weekend

[cellio]

Today's email included spam for a product that will "thicken [my] penis". I think I'll pass. That's even weirder than the Viagra spam and the spam addressed to African-American women (in which category I do not fit).

Today was the Great Race, which starts pretty much in front of our house. I can live with the necessary sound, once a year, of a few thousand people getting set up to run a race. However, blasting music for more than an hour (starting at 8am) at volume levels that would get me cited for disorderly conduct if they came from my house is inappropriate. I wonder who the correct body is to complain to. (City council?)

I guess this race just has bad karma for me or something. In 1999, the first year we lived here, Dani and I got tickets (and threat of towing; someone rang the bell at 7am) for being parked on the street. The "no parking" signs were apparently invisible that year in our block. Dani paid the ticket; I went to traffic court and the judge dismissed it. (After: "And how long have you lived in Squirrel Hill?" "We moved into the house 10 days before this happened." "Ok, dismissed. Just so you know, they do this every year and they're not real good about signs." I didn't ask if there was something the courts could do about that deficiency.)

Simchat Torah services were good. It was also Shabbat, so we started with the regular Shabbat liturgy. It was interesting to hear one of the other part-time cantorial types. It seems we know some different melodies. (Later at the oneg the rabbi introduced us to each other and he said something like "yeah, I thought so -- you were actually singing, unlike a lot of the other people". :-) )

As I mentioned before, this congregation doesn't actually dance or do silly things like some others do, but it still feels festive. I got to carry a sefer torah around the room once; there actually seemed to be enough to go around. (You make a total of seven cycles around the room, and they had about half a dozen sefri torah, so that meant they could accommodate about 42 people, which was enough.)

It turned out that New Light, where I had considered going this morning to see how they do it, had their main celebration last night, with just a regular service (with Yizkor?) this morning. So much for that.

Saturday was a local SCA event, Coronation. (In most parts of the SCA, the king changes every six months. This is the event where that happens.) It was a fun event. The choir performance mostly went well, after a chain-reaction failure on the first piece that started in either the soprano or alto section and spread. Darn it; we know that piece better than that. I guess we didn't spend enough time practicing it given that we were missing at least one strong soprano (and two other choir members are new to the piece).

The feast was fantastic. There was plenty of food for vegetarians, and everything that I ate was very tasty. And the cooks paid a lot of attention to presentation -- the table settings were far above the norm. (Heck, that there were table settings -- candles, centerpieces, salt, nice tablecloths, etc -- was unusual.)

Lunch was a bit of a challenge. It was being sold separately, not bundled into the event fee as it often is, and there didn't appear to be a mechanism for pre-paying it. So I shrugged and figured I'd just bring my own, but screwed up a little in packing. Then Dani asked what I was doing and I shrugged, and he asked if I would eat lunch if he bought it, and I said I guessed so. It still felt too much like he was doing it for me, though; I was hoping that maybe he'd just buy it for himself and I'd mooch some veggies (which he doesn't eat much of), but that didn't happen.

We picked up a different universal remote today. It claims to support a Sampo DVD player. I successfully configured it for the TV and two brands of VCR. I configured it for the DVD player using the provided code (which matches the one we found via google and that didn't work for the other remote), and it didn't work. I wonder if there's something wrong with the player -- its own remote works fine, though, so probably not. With the first remote, the "try all codes" feature didn't turn it up either. I haven't tried it with the second yet. (The second is the better remote in many other ways, though, so I know that's the one we're keeping.)

Comments

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

We had really good acoustics for the performance. One of the unfortunate side effects of that was that it was much harder to hear each other from where we were standing (or at least where I was standing.) I suspect that was a large part of it, as there were a number of places where I was doing a LOT more counting and had to fight my urge to stop and recover when that wasn't backed up by clearly hearing my usual cues from other sections.

On the way to brunch this morning about half a dozen gentlemen dressed for Orthodox services jogged playfully down Murray, across Forward past us, and on up Murray toward Greenfield. They were grinning (at least the men were; some of the kids were starting to look tired) rather than looking like they were running because they were late for something. Does that sound like it probably has something to do with Simchat? Inspiration from the Great Race? None of the above?

[goljerp]

Does that sound like it probably has something to do with Simchat?

Yep, Simchat Torah's supposed to be a joyful day. Could've had something to do with vodka or whiskey, too. But, heck, if you'd been on West End Avenue at the right time last night, you would've seen me skipping down town... (I ended up hopping from JTS at 120th st down to AC at 100th & WEA down to Shaare Tzedek at 93rd... I probably could've made it down to BJ and hit 4 conservative egalatarian simchat torah services, but I was exhausted, and it was around 11:20 by the time ST was done...)

[cellio]

Choir: That makes sense. Since I was near the center I could tell that the voices around me were not together, but I didn't make the connection that the two ends of the line couldn't hear each other.

Jogging Jews: Probably; I'm not sure. There is a synagogue in Greenfield (on Murray a block or so before that Giant Eagle), so I presume that's where they were heading. I've never been to that congregation (it would be a long walk), so I don't really know anything about them.

[fiannaharpar.livejournal.com]

I agree with Christoph, even with the half-circle formation, it was difficult to hear the other parts. I rely on lots of cues from the Tenors, and couldn't hear them at all.

Lunch at Coronation: If you ever need something like that, I have absolutely no problem with doing the "Shabbos Goy" thing at events. Just ask. I've done it before, really :-)

The table coverings/decorations were the brainchild of Tatyana, who brought all of the table coverings, and she and Jeanette set everything up just before/during morning court. They did an amazing job.