The Kosher Whine Wedding Mix

A couple of weeks ago KosherCook and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. In classic Kosher Whine style, we were both sick and missed our big date night out.

At least we exchanged gifts. And I do mean it was the absolute least either of us could have done. I decided to carry on the tradition KosherCook started last year
and bought his gifts at CVS: chocolates and a sodoku magazine.

He chose a more subtle gift. So subtle that I didn't even notice it until he told me about it.

I called him from work during the day and he asked if I liked my gift. Uh, what gift?

Apparently he had sneaked out to the car in the middle of the night and left a mix tape in my stereo. I had gotten into my car that morning, turned on my radio, saw that a tape was in the tape player and promptly took it out assuming KosherCook had used the car and left it in there.

Well, it was actually very sweet and romantic and I missed it. It was the mix tape that KosherCook had recorded the night before our wedding to play during our reception when the band went on breaks.

In his younger days KosherCook had been a DJ for a college radio station, so the tape ranged from obscure hilarious B side singles from his childhood (inside jokes with his family that I was let in on) to songs about love and marriage. Much of it sounds like what you would get if you knocked together the heads of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, and Elvis Costello, and then took whatever spilled out and sprinkled it over Broadway.

I love it. And I decided it would be fun to share it with all of you.

I created a playlist of all the songs I could find online. Unfortunately some of KosherCook's choices were so obscure there was no digital download available for them. And I couldn't always find the song sung by the same person as on the mix tape, but I think you will get the idea.

You can listen to the Official Kosher Whine Wedding Mix here. Enjoy!

PS - If you are dying to see the wacky tracks that weren't available digitally, feel free to email me and I'll send you the complete list of what was on the tape.

Paper Toys

Poor KosherCop has a cold. A wet, sloppy, snuffly, hacking cold. The kind I haven't seen the likes of since he first started preschool and would come home sick every other week.

Since Monday is CSA day, KosherCop usually stays for "late-stay" at his school. That way KosherCook can manage the veggie pickup. So, since KosherCop was not in school, I worked from home today and looked after him. It was actually kind of nice - he's very snuggly when he's sick. And most of the day he was content to watch TV or do art projects.

He is really into cutting paper these days. He got a workbook a couple of years ago with pages of pictures to cut out - mostly for the practice of using the scissors - that was too hard for him. Just recently, though, he discovered this book and has cut his way through most of it. In fact, the few pages left are not challenging enough for him.

So as part of the keeping-the-whining-to-a-minimum extravaganza, I went looking for some more pictures for KosherCop to cut out. I remembered about the wonderful site, The Toymaker, a site I had subscribed to a while ago and filed away for future reference. Marilyn Scott Waters is an illustrator who designs paper toys you can download for free on her website. We downloaded the "Chocolate Truck" you see above and the "Fast Race Car".

KosherCop started cutting out the Chocolate Truck and got carried away and hacked off the wheels. Since he is really good at cleaning up his mess, he decided both the toys should be recycled and stuffed them in the recycling bin. Hours later I realized what happened, fished out the sheets, flattened them, reattached the wheels on the chocolate truck and tried to assemble it.

Ours did not turn out quite as nice as the picture above from the Toymaker's site, but it sure was cute. All the toys available are quite whimsical and delightful - I highly recommend visiting it. If I was printing them out for an older child, I probably would have printed them on cardstock so they were easier to put together. But with KosherCop I figured it would just mean nicer paper was going to end up in the recycling.

Another site that has a great selection of free downloads is the Canon site - they have a whole town you can print, cut, and assemble. The toys there are a little more complicated. I printed out parts of the town to put together myself when KosherCop was younger, and I think even now they are little too complicated for him. But they are pretty cool.

It's frustrating, though, because I can remember being sick as a child and my own mother would bring me these workbooks with a city or a circus or some other scene that had perforated pieces that I could punch out and assemble. In fact I remember spending a long, itchy week with the chicken-pox playing exclusively with these workbooks until a small city had sprouted up and overtaken our dining room. I cannot find anything like this anywhere now.

The other thing that provided far too much entertainment for my sick kid, was going to amazon.com and looking up every single Magic Treehouse book.

I have no one but myself to blame for this.

Yesterday we were supposed to go to the library after running errands, also to look at Magic Treehouse books. Not to borrow them - we already have a bunch out - just to look at them. As the day wore on, I realized he was getting sick and I felt pretty crappy myself. I wanted to get him home, so as he was crying (or trying to - his heart wasn't really in it) I dangled the promise of hot chocolate and "looking inside" the books online instead of going to the library.

Well, this was an instant hit and the fun continued today. KosherCop had me look up every book that had the "click to look inside" graphic so he could view each cover up close, find out the chapter names, and read the excerpt. He was very careful to avoid spoiling any upcoming plotlines, so for each book we had to stop reading when the kids reached the treehouse. For those of you who are familiar with these books, I'm sure you have noticed that as good as these books are, there is a formula. So essentially we read 25 times about 2 kids either waking up in the middle of the night or sitting on the porch in the rain, yelling "be right back" to one or both of their parents, and dashing off into the woods. Then KosherCop would hold up his hand and say "Stop! Go Back."

It never got old - for KosherCop. Me, you coulda stuck a fork in me after the first 3. The best part was that he kept telling me - while I was trying to work - that he "needed the computer".

Ah yes, my first taste of things to come. I didn't expect to hear that for a couple of years yet.

Chocolate and Chocolat

Being completely out of touch, I just recently - finally - saw the wonderful movie "Chocolat", and fell in love with "Vianne Rocher", the main character that Juliette Binoche plays.

The following week we took KosherCop to the library to try to get more "Magic Treehouse" books. There were none, but in the place where they should have been was flyer listing all the books that Treehouse fans might also enjoy so we discovered some new wonderful books.

The way these excursions generally work is that one parent stays with KosherCop while the other gets to look for their own books. Then, when that parent finally decides to come back, the other can use the last five minutes to look for a book before a) the library closes or b) KosherCop realizes he is hungry starving and we have to go. This time I let KosherCook look for some books first and was left with five minutes to do my usual commando-style raid on the new fiction section.

My typical M.O. is to scoop up 4 or 5 books that seem mildly interesting and hope that one of them is worth reading. But this time I only needed 1 minute.

The first book I saw was the sequel to "Chocolat", "The Girl with No Shadow" by Joanne Harris. I didn't need 4 more "just in case" books - I was fully committed to reading this one book and couldn't wait to get home to read it.

The only problem was that once I started reading it, I began to notice small inconsistencies between references to things that had happened in the book "Chocolat" and the movie. I don't typically like to see the movie version of a book I've really enjoyed, and I certainly don't like to go back and read a book after I've seen the movie - I find myself imagining all the characters as the actors who played them and that gets really annoying.

But this time I was torn. I was immediately drawn into the story but part of me wanted to stop reading and go back and read "Chocolat" first, before continuing with the sequel. Of course I couldn't stop reading "The Girl With No Shadow" because it was far too good to put down and I couldn't get back to the library quick enough to get the first book.

In the end it didn't matter. Joanne Harris gives enough back story that I felt confident that the plot of the movie was similar enough to the book that I didn't feel left out reading this one first.

And since I am very sad that I've finished it, I can read "Chocolat" just so I can spend some more time with the characters.

One thing I did find odd was that "The Girl With No Shadow" was originally published in the UK with a much better title - "The Lollipop Shoes". It had a better cover too as far as I can tell. I'm curious why the publishers (or author, I suppose) felt Americans would be less likely to buy a book called "The Lollipop Shoes".

I feel a little jealous of everyone who got to read it under the original title. But, it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book - I still loved it.

And I have been craving (and eating) chocolate like there's no tomorrow. I especially want to try chocolate with chili pepper in it, now. I actually found some, but it wasn't hekshered. Darn!

In the Case of Yogurt v. Yogurt

Yesterday KosherCook, KosherCop, and I were out and about having some free fun (a trip to the toy and hobby shop to look at model trains instead of shelling out 14 bucks for the same thing at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds). We were over at Federal Plaza in Rockville, where we noticed that a new yogurt shop opened up called Yogiberry.

So after we pried KosherCop away from all the trains (he literally walked up and down the model train aisles going, "Ooh! Ooh! Oh Wow! Ah! Ooh!") by finding some free catalogs for him to take (and I point out they were free because most of the catalogs were for sale in this store) we went to check out the new yogurt place.

Now the original reason I was going to write this post was because this Yogiberry place had a promotion that really offended KosherCook. It was aimed at Stay-At-Home-Moms with 10% off on certain weekday afternoons. And at the bottom it actually said the offer was for Moms only. So KosherCook pointed out to the guy at the counter that he was a Stay-At-Home-Dad and this wasn't fair. The counter guy actually seemed concerned that this was in fact unfair, but then suggested that I could perhaps send KosherCook with a note saying he had my permission to get the discount or something ridiculous like that.

So my plan was to post this for all the SAHDs that have ever been discriminated against. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the exact details of the promotion, so I went to the website hoping it would be online and eventually started Googling to see if it was online anywhere. I didn't find the promotion. What I did happen upon was actually much more interesting to me.

Apparently a California based yogurt company called Pinkberry has sued this new Maryland based Yogiberry company for infringement of their trademarked name and service marks and for basically imitating their concept and brand.

The reason I find this so fascinating is that I've done identity design work as a graphic designer and it is a big fat pain in the tuchus. Coming up with a company's identity is the fun part - sitting there and figuring out the rules of usage for their logo - which colors, how much room must be left around the logo - not so much fun. It is just as annoying to have to learn and put into practice these rules for every client you design for. But it's done for a reason, and there are laws in place to protect these marks for a reason.

Having already been to Yogiberry's site I went to Pinkberry's site to see if their logos were really that similar. I didn't really think they were. But both sites were very spare with a lot of pastel.

Then I looked at the picture of Pinkberry's interior of their shops - okay I was starting to see their point. When we went to Yogiberry, one of the things that was so cool about it was the decor. Ultramodern, pastel, colored lucite chairs and white tables...a lot like this. The big brown wall was white at Yogiberry, but other than that it was pretty similar to that picture. I looked around some more and some of the pages of the websites had some really similar images. Check out the toppings and shaved ice pages on both sites if you're interested, and Yogiberry starts looking pretty shameless.

And of course, aside from the design similarities, the whole concept of the type of products being offered seems to be a total rip-off of Pinkberry. Pinkberry actually has a franchise program, so now I'm wondering did Yogiberry just not feel like paying licensing fees, did they apply for a franchise and get rejected, or did they just like the concept and think that no one would notice if they opened a similar business on the other side of the country?

KosherCook has a different take on this, however. He pointed out while we were in Yogiberry - before I found out about this lawsuit - that most clubs these days have decor very much like they do. So using that as a jumping off point, I suppose this can all be explained by recent trends in pop-culture. But, come on, those images on the site are REALLY similar.

So guess whose image I'm using for this post? That's right, I linked to one on Yogiberry. They seem like they have their hands too full right now to sue me for wrongful use of their image.

And why am I writing about frozen yogurt on the eve of the most historically important election in many of our lifetimes? To take my mind off it. Because I can't take the suspense. I just want to vote already. Only 6.25 hours until the polls open and we can vote!

And after the election, if the results are favorable and a celebration is in order, perhaps we will go out for a delicious frozen treat...ice cream - because frankly, it's a lot better than frozen yogurt.