beach dance rescue

this morning was painful. i was totally bombed, and when i got to netanya i just passed out on the couch. not good for the neck, and i was treated to the fridge repairman's entire life story. it began with "when we were kids we used to eat the granules at the bottom of the coffee with a spoon," and simply went downhill from there.

my mom hurriedly woke me up an hour later and i had to drive, without a second cup of coffee, through to hod hasharon, yet another area where nobody normal need find himself. at least it wasn't too difficult to get to our destination. we had a pleasant meeting, munched on fresh bagels and then drove to tel aviv, where we stopped at cafeneto for lunch and coffee before coming home to nap.

we left here around 5pm for the bat-mitzva, which should have given us plenty of time. not only was the map useless, but there are NO signs (surprise!) on the highway, so we were in ashdod before we realized that we'd missed the turn-off. i'm not going to share too much about the grief, stress and long strings of curses, but on the way back we suddenly found ourselves on the wrong highway, and then got lost in rishon le'tzion before finding someone who could give us decent directions.

fortunately we only missed the first few minutes of the ceremony, and the rest of the evening was nice. having a bat-mitzva celebration on the beach itself was a great idea, and we danced in the water after the sun had gone down and generally had a good time. there was even a bonfire with marshmallows, and an amusing attempt at karaoke.

things with her were awkward at first, but we got to talking a bit later and everything was fine. the situation just magically improved when she set one of the kids on me, and i got chased by a child with a rattle through the sand for a couple of minutes - good tension-breaker :P

the drive back was wonderfully uneventful - not counting the freak in front of me just before i turned who kept swerving from lane to lane. at least he was driving slowly :S