Writing and Shopping Adventures

Today included some adventures. First I had a quiet morning of minyan, breakfast and paper-writing though. The paper leaves something to be desired: it's very hard to write a whole paper about how to deal with praying as a class once a week next semester: I'm not sure I'm really happy with what I've written, but I think at this point I'll probably let it sit a bit and then edit it into shape a bit, something I don't usually feel such a need to do- but the paper, or sections thereof, will be distributed to all my classmates, which makes me rather nervous, especially since I get nervous showing my writing to peers in general, and I don't think this is a particularly good paper. The prompt had a gizillion questions to make sure to address, but they did not lend themselves to very long answers, or a very flowing literary structure. It has felt very awkward to Write, which doesn't usually happen to me consistently through a paper. The class is pass/fail, so I'm not worried about the grade, and if my classmates weren't going to get to see it, I would turn it in as it is now. But seeing as they will be, I want it to read well, and I want to make sure that it's diplomatic, especially since one of the reasons I didn't have that much to say is that I think that a nice, traditional full service structure would suit just fine, and let people sing a little if they want, and someone should say kaddishes even if no one is saying kaddish for a relative, and that's that for that. But considering that my class had a rather long and heated (and unresolved) argument about the abridgement of P'sukei D'Zimra- well, I'm rather aware that my opinions are not exactly always shared.

In any case, the real excitement of the day was meeting my sister at Grand Central and heading further downtown to do some shopping at a store billed by a friend as "like Marshalls on speed", which was indeed like Marshalls on speed, and quite intimidating. After that, we wandered, found some other stores with the occasional interesting item, and kept on wandering. We also wandered into someone she knew from UChicago and said person's seeming-to-be boyfriend, whose name was sort of unintelligible and did not seem to speak all that much English. They walked us towards the subway (all the while starting conversations and then abandoning them) except that we turned out to be on the wrong street. So we eventually found our way to a different subway line, but that whole part of the adventure got me rather anxious, especially as it was at the end of a long afternoon. So- it wasn't a very functional use of time, but it was pleasant, most of it, and we may do a bit more focused shopping tomorrow, because my mother and sister have determined that I need clothes, and if they don't facilitate matters, I'll buy things that are boring, or won't buy things at all. This may well be true- actually, it quite likely is. (Note that I have not gotten a haircut in an embarassingly long time.) And it isn't like I know of other exciting things to do on a Thursday morning with my sister- unlike me, she doesn't find the Beit Midrash an exciting location for visiting.

So tomorrow there will be shopping, hopefully a take-home final, some sort of Brush dinner about which I don't quite know all the details, and the arrival of a tovah623.

Writing and Shopping Adventures

Today included some adventures. First I had a quiet morning of minyan, breakfast and paper-writing though. The paper leaves something to be desired: it's very hard to write a whole paper about how to deal with praying as a class once a week next semester: I'm not sure I'm really happy with what I've written, but I think at this point I'll probably let it sit a bit and then edit it into shape a bit, something I don't usually feel such a need to do- but the paper, or sections thereof, will be distributed to all my classmates, which makes me rather nervous, especially since I get nervous showing my writing to peers in general, and I don't think this is a particularly good paper. The prompt had a gizillion questions to make sure to address, but they did not lend themselves to very long answers, or a very flowing literary structure. It has felt very awkward to Write, which doesn't usually happen to me consistently through a paper. The class is pass/fail, so I'm not worried about the grade, and if my classmates weren't going to get to see it, I would turn it in as it is now. But seeing as they will be, I want it to read well, and I want to make sure that it's diplomatic, especially since one of the reasons I didn't have that much to say is that I think that a nice, traditional full service structure would suit just fine, and let people sing a little if they want, and someone should say kaddishes even if no one is saying kaddish for a relative, and that's that for that. But considering that my class had a rather long and heated (and unresolved) argument about the abridgement of P'sukei D'Zimra- well, I'm rather aware that my opinions are not exactly always shared.

In any case, the real excitement of the day was meeting my sister at Grand Central and heading further downtown to do some shopping at a store billed by a friend as "like Marshalls on speed", which was indeed like Marshalls on speed, and quite intimidating. After that, we wandered, found some other stores with the occasional interesting item, and kept on wandering. We also wandered into someone she knew from UChicago and said person's seeming-to-be boyfriend, whose name was sort of unintelligible and did not seem to speak all that much English. They walked us towards the subway (all the while starting conversations and then abandoning them) except that we turned out to be on the wrong street. So we eventually found our way to a different subway line, but that whole part of the adventure got me rather anxious, especially as it was at the end of a long afternoon. So- it wasn't a very functional use of time, but it was pleasant, most of it, and we may do a bit more focused shopping tomorrow, because my mother and sister have determined that I need clothes, and if they don't facilitate matters, I'll buy things that are boring, or won't buy things at all. This may well be true- actually, it quite likely is. (Note that I have not gotten a haircut in an embarassingly long time.) And it isn't like I know of other exciting things to do on a Thursday morning with my sister- unlike me, she doesn't find the Beit Midrash an exciting location for visiting.

So tomorrow there will be shopping, hopefully a take-home final, some sort of Brush dinner about which I don't quite know all the details, and the arrival of a tovah623.