(Warning: Extreme nerdiness follows. You are not expected to understand this if you are a family member whose last name is not "Sambol". Feel free to move along.)

This Shabbos was Tu B'Shvat, the Jewish holiday to celebrate the renewal of tree life, especially fruit trees. I celebrated appropriately by spending Shabbos with a couple of other fruits. I slept over at the home of David and Arlan, the gay couple I met last week. I got there a couple hours before Shabbos, so they got to show me their snakes (shut up, jeff) in the basement. Only the newly hatched babies were terribly active; all the adults were sleeping the winter months away.