One Wish

I happened on this video a few months ago, which I think pinpoints the problem of the Israel-Palestine relations. (Fair warning: Watch it and try not to cry, I dare you.)

(via Upworthy)

I think most people see a message of peace, of hope. I think that's what they wanted you to see. But you know what I saw? Hate. How many Jews said their wish was no more Muslims in Israel? How many Muslims said their wish was no more Jews in Palestine? And how many of them were children?!

When we visited Israel for the honeymoon we saw the attempts to coexist, first-hand. Jericho, a Palestinian city, where our Israeli tour guide would be forbidden from entering. A checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem. Metal detectors, x-ray machines, and armed guards checking everyone who leaves the Muslim quarter and enters the rest of Jerusalem. Monitored and patrolled fences on the Jordanian border. Barbed wire. So many guns.

It was truly heartbreaking. My wish is that people would stop teaching their children to hate, and instead teach them to learn from, love, and respect their neighbors. 

What's your wish?

Finding our Spiritual Home

Recently I wrote this about conservative Judaism:

I maintain that a sect that won't let its clergy officiate your interfaith wedding, but once you're married will allow you into the fold isn't really that welcoming, but that's an argument for another day.

Well, today is that day.

While wedding planning, I looked high and low for a rabbi in Houston, and came up empty. If you've been reading awhile, you know the story pretty well. And while I have nothing against the rabbi who did perform our ceremony, I do wish it had been a local rabbi at a synagogue that we could attend together as a new family. I wish that planning our wedding ceremony would also have been putting down roots as a family, in a congregation.

What saddens me most is that it would have been like that, if we were going to raise our children Catholic. Through the months of premarital counseling we became friendly with the Deacon, familiar with the church, and could have done that even more if we were trying to put down roots there.

It upsets me on both a personal level and an community level. Personally, I wish we were not denied this opportunity and then told later "ok, you can come in now," which strikes me as awfully "love the sinner, hate the sin" of them. As a member of the Jewish community, I hate that Conservative Judaism might be turning interfaith families away because they are less welcoming than the "other" faith. One of Dan's coworkers is Jewish and married to a Catholic woman. They have it even worse than we do, due to the standard of matrilineal descent (considering a person to be born Jewish only if their mother was Jewish at the time of their birth). I wonder how many families like ours and theirs leave Judaism due to the lack of welcome, especially when most Christian denominations would welcome the whole family with open arms, unburdened as they are with religion by birth.

Now, Dan and I have to confront this problem head-on. For the past 5 years I have attended Chabad, a welcoming but ultra-Orthodox community. While they wouldn't officiate my wedding, they have invited us both to holidays and dinners and events. Because of the personal commitment required for an orthodox conversion, and the emphasis on having a Jewish soul, they would never attempt to convert my husband just because he married me. And because I am Jewish, they will consider our children fully Jewish.

But. I've written before about my desire not to raise my children Orthodox because I value gender equality and non-strict gender roles. Even before I was dating Dan, I would have the same intention to one day join a "regular" temple in which to raise my children. It's more difficult for Dan at Chabad, too, where he would have to sit separately from me on the men's side, where I can't help him follow along, explain things to him, translate Hebrew for him.

A reform rabbi would have performed our ceremony. A few I spoke to would have done it- no strings attached- were they available on our date. A few more would have done it if we were congregants but did not perform weddings at all for non-members. In addition to these particular synagogues being very far from where we live and therefore not feasible for us to actually attend regularly (in effect we would have joined for the sake of being members and getting an officiant, a rather expensive proposition), Reform Judaism is not quite observant enough for my personal taste. What I want is conservative Judaism. What I've always wanted is conservative Judaism.

But how do I get past the feeling that they don't want us?

How do I accept that they wouldn't help me create my interfaith family, but now that I have one they're willing to take me back? How do I accept that their stated goal is conversion of the non-Jewish spouse?

How do I allay the fear that they will talk down about interfaith marriage to my children in Hebrew school, behind our backs?

How do I accept that by a stroke of biological luck they will consider my children fully Jewish, but won't do the same for families like our friends described above, where only the father is Jewish?

How do I trust them to be our spiritual home and to take care of our family? In short, I don't know that I can.

A New Direction

When I started this blog, I wanted to get healthier and more active and thought the accountability to internet strangers would help. And it definitely did! Knowing that every week I would have to report when I did- and didn't- workout gave me the motivation to be more diligent with training. I had been reading some fitness blogs for awhile and thought the community looked friendly and welcoming (for the most part, it is) and I wanted to give it a try.

But here's the truth... I am not a fitness blogger. I am not one of those people who looks forward to workouts. I don't run because I am a runner, I run because I like to eat and also fit into my pants. I sign up for races because I like the challenge, and because committing to a race means I'll have to do it, and if I have to do it then I'll have to train, which means I might still fit in my pants when it's over.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the accomplishment of finishing the half marathon or the triathlon. I loved both of those (well, for the half that more true after I could walk again) and am already eager to plan my next races for each event. But I want to focus on other aspects of my life.

Nerds-in-love.net was the domain name that Dan and I bought for our wedding website. After the wedding was over, I cancelled our wedding website but kept the domain name for some future use. And now its the new home of my blog. (If you subscribe in a reader you may need to update your subscription to point to the new page; although spaceysteph.blogspot.com address will redirect, I'm not sure how it will affect apps.)

The Nerds In Love name was inspired by a comment from my rabbi's wife when I brought my Catholic boyfriend to Sukkot dinner almost 3 years ago. "If you have a Jewish soul, you have a Jewish soul mate," she said to me. I came back to this thought for months, as things became more serious between me and Dan, as I considered that he was perhaps more future-husband than fling.

It's true that we don't have religion in common, but we do have other things in common. While our names for God and the rituals we relate to him through are different, I believe we share faith in the same God. Many of my coworkers actively try not to date inside NASA, but I loved that we could talk about our days using so easily, could use technical terms and shorthand. I loved that we could both look at the sky and see the same desire to explore. I may be Jewish, but I don't define myself solely by my Jewishness. I define myself often by my nerdiness. I have a Nerd soul. And so does my husband. Nerd soulmates.

Though people thought it was cute, and most assumed it related to our Mission Control engagement or was predictive of a space-themed wedding, "Nerds in Love" was part of what I consider to be our actual wedding theme: What we have in common is more important than what divides us.

On the revamped blog, I'll continue to explore interfaith marriage (and maybe one day, interfaith babies!). I have more to say about being Jewish in America, especially now that I have a front row seat to how "the other half" lives. There's another half marathon on our horizon and you'll hear about that too (because, still, accountability to the internet makes me try harder.) I'll keep showing you yummy food and fun adventures and the occasional tales from mission control. This is now Nerds in Love, and this is our story.

Houston Eats: RDG for Houston Restaurant Weeks

After the triathlon, we came home to clean up and take a quick nap before heading out to a 12:30 brunch reservation at RDG (named for it's chef-owner Robert Del Grande). It's also #35 on the Top 100 list that we've decided to follow around town. It's in the fancy Galleria area of Houston and you can tell from the decor, the prices, and the Lamborghini parked out front.

Wearing 3/4 sleeves and a maxi dress to cover my body markings!

Their HRW menu was a 3 course brunch for $35, which I decided was perfect for post-triathlon... I sure was rungry and I was not disappointed.

We started with mimosas! (bottomless for $9 and I definitely feel I drank my money's worth!)

 

First course: Cold corn soup with queso fresco and chipotle chiles in adobo for Dan

...and smoked salmon on toast with a fennel salad and some to-die-for lemony cream dressing all over everything for me. I scraped the plate clean.

Main course: A fancy version of steak and eggs (huevos rancheros style) for Dan- there was an amazing sear on that steak and the rest was spicy and delicious.

 I had the crab and potato hash with a fried egg. Two standout sauces here too- the white mustard cream sauce on the bottom, and the salsa verde on top.

 Finally, for dessert: A chocolate bread pudding for Dan, and a pecan pie for me. I love that the desserts were both individual sizes rather than slices of a larger dessert. Too cute.

So delicious. We'll definitely be back!

TriGirl- My First Triathlon

Spoiler: I lived!

First alarm: 4am. Second alarm: 4:02. Third alarm: 4:05. The first alarm woke me, but I laid there until the third alarm. "Terrible idea. Who gets up at 4am?" I thought to myself, before realizing that this won't be the last time I see 4am this week. (I start the night shift on Friday.) Then I hopped up and turned on every light in the house.

Since it was my first tri, I wanted to get there early. We ended up arriving before the park opened. Luckily there were a couple other people also waiting outside the gate with bike racks, or we might have thought we were in the wrong place. Transition was even more confusing in the dark, but I managed to rack my bike (it's so short that the front wheel didn't even reach the ground when racked, which made it a little complicated to get un-racked) and set up my stuff.

Do I look a little scared here? I think so...

Then I got to a pitch black (what you don't know CAN hurt you) port-o-potty before the line started. By 6:15 there was a huge line for getting marked, so I'm glad we got there early. Hubs and I milled about until the festivities started with a prayer (surprisingly non-denominational, for Texas) and the national anthem a little before 7, then headed to the water to watch the wave starts.

Sunrise over Lake Houston

300* yd Swim
They did wave start by age group, starting with the 30-34 ladies and ending with the 20-29 so I had to wait until about 7:20 for our turn. We're having a little cold snap (for Houston, for August, anyways) so I was a little chilly before the start (it was about 68 degrees... I'm such a wimp, I know) and worried that the water would be cold. Nope. The water was magnificently warm, even warmer than being out in the air.

We got into the water and stood on a little sandbar, then they started us with a horn. I was a little disoriented when people around me took off , but I rallied, scooted toward the outside (yes that means more distance to swim, but less chance of being kicked in the head) and started out. There was a pretty strong diagonal current dragging us back toward shore. I felt like I'd take a couple strokes and barely get anywhere. So I did some doggy paddling and some sidestroke to catch my breath. I'm surprised I came in 17th of 40 in my age group for the swim, which was my highest place of the day, since I would have pegged it as my worst of the three sports.

*There's a discussion on the race's facebook page- the race director confirmed that swims were about 2 mins slower than usual across the board, and speculating that buoys may have moved due to the current. A few people with waterproof Garmins say they were reading over 400 yards rather than the expected 300. I can't be sure, but it definitely felt like a long way!
Time: 11:24

T1
I knew this was going to be my long transition and I decided not to rush too much and screw something else (a DQ would really ruin my day!). I did run from the water to the transition. Then I threw down my beach towel and took a seat. Whatever. I wiped off my grassy, dirty, wet, gravely feet and pulled my capris up to my knees. Then I put on my socks and shoes, stood up, hoisted up my pants to my waist, got my sunglasses and helmet on, and headed off.
Time: 2:45 (actually, I was expecting like 4 mins, so this isn't bad)

11 mile Bike
I started the bike feeling pretty good, despite the swim being a battle. I passed a few people early on, but got passed plenty on the hills that came later. I felt the burn for sure on those hills, but overall the bike was pleasant. Based on my training rides I was expecting close to an hour for the bike, so I'm pretty proud of my time even if I did come in 30th out of 40 in my age group.
Time: 46:16 (avg speed 14.3 mph)

T2
I didn't have that much to do, but it was much harder to rack up my poor, short bike with all the others around me. I wasn't changing shoes (no clips for me) so I just had to drop my helmet and my (thankfully unused) spare tube. Then I grabbed my shirt and hat and walked out of transition while putting them on. I also grabbed a gatorade from the water stop that was right at the transition exit and drank it before running.
Time: 1:23

3 mile Run
Whew, almost there! As I exited transition and saw that I was just reaching an hour, I realized 1:45 (which I thought was my pipe dream goal) was well within my grasp, which I was pretty excited about. So I headed off on what I hoped was a steady pace (I decided to forego putting on my non-waterproof Garmin in transition and just used a regular sports watch, so I didn't know distance or pace all day). The run was lovely- half pavement, half trail, mostly shade. I train at a 13:20 pace on the treadmill (4.5 mph) but I already noticed in my bricks that the numb biker butt makes me run faster than usual and then I get tired out because I can't sustain that pace. I think I did a good job of trotting along at a pace slightly faster than training, and when I saw the finish line I still had enough juice to pull out a pretty decent sprint.
Time: 37:14 (12:25 pace)

Total time: 1:39:03. 35th overall in my age group, 295 of 400-something overall.

New bling!

Thoughts: I loved the tri. I didn't love the swim, but I did enjoy being wet and cool for the rest of it. I loved the bike, I loved the run, I loved being out there with everyone (people were friendly, helpful, and encouraging all day long, which was great). I also really love training for a tri- training for a running-only race gets a little dull. I don't think I can get another tri done this season, but you can be sure I'll be back next summer!

Finally, a huge thank you to my husband for getting up at 4am with me, loading and unloading my hefty bike from the bike rack, holding my crap, taking all these pictures, cheering for me, and being right there when I came back from each leg and giving me a reason to smile.