A Plain Old Nice Shabbos

This Shabbos was quite pleasant. Dinner was with two friends, very local, which meant that we started pretty much right after shul, and I didn't have a long walk to prevent me from getting to bed pretty much on time.

It was a good thing that I did, as there didn't turn out to be time for a shabbos nap today. First off, last night I ended up taking on the mincha leyning, which hardly takes a long time to learn, but needs to get done at some point. I started it in the morning before shul, but didn't quite finish then, as I really wanted to be on time, for once. Then shul ran a bit later than usual, as it was Rosh Hodesh, and I was having people over for lunch, so I actually left before davening was over (and Certainly didn't have time to stay for kiddutsh), in order to get back and get set up. Lunch was lovely- a bit of a different crowd from my usual invites, as it turned out, but quite nice- fun people, good conversation, and they liked to food. (And unlike last week, I made enough to have some leftovers to be a few meals into this coming week.)

After lunch, wildblueyonder2 and outofnapkins were delightful enough to help me clean up and deal with the dishes, and then I walked them much of the way to their respective dwelling places. There was more good conversation along the way. And then I finally came home, finished learning my leyning, and went to shul, waited, found no one there, and realized that I had no proof that shul was still downstairs for mincha- and lo and behold, it was indeed upstairs. We scraped together a minyan, and did so again for ma'ariv, and since then, I've had a pretty quiet evening.
One interesting/awkward set of moments before and during shabbos came from finding that Talmud teacher from last year, who's been in town visiting/lecturing, was around for shabbos (apparently rather a surprise to them- I don't know what happened), and I got to be helpful introducing him and his wife to the Brush kitchen, and such things. Always a bit awkward, encountering teachers in such a different setting. But apparently his wife admired the smoothness of my bread-dough, which confuses me- it almost always looks smooth once it's been rising for a while...