Shabbaton

This Shabbat was my congregation's annual shabbat retreat. I look forward to this every year -- sorry to anyone who was looking for me at AEthelmearc War Practice this weekend, but this takes priority. This year was also exactly my tenth "anniversary" -- ten years ago on the 36th day of the Omer, on a Friday, in the morning I went to the mikveh and then in the afternoon I went to my first shabbaton. This past Friday was again the 36th day of the Omer. Nifty that it lined up like that. My rabbi let me read torah and he gave me a special blessing, there with the core community. Nice.

Friday night after dinner and services and usually some teaching, we have a singalong. Usually everything sung is at least one of: a Hebrew song, a folk song from the 60s, or an easy song whose lyrics are in the songsheets or Rise Up Singing. This year there was a second guitarist (so my rabbi didn't have to do it all) who brought his own musical preferences. So there were a lot of songs from the 40s, and I found they really didn't resonate for me at all. I wonder if today's college kids feel the same way about the music of the 60s as I do about the music of the 40s.

My rabbi always prepares a bunch of material for study, more than we ever get to. This might be the rabbinic equivalent of the Jewish mother: heaven forbid we should run out of food, so cook twice as much as you need. :-) (To be clear: I'm not complaining, and I would probably do the same thing in his place.) This year I perceived that he had not gone so far as he usually does, and I think he was also more relaxed. Some years it feels like everybody else gets to rest on the shabbaton but he doesn't; this year I think he did too. Whatever changed, I hope we can keep it.

There was an amusing glitch in communications with the campground. We're not sure how this happened, but as we were eating lunch someone came in to tell us that the climbing wall would be ready for us at 1:30. Climbing wall? Someone apparently thought we'd booked a climbing wall. We always have some unscheduled time at the shabbaton and this was during it, so a few people went and reportedly had fun (and no one broke anything). Since the description of the facility did not include big piles of fluffy pillows, I decided to pass. :-) (Actually, I don't think I'd be uncomfortable climbing up; it's getting back down that would bother me.)

I get different things out of the shabbaton each year -- sometimes the learning stands out, sometimes the prayer, sometimes other things. This year what stood out is the connection with the other people in the group. There were a few people there who I don't know well, and I got to know them a little better. And with everyone, it felt like we were all there for the same thing and people cared about each other. It was neat.

In a "small world" moment, as we were driving out at the end we drove past an archery range, and one of the people I was riding with said if he'd known he'd have brought his bow. So we talked about archery at one point, and in the process I mentioned the SCA, and he said "do you know Gwilym?". Heh. They were coworkers for many years.

random bits

Quote of the day #1: "My parents visited a planet without bilateral symmetry and all I got was this stupid F-Shirt" (from bitsy_legend and Fred).

A few weeks ago BitDefender, my antivirus software, stopped working -- attempting to run a scan emitted a very unhelpful error message. Some time with Google showed me that lots of people were having that problem, and after some work I found and installed a patch. Today it shut down again, and after I tried all the new remedies suggested on a BD forum (lots more people are having this problem) I, in a moment of "it can't hurt" desperation, reinstalled the patch. (It should already be there, right?) And it started working again. I wonder what is going on. Customer support has been responsive but of mediocre quality so far. Ah well, one more reason to move to the new machine sooner rather than later. Once I have the Mac, I won't need the PC to be on the internet. And if I were staying with Windows, I'd surely replace BitDefender with something else when the annual subscription expires. (I have not, by the way, seen any evidence that the machine has actually been infected with anything.)

Signal boost: 530nm330hz has been developing his own siddur for personal use, and wants to know if enough people to justify a small production run are interested. The sample pages are quite lovely (a nice siddur can be more than just the words on the page); he's using color to effectively indicate variations for weekday, Shabbat, and festivals, and is laying it out in a way that sounds useful. Andrew's Orthodox, so it'll be a complete siddur.

This afternoon we saw a flurry of bicyclists cruising down our street. (There appears to have been some sort of organized activity, but I'm not sure what.) And, among them, I saw one guy on a huge unicycle. The wheeel was at least three feet across, possibly four. I wondered how one mounts a unicycle with a wheel diameter bigger than one's inseam. I don't yet have the internet in my pocket, so I had to wait until we got home to find out. Err, now that I know I'm even more impressed. I'm still not sure what you do about temporary stops, like red lights, though. It sounds like you need a hand-hold to get going; what do you do if none are available?

Quote of the day #2: "Always double-check your math if there are explosives involved", via kyleri.

Why aren't people commenting on my post? I've had this in a browser tab for a while waiting for a "misc" post to add it to, and I no longer remember where I got it.