“It’s Shabbat Rosh Chodesh again” I whined to the Soror, convinced that we’d had at least four in the past year. It hadn’t been a good day* and we were drinking somewhat unexpectedly**. “I can’t take Isaiah on top of all of this. [Don’t tell the Torah Maven.] And I didn’t have time to buy Blue Moon. What kinds of juice do you have? I only brought tomato.”
Maybe this all makes more sense if you’re standing in Soror and the Frat Man’s newly-painted office (now with art on the wall***), accidentally making dirty jokes and holding a bottle of cast-off New Glarus.**** Maybe this only makes sense if you’ve been friends for long enough to have ridiculous traditions, and to have a mind meld that allows you to both make the same embarrassingly filthy joke…purely in your head…and crack up together as soon as you leave the room.
It was just the second Shabbat Rosh Chodesh (plus a Shabbat Machar Chodesh, if you’re into technicalities, which I can assure you that as Ashkenaz-centric Conservative Jews, we so totally are), but this second one felt like part of a long-established ritual.
Recipe: Summer Moon: Actually, we think this should be called a beer-lini. Fill a champagne flute 2/3 of the way with a moon-themed IPA like New Glarus’s “Moon Man,” well-chilled; top off with cold apricot nectar. We think you should drink this while sitting on your porch, looking at the moon…but we’re South Side condo dwellers, so we settled for a big window.
*Your Hostess, 2pm “I am drowning in a fountain of stupid today. We are drinking. I promise to eat dinner first. And admire the painting you did last week.”
Soror, 2:10pm “OK.”
**Which, given that our original plan involved replacing a deadbolt after getting drunk, was probably an actual Rational Grownup Decision.
***Where Art=Mint-in-Box-Sci-Fi-Pez-Dispensers
****I know, that suggestion is a travesty. But my supplier mistook my request for the now-defunct limited edition “Dancing Man” for the now-ubiquitous “Moon Man.” (We both refer to it as “Burning Man,” so the blame is shared equally.)
Tippling Through The Torah 