The Battle Between the Two Whites-the Blues and the Reds

TITLE actually READ: HOLY SHIT! WE WON!

I'm referring to the basket ball game last night where Maccabi Tel Aviv (Blue and White) played the Toronto Raptors (Red and White), and won! But first let me recap a bit about the past few days.

Yesterday was Sunday so I started with good old Thursday morning manual labor. What?! Yes, the lovely brass (actually i think it was the NCO) decided that since we weren't on base on Thursday, we would work on Sunday. It actually wasn't that hard. Mostly bringing some chairs down a few flights of stairs and organizing them. I ended up mostly sitting on my ass for like 1.5 hours chilling with some guys. It really wouldn't have been that bad at all if I hadn't gone to sleep at 3:30 and woken up at 5:15 when the phone rang. Who calls at 5:15?! Actually it was fax spam. What's up with fax spam?! But that's a whole other post. So I had like 2 hours of sleep, but was surprisingly awake. Regular day at work, average stuff + a few meetings. Came home and we decided to go out.

"We" ended up being me, Katz, Nadiv, Ren and Ilan H. Katz wanted somewhere close with kosher food (so he could eat while we drank). My parents have been bugging me about this place in Herzelya Pituach called Tarabin. Supposedly some bar/restaurant where religious youths chill, possibly with nargila/Karaoke. Now I'm not much for nargila or Karaoke but I figured why not check it out. It fit both Katz's criteria. So we get there and it didn't seem like the kind of place we wanted to hang out in. It was very bright and filled mostly with little religious Yemenite kids, smoking nargila and singing (badly). Not that I have a problem with little people, religious people or Yemenite people. Just not exactly our crowd. So we left. Maybe we'll try again sometime. Katz and Ilan decided they wanted to go to Max Brenner, not to far away. Overpriced chocolate wasn't really what i was looking for so I was happy when the line to get in was huge and we scrapped that idea. We tried a bar on the beach, which was closed and then another further up on the beach, Picasso. WE got there and through the window we could see a bunch of old people dancing like old-school Israeli dancing. Like the Horah and shit. Maybe a bit of salsa to. Also not our scene. At this point Ilan was pretty tired (it was like 12:30) and decided to call it a night, so the rest of us headed to Tel Aviv to go to our usual TA hang out- Mike's Place. Sat at a booth and enjoyed the live music, conversation and the basketball game that was on. It was two minutes till the end and we were up by 3. The last 2 minutes of the game found them tying it up then pulling ahead, then us pulling ahead etc. In the last 11 seconds we managed to pull ahead. With 0.8 seconds left the ball moves to the Raptors (WHY!!?), we're up by two and they shoot a 3 pointer for game. It hits the hoop...No good!!! The bar erupts in applause and cheering (which the band thinks is for them because they just finished their last song) and we just beat a NBA team. Spent the rest of the night talking. I had my usual 1/2L of Guinness. Then decided to try Sam Adams (first time they have it in Israel) which I really liked. It had this sort of apple-y grape-y flavor to it that was interesting. A good second beer.

We chilled on the beach for a while (this time TA not Herzelya) and then headed back to Ra'anana cause Nadiv had to get up in a few hours (it was like 3:30). This was the first time i didn't fall asleep on the way home form TA in a long time. Ren, Katz and I hung out in a park for a few more hours till the sun came up. At 5:45 when I walked in the door I had been up for over 24 hours. I went to sleep till 12:30 ish, and here I am.

I also finally got my permission from customs to drive the car. I'm not sure I explained this so I'll do a quick recap. Got my license (finally). Can't drive the car for two reasons:1-insurance, 2-customs. Insurance shouldn't be hard to get, they said simply to call after we dealt with customs and that day I would have insurance. Customs on the other hand at the best of times are difficult to deal with. Basically, because my parents bought the car with immigrant rights (less or no taxes), only they can drive it. So i needed permission from them in writing that I'm allowed to drive the car. A few phone calls, letters, faxes, days later, I got the letter in the mail. Yeah! But, the insurance agency is already closed for the day as tonight starts Sukkot. Hopefully by Wednesday I will finally get behind the wheel of our car.

Wow! This is a ridiculously long post. I'm not sure anyone will really want to read it. If you are reading this, thank you for sitting through that bout of verbal diarrhea. Cheers.