Borat and the Tarot Card Reader

I had a fun-filled weekend. I spent Shabbat with old and new friends. I had someone stay with me for Shabbas; lately I've been having friends of friends stay over which, thank G-d, has worked out very well. I went to a friend's place for dinner on Friday; I actually contributed a home-made dish for the meal; I made a corn souffle and switched the dairy ingredients to parve ingredients (thank G-d for tofutti). In case anyone is interested, I can give you the recipe.
Just to show you that there is truly 6 degrees of separation in the Jewish community, one of the guests at the dinner is the brother of one of my roommates in Jerusalem when I studied there.

Borat was a topic of discussion both at the Friday night dinner and on Shabbat, where my synagogue held a Kiddush conversation on whether Borat was comedic or anti-Semitic. It was set up as a debate followed by comments and questions. There was a huge turnout for the discussion and I would want to see the movie, although I've heard so much about it that it's sort of been ruined for me. There was also a special kiddush for a couple that recently had a baby girl, she is their first child and it was special because they were among the people that I first studied with at Aish in NY back in 2002. She is a very cute baby, I call her "Little Peanut".

Motzei Shabbas (after Shabbat), I took a bus to NJ and got in later than I would have liked. I learned the hard way that it is better to take a subway to Port Authority than a taxi on Saturday evening. To make up for the hellish cab ride, I was able to get on the next bus pretty quickly and the bus ride did go smoothly. My best friend took me to her company holiday party.
It was a pretty casual affair; it's held at the head's home, catered food was bought in along with a ton of alcohol. We each had to bring in a wrapped gift for "Robbers X'mas", you pick a number and choose a gift. Your gift can be stolen at any point in the game, at which point you can either steal someone else's gift or choose a new gift on the table. This goes on until all the gifts are taken. At least 60% of the gifts were bottles of alcohol. I had my eye on a Ghiradelli Chocolate gift basket which we stole only to have it stolen from us on the next turn.

There was also karaoke, a jewelry bazaar (we each got a piece of jewelry for free) and a tarot card reader. I've had palm readings and tarot card readings before and I thought it was all a bunch of crap. In my opinion, it seems that the readers say general statements that can apply to everyone. Also, I'm not sure whether tarot cards and palm readings are frowned upon in Orthodox Judaism; could that be looked at as a form of idol worship? Whatever the case, I decided to get a reading for fun and she definitely said some interesting but good things that apply to goals I'm trying to accomplish in 6 months time.

Yesterday was spent relaxing at home with the family and I had a long bus ride back thanks to a car accident or two by the Lincoln Tunnel that caused some serious backups. Now starts another work week and I am very grateful to have a couple of 3 day weekends coming up.