semi-short takes

[cellio]

This came as a complete surprise to me, but my sister would like to attend a Star Trek convention with at least one of her teenage kids. (None of them have ever been to any con.) If anyone has suggestions for ones not too far from Pittsburgh that might appeal to newcomers and not be too expensive, I'll pass the suggestions along. Shore Leave in Baltimore could work, except if I recall correctly the hotel is something well over $100/night, which might be a problem.

It seems a little, I don't know, unnerving that the "eye for an eye" part of the Torah (in Mishpatim) rolls trippingly off the tongue, both musically and textually. It's so smooth and graceful... but hey, at least it's easy to learn. :-)

They gave me an aliya this morning at services. Before reciting the blessings, it is customary for a man to touch the Torah scroll with a corner of his tallit. For a woman, they have you use the sash that's used to tie the scroll shut. But this morning they had temporarily lost track of that sash when it was my turn, and while they were looking for it one of the guys told me to "just wear a tallit already, ok?". This is the first evidence I've seen in ~5 years of going there that it would be considered socially acceptable in that congregation for a woman to wear a tallit. Heh -- learn something new every day.

Tonight's D&D game was fun. We had several combats in rapid succession, and we know there will be more before the characters have time to rest, which lends excitement to the game in excess of the sum of the excitement levels of the individual fights. And we did some fun things in the fights; I was particularly happy when something (probably called a cloaker or the like) enveloped someone and my sorceror -- polymorphed as a troll and flying -- attempted to out-grapple it and pull it off. This rightly failed, as my character is not a warrior, but it was entirely appropriate for her to try. (Similarly, it was entirely appropriate for her to charge into combat with the undead whatever-they-weres and smack them with her undead-hating sword.) I like the fact that the level of paladin gives me flexibility in interesting ways without in any way competing with the party's half-dragon fighter.

Comments

Re:

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

Marcon is not a Star Trek con, is it?

Re:

[cellio]

It wasn't the one time I went, though it was a fun con that I'd like to get back to some year. I'll probably suggest it to her as a second con, but I think I should try to satisfy her desire to see Klingons and media guests for her first time out.