Read this on galpod.com. We don't celebrate Christmas. Makes sense, being Jewish and all. My partner and I are technically atheists, so we don't subscribe to any of this, but we do celebrate the main Jewish holidays, namely Passover and Rosh HaShana (New Year, which is in September). We also celebrate the ones we think are fun, like Shavu'ot (dairy dishes!) and Hannukah. Now, Hannukah isn't really a holiday; it's not even in the bible. Not that we care about this stuff, but i

Read this on galpod.com. About a third into this month, I had a breakthrough with the book I'm working on. It's a good thing, of course. But because I needed to do a lot more research, it meant a lot less writing. I hit about 40% of my word goals for the book. But I'm reading an excellent book that looks like it was written especially for me. It's telling me exactly what I wanted to know, plus there are books and blogs listed that I'm going to check once I'm done with the boo

Read this on galpod.com. I have two Israeli friends who live close by. Both have kids, although a little younger than mine (their eldest are my youngest's age). The kids get along as kids do: sometimes they fight, most of the time they go off and play, and we only hear from them if they're hungry. That, by itself, is fantastic. But the thing I love is when they hang out at our place, stay over for dinner, and we sort of, for that day, raise the kids together. If you read The

Read this on galpod.com. Today is the last day of the school year. When I was in school, it was always a sad day for me. I loved going to school. I think now that what I liked about school was how routine it was. You get up at the same time every day. You catch the school bus at the same time. You know how your day is going to look like. I still like knowing how my day's going to look like, but I'm a lot more flexible now. So now, it's a mixed-emotions kind of day. I'm feelin

Read this on galpod.com. During May, I did the Ninja Writing Challenge. It was awesome. THE challenge was to write every single day, even if it's just 10 minutes. There are lots of people talking about doing something daily to create a habit, and I get it. I do. It worked for me for a variety of things. But when I wrote every day in my WIP, it became a chore. I started preferring working on my short stories. I would write the mandatory 10 minutes and then stop working on the

Hello! I'm experimenting with blogging every day. Because I'm very new to this, I need your help. Please take a minute to drop me a line and let me know what you think. I will post stories, thoughts, and possibly recipes (if I'm having an off day). Here's the post for today. Today is Shavuot. It's one of the three big Jewish holidays. None of my non-Jewish friends ever heard about it, probably because it doesn't co-occur with any Christian holiday. Shavuot is my favourite hol