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Maria invited people for a Passover Seder and we worked out a menu for the festival meal: * Hard boiled egg * Gefilte fish * Matzoh ball soup * Brisket with dried apricots and aromatic spices * Roast Chicken with lemon and herbs * Braised asparagus * New potatoes * honey-soaked almond cake, recipe torn from April 1987 Bon Appetit

I intended to go in to work Friday, so I swapped the holiday for Thursday. What she overlooked was that she doesn’t have a day off to swap. Oops. So I’m taking care of everything.

Tonight I’m making the brisket and Maria prepared a Sephardic haroset (dates, nuts, an apple, honey and wine) and the eggs. Early tomorrow I’ll make the cake and soup. The gefilte fish is from a jar and the matzoh balls are from a mix so that’s a cinch. The chicken is my own recipe (rub chicken inside and out with olive oil, bruised fresh rosemary and thyme, ground black pepper and sprinkle with dry boullion, stuff with quartered lemons and roast. Works best if I don’t measure anything) and always turns out okay. The vegetables are simple, no sauces. The brisket gets sliced and reheated. I have to get things arranged and set the table.

Nothing difficult, still, it’s tricky getting the last minute coordination of a meal right, especially single-handed. Trying to pull this off alone makes you appreciate how hard our Grandmothers worked.

We began packing books today. Twenty four boxes, one with the tchotchkas that accumulate on shelves, makes a satisfying start on the living room. I estimate it’s a little more than a third of our books.

Forget the next Hummer, you need this baby parked in your suburban driveway. It’s a bargain, too, at 33% of sticker price for a Hummer H1 and 67% of MSRP for the H2. Read a little more about the Saracen and admire the pictures. I think Moms all over New Jersey will feel safer going to the supermarket and dropping the kids off at soccer practice in a vehicle like this.

A realtor for the seller of a house we had bid on contacted us that the seller had a number in mind and was willing to consider a new offer. We decided to take another look and bring Maria’s parents with us to offer their opinion. The guy’s contractors have been busy and the place is in even better shape than before, so with a few questions to be answered, we made a new bid. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Our fall back is to rent for a year and that option doesn’t seem bad at all. There are a lot of empty apartments so availability isn’t much of a constraint. One rental we might see tomorrow is a 2000 sq. ft. carriage house with garage and a slate roof deck. Not too shabby.

I finished reading Augustine Burroughs Dry: A Memoir. All I can say is, damn, what a train wreck. I’d also be hard pressed to categorize his writing based on this book. It’s amusing but it doesn’t occupy the niche as David Sedaris’ books. Sedaris revels in his pain and wants it to be funny and is keenly aware of absurdity. Burroughs, though, just seems to be telling a painful story and sometimes it’s funny and is mostly aware of himself (it is a memoir, after all). They also differ in where they focus their criticism: Sedaris flings it on everything including himself but Burroughs is compassionate, if not kind, to his characters reserving severity for himself.