Rosh Hashana in bullet points

- Normal 15-minute drive home from work Friday took 45 minutes.
+ But I'd done most of the cooking the night before.
+ Used special candles that were a Pesach present from lefkowitzga's father.
- Kabbalat shabbat shrunk to make room for Rosh Hashana.
+ Seasonal motifs work: the majesty of the HHD music was quite evocative.
- Off-by-one error in the assigned torah readings left me preparing one more verse five minutes before the service.
+ I could, in part because I thought that might happen and looked at it briefly the night before.
+ Compliment from several: "you sounded like you knew what you were chanting". That's because I did, and I also got the climax of the passage.
+ Excellent sermon jumping off from Yishmael (not Yitzchak as we often do).
- Morning liturgy felt choppy to me: day-of-judgment stuff was very effective but we seemed to spend more time celebrating the creation of the world instead. Maybe I need to get myself a traditional machzor to better learn and appreciate. (Suggestions welcome.)
+ Unatana tokef brought out the gravity of the day quite thoroughly.
- I wish I'd felt more of that before Rosh Hashana.
+ Second-day service was a nice complement to the first.
+ The rising crescendo of the last shofar blast, t'kiah g'dolah; to conserve breath it starts low and quiet and then intensifies to the final blast. *shiver*
-/+ No guests (minus), but it meant meals could be lower key and that turned out to be good.
+ Afternoon games of Pandemic, because it's ok to not spend all your time focusing on the themes of the season.

short takes

And now for something completely different...

The husband of a member of the Debatable Choir posted video from our Pennsic performance.

I didn't know enough chemistry to fully parse this geeky comic by ohiblather, but I still laughed out loud when I saw it.

xiphias reports research that seems to be begging for an IgNobel award. As he points out, it's worthy because first it makes you laugh and then it makes you think. I mean, what publishable conclusion would you expect from researchers doing an MRI on a dead salmon?

I feel fortunate that "talk like a pirate day" fell on Rosh Hashana, meaning I was shielded from most of the antics. But I enjoyed top ten halachic problems for a Jewish pirate, forwarded by dglenn. Should I be worried that I have defensible answers for several of them?

Fun website mash-ups from metahacker and others. From one of the comments: "OKAmazon: People who had sex with this person also liked..."

Signal boost: kyleri makes hand creams, lip balms, soaps, and similar items, and she is currently having a sale. I bought some of her creams at Pennsic and am happy with the results.

I haven't turned off the spelling checker in Firefox on this machine yet because I do sometimes make typos that it catches, but this post almost made me do so. :-)