The Nate Newsletter

In summary: The California DMV absolutely sucks. To be fair, some of the issues today were not on my behalf or the behalf of the California DMV. Nevertheless, I expected to walk in and get my Learner's Permit in 30 minutes. Instead, a whole host of surprises waited for me-- I achieved my objective a whole three and a half hours after I started. There are two DMV offices near I live, of which I had an appointment at one of them to apply for a Learner's Permit in California and take the written exam. I get there and it goes smoothly until I am told that the camera does not work. I do not understand why they cannot use a cell phone photo, but the camera at the DMV does not work, and they need your photograph so you can take the exam, so I can only get this permit if I go to a different DMV. After a long drive to the other side of town where the other DMV is, I walk into a line nearly out the door-- at least 25 people in front of me. I did not have an appointment and the appoi...

Hello. I returned home yesterday to an unexpected series of events. I thought this was an interesting story that happened by random chance. My brother broke his finger the day after his Bar Mitzvah playing Flag Football. It's been in a cast for quite some time and the fracture appears to have healed; however, there was another problem. His young hands were going to keep growing, so his finger was going to grow at a crooked angle that would bend over time. I expected him to go to an appointment yesterday afternoon in order to get a cast that would correct his finger. However, at roughly 4:30 PM, he called me on his cell phone and stated that he would need to either undergo surgery on his finger that day or live with a crooked finger for the rest of his life. My response: "Of course you should get the ******* surgery! You don't want to have a crooked finger for the rest of your life!" While surgeries are painful for a few days after one undergoes them, they...

Yesterday, December 1, 2018, was the date that my brother celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. I thought I would take some time to reflect on the festivities and provide some description of what was an amazing event. For security reasons, I will not name the synagogue where the ceremony occurred or the venue for the party that followed. While every Bar Mitzvah ceremony occurs on Saturday, the Jewish Shabbat (Sabbath), the festivities actually start the night before. At the synagogue that hosted the ceremony, the person whose Bar Mitzvah is the same week recites a prayer at the Friday night ceremony, called the Kiddish . Typically, a Kiddish ceremony involves lighting candles, uncovering bread (specifically, challah ), and drinking wine from a special cup (since my brother is too young to legally drink, grape juice served as a substitute). For this ceremony, my mother, grandmother, and great-aunt were all on the bema (the holy, often elevated area at the front of the synagogue) with him. Aft...