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short takes
I went early to services on Friday so I could sneak a peek at the sefer torah I'll be reading from next week. The rabbi asked me which scroll I wanted to use, the one with the clearest text (which is heavy) or the lightest one (which has less-clear, though acceptable, text). I told him that I don't have hagbah (the job of lifting the scroll overhead for the congregation to see), so I had a clear opinion on the subject that was subject to veto. :-) (Apparently the person doing hagbah can cope, though, so I get the good text.) I tripped in a few places reading from the scroll on Friday, but I'm now in pretty good shape from the practice copy (in the tikkun), so I think it'll be fine.
Last night we went to Kathy's PhD party. She successfully defended her thesis a couple months ago and officially gets the degree next month. She commented that she has spent more than a third of her life in grad school. That's kind of a scary way of looking at it. I don't think I would have the stamina. (Or the financial wherewithall, possibly.)
The party was a mix of SCA people, coworkers, and relatives. Often those kinds of gatherings fragment, with the SCA people talking about things that are utterly cryptic to the others. That didn't happen as much last night, and the relatives and coworkers didn't bolt early. That's good.
I'm thinking of having a birthday party this fall -- round number and it's an excuse for a party at our house, so what the heck. I hope we can achieve a similar dynamic, because I'd like to invite a mix of people.
Johan and I went up to Cooper's Lake last week to inspect the trailer and make sure the new jack will fit. (It will, but we need to go back with different tools to attach it.) On the way up, we made a stop by the Highland Park water filtration plant, which is really his project (lead engineer). It's quite impressive -- very pretty, and you'd never guess that there's a water-tratment plant inside if you weren't looking for it. It really blends into the park. A particularly fun part is the babbling brook; you see, they need to aerate some of the waste water before it can proceed to the river or wherever it gets dumped, and this is usually done by piping it over chunks of cement and stuff in a chamber. But this is a park, so he got authorization to make a pretty brook with rock beds and stuff. While we were standing on a bridge looking down on it, a couple of people out for a walk joined us and he was explaining to them how it worked. They were very complimentary, and they thanked him for keeping the park pretty. After we left, I asked him how it felt to have fans. :-) It really is an impressive project, and I gather that he's gotten engineering awards for it. While I love what I do for a living, there's got to be something neat about doing something that has an immediate, positive impact on the community in which you live.
Oh, and a link, courtesy of Johan: http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com .
Last night we went to Kathy's PhD party. She successfully defended her thesis a couple months ago and officially gets the degree next month. She commented that she has spent more than a third of her life in grad school. That's kind of a scary way of looking at it. I don't think I would have the stamina. (Or the financial wherewithall, possibly.)
The party was a mix of SCA people, coworkers, and relatives. Often those kinds of gatherings fragment, with the SCA people talking about things that are utterly cryptic to the others. That didn't happen as much last night, and the relatives and coworkers didn't bolt early. That's good.
I'm thinking of having a birthday party this fall -- round number and it's an excuse for a party at our house, so what the heck. I hope we can achieve a similar dynamic, because I'd like to invite a mix of people.
Johan and I went up to Cooper's Lake last week to inspect the trailer and make sure the new jack will fit. (It will, but we need to go back with different tools to attach it.) On the way up, we made a stop by the Highland Park water filtration plant, which is really his project (lead engineer). It's quite impressive -- very pretty, and you'd never guess that there's a water-tratment plant inside if you weren't looking for it. It really blends into the park. A particularly fun part is the babbling brook; you see, they need to aerate some of the waste water before it can proceed to the river or wherever it gets dumped, and this is usually done by piping it over chunks of cement and stuff in a chamber. But this is a park, so he got authorization to make a pretty brook with rock beds and stuff. While we were standing on a bridge looking down on it, a couple of people out for a walk joined us and he was explaining to them how it worked. They were very complimentary, and they thanked him for keeping the park pretty. After we left, I asked him how it felt to have fans. :-) It really is an impressive project, and I gather that he's gotten engineering awards for it. While I love what I do for a living, there's got to be something neat about doing something that has an immediate, positive impact on the community in which you live.
Oh, and a link, courtesy of Johan: http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com .