Here in Highland Park, New Jersey

I don’t really mean to freak my readers out with the first two photos, but the New Jersey turnpike around Elizabeth, Newark and Linden is really what gives New Jersey a bad name. These don’t even show the worst of it, which we passed when I was driving my son to the bus stop for sleepaway camp last week. He took the photos.

Just to prove that our state is actually mostly much prettier than this, I took these in Hope, New Jersey in a wonderful little amusement park, water park and outdoor theatre in which the audience can participate:

My daughter, husband and I participated in a play in the front of this castle. She was a princess, he was the dragon (a major role!), and I played the skunk:

After I took the above photo, it did rain on us. But not too much.

Since the sky was glorious blue this morning, I’ll finish up with these two photos taken in front of my home:

For more Skywatch participants, please visit:

My kids like bagels. So we spend time going to bagel shops.

If any of you grew up within 600 miles of New York City, you may know that New York is well known for its bagels. And bagels are often associated with folks of those parts as a “Jewish” food.

Well, it may or may not surprise you to know that in the early days of the State of Israel, the 1950s - 1970s, it was very difficult if not impossible to find a bagel in the Jewish State. I was first in Israel in 1980, and I cannot remember eating bagel while there. I remember pizza, especially Richie’s pizza. But not bagels. Pita, fresh rolls, yes, but I don’t remember bagels.

It was a nice surprise on this past trip to Israel (my fifth time visiting) that we enjoyed not just one but two bagel shops in the city of Jerusalem. At left my son is happily chomping on a poppy seed bagel from Bonkers Bagel in the Old City.

Below you will see my daughter munching a pizza bagel at Holy Bagel on Rechov Yaffo:

How did these bagels shops rate? Hey, they were happy. And that makes mommy happy.

However, the bagel story in our home town of Highland Park, New Jersey is a bit of a sadder tale. We used to have this wonderful bagel shop just over the border in Edison on Rte. 27. They served delicious fresh bagels, and I remember buying the egg salad bagel with tomato and red onion when my son was a mere babe. However, at some point that bagel store departed, and a new one opened in Highland Park. The new bagel shop wasn’t nearly as good as the old one, both for reasons that the bagels weren’t as good and the service was, well, lousy. The new bagel shop changed owners and then closed completely. There is a Bagel Dish Cafe here in Highland Park, but alas, it is not kosher.

Now when we want bagels in Highland Park, we go to: Dunkin’ Donuts!
I should tell you the best part of our Dunkin’ Donuts is great service. Part of the way they give great service is they yell at you if you are chatting online, and it’s your turn to give your order. They keep the line moving fast, and the people behind the counter remember you. And what you ordered last time. The friendly service is quite nice. Personally, my favorite is the multigrain bagel, because of the oatmeal and sunflower seeds on top.

During the school year some teenage boys ran a service where you could order bagels from Teaneck. I don’t know much about the service or about the Teaneck bagels, but as my son will be going to school in Teaneck in September, I expect I might ask him to buy a few bagels for us.

Years ago when my husband and I were dating we used to go to a nice bagel shop on 72nd Street on the West Side in Manhattan. They served bagels, coffee, orange juice and scrambled eggs for one price, and under the glass on the tables were comic strips. Whatever it was called, it probably is no longer there.

In Brookline, Massachusetts (I grew up in nearby Newton) at Kupel’s Bagels on Harvard Street you could get green bagels on St. Patrick’s Day. Probably still can.

Any decent bagel shops where you live?

If you haven’t had enough photos of bagel shops in Jerusalem, visit Dina.

Another Photoshopped photo. I do hope these women don’t recognize themselves. I used so many different Photoshop tools: brush, clone stamp, palette knife, colored pencil filter, sponge, desaturate, paint daubs, magic wand.

Juggling Frogs, a blogger I have wanted to write about, has set up a new blog carnival:

A Carnival of Overdue Thanks

Who is being thanked?

The “object” of the gratitude should be a person, or more than one person. Not an object, not an animal, and not an idea or fictional character. (Although, it’s within the rules to address the author/creator of ideas and/or characters.) The person can be living or dead.

More on her site…

If you want to add a link to a comment in my blog, all you need to do is copy the url that you want from the top of your browser and paste it into the comment. A url begins with “http://“. Once you press submit, it gets converted into a link. Automatically. This also works in Ilana-Davita’s blog, because she also uses Wordpress.

However, if you are using Blogger and you add a url link, it will look like a url, like this:
http://www.somedomain.com/whatever/yourfilename.htm

So what if you want to make that link into a hyperlink, so people click on it? You need to add anchor tags. You start your tag like this:
<a href=”http://www.somedomain.com/whatever/yourfilename.htm”>
Then you put in some sort of text here. And end it with:
</a>

Here’s another way of showing how to do it:
<a href=”url”>Text to be displayed</a>

When you do add a link in Blogger, this is a good time to press “Preview”. Run your mouse over link, and look at the bottom of your browser to make sure you put in the correct link.

< and > locations:
Here it’s on bottom right(this looks like my keyboard)

Here it’s on bottom left
(maybe the > is achieved by holding the Shift key down?)

Any questions?