Gay Pride Parade

I promise, I'm not a liberal. I'm a republican... but...
I just saw a sign in my shul yesterday to contact XY&Z organizations to do whatever they can to stop the gay pride parade in yerushalayim. It gave me this terrible fear of what's going to be. There's a terrible feeling against gays in our community-- and I understand, they're an abomination according to the Torah, but what does that mean for us? Does it mean that we should scare them away from the community? Make them hate our religion because of what we did to them as teenagers? Or should we embrace them, just tell them that they are not allowed to act on their gay inclinations.
I can only imagine the feelings of the gay teenage boy - of course, no one knows he's gay - and how must he feel, seeing that sign in his shul. And oy, what's going to happen at the parade--which, let's face it, is going to happen. What kind of massive Chillul Hashem is going to be? How much can we NOT afford to make a chillul Hashem at a time like this?
I dont know, maybe Hashem wants us to make a Chillul Hashem about some thing like this. Does this count as today's avodah zarah? How do we decide something so huge?

Vacation is a beautiful thing

Seriously, gorgeous.
I had two friends over for shabbos, which was really nice. They stayed 'till Sunday morning... it was really nice - I got a chance to hangout, like - fun hanging, and I got to talk, seriously, about life, religion and other important things.
Sunday was spent with Tzvi, which is always a pleasure. Monday the plan was to see Superman in IMAX 3D, that didn't really work out for us - it was sold out. Of course, by the time we got there I was so totally dehydrated, after the gym and the 800 degree weather, that I just couldn't walk outside again. So, we saw the Da Vinci Code. We agreed to disagree with the critics, we liked it better than the book.
Tuesday's kinda a blur. After coming home and barely being able to move I overslept. Then I went out to lunch, and when I came home I dont think I moved much. Oh, except to clean the bathroom. I got all this energy around 5ish and scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, changed the shower curtain liner and everything.
Wednesday was a great day, except for my failure in sneaker shopping. I went to the gym, came home and showered, and then 3 of my friends came over and we hung out for a while, it was so nice.
Today was kinda boringish... spent the whole day making the Young Israel Day Camp's Newsletter... not done yet.
Tomorrow should be a pretty chilled day. I'll probably wake up late and excersize in the house, since the gym's closed on Fridays.
That's it.

Summer

Parenting

I'm not a parent, so if you're gonna read this and criticize me because I don't know what I'm talking about, agreed, so save your breath.
However - here are my thoughts. Parents today are spoiling their kids. I filled in for my friend today at the day camp office. A parent called to find out if their kid got Youth Corp (meaning they'll get paid more because the government is paying them). I learned that this parent calls every day to find out. Another parent called for her daughter, a counselor, because she doesn't like her group. The parent told the camp that if they didn't change her group the counselor would quit. The camp said, "So quit," and she did. Someone else told me that some of their 7-year-old campers wont sit on the floor.
If I was a counselor, and didn't like my group - my parents would say "deal with it." It would be up to me if I wanted to see if they would change my group. It would be up to me if I wanted to quit. My mom would NEVER call for me.
If I was a 7 year old, my mom would say, "get over it, sit. You're in camp, you listen to your counselor."
What happened to that mentality?
Now, when a kid does something wrong, it's the counselor/teacher/principals fault. How did this happen? My parents generation didn't do it, and my generation seems to agree that this style of parenting is totally ridiculous. So what happened to that generation in the middle?

Happiness is...

I took this photo on July 4th. Behind the American Museum of National History is this really cute sprinkler type place for kids - they were all over running around. So, while our friends waited for us to meet them at the museum, my husband and I stopped to take some pictures of the kids.

Photos

So, my husband found this great website Photojojo, and they sent me to another fun site, Photo Friday. Photojojo is a biweekly newsletter of fun stuff to do with your photos. Photo Friday is a weekly challenge for photographers, from children to professional, of something to capture. So - I'm gonna try it. I'm totally a novice, but it's fun.