Up, Down and All Around

In other words, this has been a sort of mood-swing-y (as if that were a word) weekend. Shabbos meals were lovely- I had dinner at taylweaver's place, and as wilperegrine and Steve were invited, even had people with whom to walk home (along with an escort most of the way from wildblueyonder2).

I stayed at JTS for shul, and led Psukei D'Zimra (big surprise, I know). Services were remarkably short- given the short parsha, and the fact that the person who was reading Haftarah is Sefardi, this did make sense. Still, we started 10 minutes late, since we were sort of waiting for more people to show up (and then gave up on waiting), and yet we still finished quite early. That gave me time to relax a bit after shul, and still have time to assemble a different salad than I'd been planning, when I realized that I'd bought a can of green beans rather than beets, when I'd been planning to do a beet and steamed green bean salad- green bean and green bean salad just sounds a little dull. So instead I chopped up some mushrooms, scallions and goat cheese that I had, to go with the green beans, and did a dressing with mayonnaise, soy sauce, honey and balsamic vinegar, and I think it worked quite well, although I may have overdone the cheese a little.

I really enjoyed lunch. People seemed to get along well, and the people who said they had other plans but might drop by actually did drop by- and everyone still seemed to get along. I sometimes get sort of stressed when I host meals and people seem uncomfortable or various things of that sort- this time, I got to feed my friends, And enjoy it. After lunch we played a game we found in the Moadon entitled Green Eggs and Ham. It was a pretty silly game, designed, naturally, for kids, but I at least found it hilarious. I also lost in my usual fashion.

Mincha actually had more than a minyan's worth of people present. Oddly enough, it was Ma'ariv, which is usually quite well populated, that we had to round up a minyan for, and then afterwards, they didn't make havdalah. So I did so on my own, when I really dislike making havdalah alone- it feels very lonely somehow. So that was the start of a somewhat less happy evening- although I did have a cup of tea with a classmate I don't see that much this year.

So I woke up this morning feeling a little generically down and sort of empty-feeling. So I didn't get a lot of work done early in the day, but later on I got better about that, and got a chunk of Yom Kippur preparations done, and some reading for class- if not as much as I should have. And this evening, I ended up preparing some gemara with zodiacmg, which was a lot of fun, and I actually understood this chunk better than much of the sugya before this point. In the midst of that, we took a break to help some other folks with their Talmud homework, and for me to read some homework to Steve, who's blind, so she could type it for homework. Giving an assignment to read clock-faces and write out the times in Hebrew is sort of absurd to do with a blind student, I just have to say.

P.S.

Also, my overhead light is out. I put in a work order- we'll see how long it takes for them to replace it, but I can't reach it to replace it on my own- that's for sure. I'm glad I have a few lamps.

What a Day

Today was another day-on-a-yo-yo, a bit. I reset my alarm clock in the morning, and then forgot to turn it back on, so I slept in a bit. Then I did a bit of gemara with zodiacmg, gave some fabric scraps to a friend who needs them for a crafts project she's doing with her Hebrew school kids, and wasted a little time. I did get my basic outline for my Yom Kippur services set up, at least.

Gemara class was its usual random self- we went through about an amud, but the teacher didn't seem to know exactly what was going on with that amud, or how to teach it. It made for an odd class, but it wasn't unpleasant, at least. I even got up the nerve to read in class- something that takes me a while to feel ok with in these contexts where half the class has so much more experience than I do.

I checked my email, and got an email from the Brandeis Chabad house, asking for money, and including a testimonial, basically, from a student. No big deal, except that the letter talks all about how this girl grew up in a Conservative home, and therefore was never taught to love Judaism, and never felt part of a Jewish community, and was never told that she should marry a Jew, and that she learned all this at Chabad. I found it pretty insulting, and wrote a rather cranky letter in response. I think I got as far as telling them that I'd been thinking about sending them some contribution, but that now I was glad I'd never sent them money, and that especially at this time of year, they should think twice about how they talk about Klal Yisrael. We'll see what happens. Maybe I over-reacted, but I'm leaning towards thinking that I didn't.

At dancing, a quite effusive older Israeli man basically scolded me for not getting to zodiacmg in time to make sure that he danced with me- that that was the only way I was going to get a partner. Since he'd spent much of the evening trying to get zodiacmg to let him set him up so that he could make a shidduch and get into Olam haBa, this felt a lot like being thrown at my ex. I really do wonder why people at dancing have such a knack for that particular activity.