weekend

Friday night was our "mostly musical Shabbat" service, which we're now doing on the first Friday of each month (except maybe not in the summer). We have a home-grown band, now, which is fun. Some day I may join them. (I'd bring the drums, not try to play dulcimer. There would be too many logistical challenges around transportation and tuning for the dulcimer to be feasible.)

Saturday we went to the AEthelmearc Academy (SCA event), which was held at Seton Hill College (universtiy?) in Greensburg. It's a really pretty campus. (Looked to be pretty unfriendly to wheelchairs; I'm glad a local member who was using a wheelchair last year isn't using one now.)

Dani spotted a poster on campus advertising a field trip to Giant Eagle and WallMart. The campus is not exactly downtown, so while you could walk to those locations, it'd be a shlep and you wouldn't want to do it carrying groceries. So this makes sense, but it never would have occurred to me.

The event was pleasant. There weren't many classes that particularly interested me, but I ended up at some that were pretty decent. One of the classes I specifically wanted to attend got cancelled, unfortunately (instructor didn't make it to the event). The overall feel was pretty casual; I've seen university-style events that were higher pressure for the instructors, but this didn't seem that way.

The school provided the food. It was very good for catered food -- not really medieval in content or ambience, but no one expected it to be (given the catering) so that's not a problem. It did look like they ran out of some things before everyone got through the line; I assume this is due to the too-common SCAdian tendency to take large portions.

At the end of the day they put out some fruit and bags of potato chips/pretzels/etc, and there were a lot of leftovers. I noticed that our college students were grabbing some extras; when the autocrat announced that people should take the leftovers home, they went into full starving-student mode. It was kind of cute -- kind of like Halloween, sack and all. :-)

The event ended around 6:30 (no feast). We failed to find a local restaurant without a long line, so we just headed back to Pittsburgh. (Well, first we bumbled around a little, because the directions to the site didn't reverse neatly and, ahem, some drivers just won't ask for directions. But we found the highway entrance and all was good.)

After we dropped off our passengers Dani and I went to Indian Oven, a newish restaurant in Squirrel Hill. It replaced Platters and is, alas, no longer kosher. It has a significant vegetarian and adequate vegan menu, though.

We both got samplers (meat for him, veggie for me), and we both liked the food a lot. Service was a bit slow due to a sub-optimal waiter:customer ratio. But I'd definitely go back. The vegetable korma (ordered at a spice level of 7) was nicely zippy and not mushy. The mattar paneer (one of my standard benchmarks) was nice but not excellent. The raita was very good, as were the green and red chutneys. The spiced tea (with cream) was evocative of chai.

This afternoon I finally took down the sukkah. Sometime before next year I'm going to take the vertical poles to be cut down a foot or so (a friend has the relevant power tool for cutting metal tubing), so that next year I won't have to do awkward things involving a ladder to put it up. I don't need my sukkah to be 8 feet tall; 7 would be fine.

Tonight was a pleasant dinner with ralphmelton and lorimelton. Dessert was a nice pumpkin cake with whipped cream; Lori mixed some powdered ginger into the cream before whipping it, which added a nice effect. I'll have to remember that. (Ok, whom am I kidding? When's the last time I whipped cream rather than buying it that way? But hey, I might...)

reading torah

I'll be chanting torah in a couple weeks (Vayeitzei), and preparing the portion reminds me of why the book of Bereishit (Genesis) is so cool. Drama! And the trope helps to reinforce it! I try to make a point of understanding what I'm chanting on a word-by-word basis, and as I've done that with this portion the pieces have just fallen into place. Which doesn't mean I don't have the usual memorization challenge, but this time the associations are a little stronger. This is the portion where Lavan dupes Yaakov by giving him the wrong bride and therefore getting an extra seven years' labor out of him, and it feels like, when chanted, the sneakiness and then the confrontation just come through clearly even in a language most people don't understand. Neat.

At first I thought that Yaakov was being way too cooperative in all this; I mean, he was pretty clearly cheated, yet he didn't try to annul the marriage with Leah and demand the bride he was promised. (These days I suppose someone would sue, too.) But I'm not convinced he's being a wuss; I think he might be showing exceptional care for Leah's feelings. Her father is a lout, but that's not her fault -- yet she's the one who would suffer if Yaakov succeeded in dumping her. So, maybe, for her sake he accepts her, so long as he also gets the wife he loves.

This could be wrong, of course. The torah makes it clear that the patriarchs are real people with real flaws, and Yaakov seems to have more than others. So maybe he's being a wuss, or maybe he's starting to get that first important clue about other people's feelings. Maybe.