Beit HaChatulim - Who Are These Guys?

Last updated at 10:55 a.m. MT on 23 September 2004.

Two Parental Units: Aren is a computer systems architect for fun and profit, and a fan of hockey and baseball in his spare time. Joan has done a number of things like technical documentation and training and graphic design, but is currently devoting most of her time to growing human beings and playing around with the internet.
One Daughter: Miriam is now 23. She loves fantasy literature and dramatics. She is currently going to school full time and working 3 part-time jobs (all at our synagogue). Her future plans currently include law school and rabbinical school.
My Three Sons: Simon is 19 and cares for one orange cat, plus he gets to sleep with the Corgi. He reads incessantly and eclectically and has become a big sports fan. He is currently taking college classes, but isn't yet sure where he's heading.
Eli is 16. He loves baseball, an orange cat named Junior, and eating chocolate cake for breakfast. He spent the summer of 2004 going around the US with USY on Wheels Bus C and is now interested in finishing up high school and applying to USY's Nativ program in two years.
Nathan (warning: the page that links to is WAY out of date) is now 15 and has just started taking Driver Education. He still loves animals and a wide variety of other things, which you can read about on his own homepage.

The questions we are most frequently asked about the non-human members of our family are:

How does anyone get nine cats?: Well, shouldn't every life have nine cats? Since we moved to New Mexico, we added a few cats -- but we're not going to mention numbers, okay?
Why would you even consider getting a dog?: Dogs are fun. They make you take walks. At least our Siberian Husky, Max, makes us take walks. Yuki, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi, comes along for the exercise.
What happened to the frogs and the hamster and the guinea pig and the gerbils and the mice?: Unfortunately, our frogs and Tubie, our beloved hamster, reached the end of their lives. The frogs were African water frogs from a science supply store, not captured from a local pond -- just in case anyone was worried. We now get our amphibian fix by going to one of those ponds and watching the critters there. Tubie the hamster had a long and interesting life; he lived to be almost 3 years old, which is a pretty respectable age for a hamster. He died one cold February morning as we held him and was buried in our yard back in Massachusetts. The guinea pig and gerbils were given to new homes before we moved. Noriko, the sole surviving mouse at the time of our move, came along with us -- in a cage inside the car that held the cats -- because she was very old and Nathan didn't think it was fair to give her to a family, only to have her die soon after. She died peacefully a few months after we moved.

To see all of us as we are in 2004 -- click here.