednesday evening as we were packing she called and said she had a problem. Turns out she tripped and broke her arm in two places. Off we all went to the emergency room, where we remained until nearly 2am. After x-rays, a painful reset of the bones, and a cast, we took her home. Clearly, she was not going to Omaha. I promised her I'd deliver the speech in her stead. This, by the way, was no small concession on my part: I am almost pathologically afraid of speaking in front of people.

But of course the weekend was a lot of fun. We already had dinner plans on Saturday night with Steve Perelman, Ralph Kellogg and Vicki Perlmeter.

We had dinner Thursday night with Shirley Kulakofsky, who was devastated that Mom wasn't there. Friday we went over to Bloomfield and spent a nice long time catching up with Cathy Stirts. Then we did a little shopping. Philip was in heaven when he found out there's a new Cabela's store in Omaha. We got a few Christmas presents out of the way and he got some real bargains, as they were having a huge sale. Services were early, and I delivered the speech. It was fun talking to so many people who had shown up to see Mom. The Omaha grapevine was running on all cylinders, however: by the time we got to Temple nearly everyone in the community already knew that Mom had broken her arm and wasn't going to be there. So they had to make do with the understudy. But it was a good crowd and I got to talk to lots of people. After services we went to dinner with Shirley, Dennis DePorte and Dennis' son, Alan. Really a good time. Shirley was furious with us because we picked up the tab.

Saturday we went to Lincoln, because Philip had never been there and I hadn't been there since high school. They have a wonderful farmer's market/street fair every Saturday and we walked around looking at everything. I only wished I could bring home some of the gorgeous produce. We picked up one more Christmas gift and headed back to Omaha.

Dinner with Steve, Ralph and Vicki was great. When we picked Vicki up at home I was surprised to find Nancy Kaplan (Marshall) there. She was in town for the weekend visiting her mother. We had a great time catching up. Steve had baked mandel bread, and gave us a huge bag. Unbelievably delicious. We ate it on the plane trip home, and there's still a ton left. I'm going to try my hand at it one of these days.

Our travel karma continues to be good, as there were no problems on the way home. Except for the kid who didn't stop screaming the entire trip. I would gladly pay any surcharge if only the airlines would institute child-free flights.

4th of July

Ok, so this isn't exactly a travel-related post, but I wanted to show the adorable dessert I made for our 4th of July barbeque:

Bratwurst (with sauteed peppers and onions), hamburgers, salad, chicken, cute cupcakes and ice cream: what could be better?