Chanukah and stamps

Chanukah:

Tomorrow night's the first night of Chanukah. Thank G-d, people in Israel don't give gifts so much, because I'm writing this at 22:23 (10:23pm for the Americans amongst you), and I am still at work.

In all fairness, I came at 13:00 (1pm), but I still feel like I've been here for 12 hours.

Anyway... Chanukah...

I made latkes yesterday for tomorrow night's dinner. Saturday, we'll have sufganiot (donuts)... maybe for breakfast... maybe for dessert after lunch... maybe all day.

It's weird, though... because it's once again so clear to me how different Israel is from the U.S.

When I was back in the States for Thanksgiving, it was like an alien could have come down anywhere in the Detroit area, and he/she/it would have known it was some sort of festive holiday wherein people decorated trees, yards and stores with lots of shiny stuff and people dressed in red and/or green outfits. No doubt about it -- x-mas was coming.

Here, though, I walked through a small mall yesterday, and I wouldn't have known it was Chanukah except that I saw that the bakery had the sufganiot, and there were some chanukiot (Chanukah candle holders) for sale. No extra decorations at all.

So we're definitely not in Detroit anymore.

Stamps:

A woman goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Chanukah cards.

She says to the clerk, "May I have 50 Chanukah stamps?"

The clerk asks, "What denomination?"

The woman says, "Oh my G-d, has it come to this? Okay, give me 6 Orthodox, 12 Conservative, and 32 Reform."

(I got that from one of my mailing lists.)