One ROYALLY sizzling day

Very, very hot.  This is apparently our first heat wave since 2007.

But, while most of us were inclined to dress like this:

 

Some of us had to dress like this instead:

   

…and we were there!!!

I’ll post a link to our YouTube video as soon as it’s available.  It’s just taking forever to upload.

Done!  Here’s our video!

Queen Elizabeth II has spent more time in Canada than any other country besides England.  She is a very special person to many Torontonians.  But she’s 84 now.  Though I wish many long years of life ahead of her, I don’t know how many return visits she’ll be able to make to our stinky, steamy, at times power-deprived city.

Skip the next paragraph to go straight to the holy stuff.

(I do have to say, I was really expecting a lot more and joking around considering that the day she made her first appearances downtown coincided with the (gay) Pride Parade.  Maybe I listen to the wrong (conservative) radio station.  Still:  something about queens… well, never mind.  I guess I’m the only one who thought of it.  By the way, why is it that “pride” is now automatically short for “gay pride?”  Am I allowed to wonder without being considered “homophobic” – ie, fearful of homosexuality, which, by the way, most so-called homophobes probably are not?)

More importantly, like a fruit tree blooming in the month of Nissan, she is an opportunity for a special bracha, one most people make once in a lifetime, if ever.

Baruch atah adonoi, eloheinu melech ha’olam, she’nasan mi’kvodo le basar v’dam.

Blessed are you, Hashem, God, king of the world, who gave of his glory to flesh and blood.  As  I explained to Naomi Rivka (who was amazed and querulous that I was saying a bracha instead of waving or screaming like everybody else), the bracha shows our gratitude for this earthly reminder, a tiny fragment, of God’s own glory.

And I have to say, Lizzie (we’re on first name terms now, of course) pulled off the job with grace and aplomb.