Monica

I realized today what I need for my sukkah for next year: cable ties.

Not for the sukkah itself, but for the lights. I use strings of lights of the "plug one into the end of another" variety, to make a long chain of them, but they all lead with a fairly long expanse of cord without lights. That makes sense for the first set of lights in a series, if they're assuming these would be plugged into a wall somewhere (instead of my outdoor-rated heavy-duty extension cord run from the garage), but the result is expanses of non-light or wrapping up that extra cord length somehow. I wrapped up the extra cord length in a suboptimal manner, and then remembered that a solution exists.

Onto the shopping list, then.

Sukkot starts pretty soon here, so chag sameach to all who are celebrating.

Come Thursday I will have read torah four times in three weeks. Fortunately none of the portions were new to me (Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur afternoon, Shabbat during Sukkot, and coming up, creation for Simchat Torah). And I led a good chunk of a service on Yom Kippur, which was nifty but of course required prep.

There has been a great deal of cat-herding surrounding the congregational web site, publicity for an upcoming Shabbat dinner (or rather, the lack of same when it was expected), committee and board meetings, etc.

I'm glad to report that we've had some respite from the rain; I've been able to eat in the sukkah four times so far. The new christmas sukkah lights are working out ok (previous ones were failing).

And, of course, work and household stuff demand their usual attention.

This stretch of fall is hectic, but we're coming into the home stretch now. Sorry if I've seemed to be ignoring anybody.

Today I led morning services. That's not unusual. Today this included Hallel; that's kind of unusual, and something I've only done about three times before. During Sukkot, Hallel includes some extra stuff, which I had not led before and was a little uncertain about. In particular, since I always just follow the leader on when to wave the lulav, and since work commitments prevented me from getting a refresher earlier this week, I wasn't sure I knew it correctly -- and in fact, Joe had to point out one place where I would have missed it otherwise (that final Hodu). There is also the small matter of not being able to hold the siddur at a good reading distance (for me) while also dealing with the lulav, so I did the best I could but had also memorized the key passages there. (For those who are wondering, David the torah reader always leads the special Sukkot processions, so I didn't do that.)

Before the service I asked Joe (the usual Hallel person, until he pushed me) a couple questions and he agreed to come up on the bimah with me for that part. But aside from that one correction he didn't have to do anything. I am pleased. Joe seemed very pleased, which makes me happy because he's my teacher there. Joe is the person who pushed me to start leading a weekday Conservative service at all, years ago, and more recently is the one who pushed me to lead Hallel (I'd always deferred to him).

(It's not that I don't want to lead services; I enjoy that and would like more opportunities in my own congregation. But even though I'm a regular I still think of myself as a visitor to this congregation; I'm not a member there nor even a member of that movement. I'm comfortable in this minyan but am mindful of the norms of hospitality, including that guests don't try to take over.)

Monday night at Sukkot services our new educator rabbi did something nifty. Monday night is a school night (for the teens), so he told them they wouldn't be skipping that for the holiday. Instead, they all gathered in the congregational sukkah for dinner before, and partway during, services. The whole group came in after the introductory prayers, and during the "sermon slot" they explained what they'd been doing.

There is a tradition during Sukkot of metaphorically inviting extra guests to meals -- the patriarchs, Moshe, King David, etc (one per night). It's sort of like how Eliyahu is invited to the Pesach seder (among other things). Egalitarian-minded Jews have added prominent women to this list. The rabbi explained that while the class knew all that (and did so), tonight they had focused not on reaching back but reaching "sideways". Groups of students then got up and talked about members of the local community who were significant in various ways -- a teacher, a leader in social justice, and so on. These people, unlike the historical guests, were actually present. It was nifty because while, yes, it did honor those people, it seemed like it was more focused on teaching the values for which those people were being honored.

My rabbi invited me and one other married-but-there-solo person onto the bimah for "candles and kiddush", though it turned out to be just candles because there's a special kiddush for the holiday and the rabbi chanted it. (I could have, but it's his prerogative.) This invitation is significant because this is usually owned by couples, and I've commented to my rabbi that this feels a little isolating to those of us who aren't. So yay! Maybe I've been heard.

Tuesday morning my rabbi asked me to be one of the readers for Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), the special reading for this holiday. (We read in English, so this can be given to anyone, so I never volunteer -- I defer to people who would be challenged by other roles.) We read from the JPS translation (which isn't online so I can't easily share), and there was some stuff at the end of chapter 7 that I found challenging (seeming to say that women are traps for men who would be wise, and stuff like that). But here's something interesting: this Jewish translation seems different in small but important ways, and tracks with another I found of unknown background. So what's up with this, I wonder? Time to see what I can glean from the Hebrew myself, it seems. I want to improve my text skills anyway.

The weather for the opening days of Sukkot has been lovely. It's supposed to get colder now, though, and it rained today (but was clear by dinner-time). So we'll see. But at least I'll have gotten a few meals in my sukkah.

I met a new neighbor while I was putting the sukkah up, by the way. The house next door apparently changed hands this spring (based on the appearance of realtors and moving vans), but I hadn't actually seen anyone yet (other than the crew doing renovations). There's a fence between the houses in the back, so usually we can't see each other, but one of the new owners happened to be walking out while I was standing on a ladder rolling out my s'chach (roof). I think she was startled to see me. :-) So at some point we'll spend more time talking; she was on her way out and, well, I was standing on a ladder putting up my sukkah. But it's nice to know that we do in fact have neighbors.

Tonight begins the week-long festival of Sukkot. (That's "booths", for those who were wondering what all the little huts springing up on lawns in Squirrel Hill are about.) Chag sameach to those who celebrate, and happy fall to everyone else.

Naturally, in a week when we're supposed to take our meals outdoors under the fragile roofs of these booths, it's slated to rain more than a little. :-)

(Oddly, according to my favorite weather site, the equinox is today. Isn't that rather late? Or should I automatically view with suspicion a site that tells me that there are "11:60" hours of daylight today?)

I heard a great comeback the other day. Someone had moved in with an SO before marriage, and a holier-than-thou relative was giving her grief. The relative reported that she'd learned about this sinful situation from some mutual acquaintance who also disapproves, and what did she have to say for herself? Her response: "Were you... gossiping?"

Sukkot morning there was a bar mitzvah. I wasn't thrilled to hear that; usually that means the bar-mitzvah family takes over and the regular congregation feels pushed off to the side. So that's not a nice thing to do at a service that is the only option for the greater congregation. (On most Shabbatot we have two services, the one the regulars go to and the bar-mitzvah service that the family pretty much owns. I wish it weren't that way, but it is. On holidays we don't do that, though; there's one service.) However, it worked out; the bar mitzvah was very good and gave one of the best talks I've heard from a kid so far. I hope that was intentional -- that a particularly promising student was given the honor of having his bar mitzvah at a holiday service -- but I don't know if it was. They schedule those pretty far in advance, so he would have had to have been particularly promising two years ago.

Today Dani and I went to the Shadyside home tour. We've never been to one of these before. Other neighborhoods have them too (though I've never heard of one in Squirrel Hill). The tour consisted of seven homes, all of which are clearly objects of obsession for their owners. I had assumed the tour would consist of big impressive mansions (there are several in Shadyside), but it was a mix of mostly "normal-person" homes, though with often-impressive restoration work. One small house was obviously a bachelor pad; the "bedroom" was in a loft visible from everyplace except directly below it, with no curtains or the like. Not the sort of place you live with a non-romantic roommate, or your kids. :-)

Tomorrow we are getting a new furnace. It's the sort of thing you shold do every half-century whether you need it or not. :-) Seriously, we think our current furnace is running at about 50% efficiency, and the new one will be abut 95%, so that should bring some relief on the winter gas bills.

( Hebrew minutiae )

Or, alternatively: do not think, mostly through sukkah-building, "Hey! I've gotten through this so far without any boo-boos!"

Tonight the sukkah is up and valid, if listing a bit to Forbes. (Uneven patio. The frame is made out of pretty hefty metal pieces, so I don't think anything's bent.) Tomorrow, I hope, it will be lighted and furnished.

Naturally, yesterday (when I couldn't put up the sukkah) the weather was wonderful, and today (when I could) it was colder and threatening rain. But I got it up and I didn't get wet, so that worked out. It only took half an hour to put the frame and roof (s'chach) together. The walls took another half hour. I'm sure I could expedite if I'd just use plastic walls like lots of other people, but I like the look of the lattice pieces that I use much better, so it's worth some fussing. Besides, the lattice makes it easier, in principle, to have decorations; one of these years I'll get some of those.

Sukkot begins tomorrow night. Chag sameach to all who celebrate!

Yesterday was the wedding of two SCA friends. I think the SCA people outnumbered the relatives at the reception. Everyone seemed to be having fun, even the pinch-hitting cooks. (The original cook got into an accident on Wednesday and is still in the hospital. We planned to visit him today, but he was moved back into the ICU so we couldn't. I really hope he's ok!)

Yesterday morning I chanted torah. There was no bar mitzvah, so my rabbi stayed for the whole service and acted as my checker. He had chanted the portion the previous night; I'd tried to call him on Friday to talk about that but didn't reach him. (It was a very busy week. I had learned the portion anyway. I was calling to offer to save him the time preparing it, which I suspected he wasn't going to do until after Yom Kippur anyway.) He usually doesn't chant but did this time, though, so I suspect he wouldn't have taken me up on the offer. And he is, as you might expect, much better at it than I am. Still, mine went ok -- forgot one trope and had to be prompted but fine otherwise. My comments on the portion were well-received. Some people commented on my having read for Rosh Hashana and wanted to know if I'd really learned this portion since then; mostly, but it was short. But hey! I can learn a torah portion more quickly than I used to be able to.

Most dates are taken for the next several weeks, except one week when I'll be out of town (Thanskgiving), so I'm next reading for Vayishlach in mid-December. I'll ask to read Friday night too; I last did that at the end of August. I'm glad that we've got people siging up again for Shabbat morning; there were some rough spots during the summer, I guess due to vacations.

Tonight's dinner included a culinary mystery. When I was last at the store I picked up a package that was labelled "California lamb chops". I didn't know what that meant (origin? applied seasoning?) but they looked like lamb chops so I shrugged and put the package in my basket. Tonight, in preparing to cook them, I saw that they looked like they'd been fabricated from ground lamb -- but they had bones! What was that all about? I cooked them and they were ok (but not as good as actual chops), but I'm still a little puzzled by what I was eating. Is this some novelty I'm unaware of, or was the packaging meant to be deceptive? Next time I'll look more closely, I guess.

Sukkot and Shabbat both went well for me, in a mostly low-key way.

( Sukkot )

( Shabbat )

So far we've been able to have all our at-home meals in the sukkah. (It looked like we might get lunchtime rain today, but we didn't.) Tomorrow we're visiting friends fron the congregation for lunch, and then we're having guests for dinner. That'll be nice, since we didn't have any guests for Yom Tov or Shabbat. Once again I have failed to invite my highly-allergic-to-cats rabbi over for a meal in the sukkah, though there might still be time. (That is, there are still days before the end of the festival, but he tends to be pretty busy. Next year I need to remember to invite him, oh, before Rosh Hashana.)

Apropos of nothing... this essay by dglenn on no longer being special in the modern era resonated with me.

Tonight's D&D game was a lot of fun. The party is slogging through some difficult terrain, and the visual imagery has been effective for me (both terrain and monsters). This is going to be a several-days trek that will wear the group down over time, but I think that's the right thing from a story perspective. Sure, if Frodo and Sam had had the ability to teleport straight to the heart of Mordor they would have, but had they done so Lord of the Rings would not be the classic it is. I play these games for story and character, and for me the story demands the trek.

Ever since we moved to our current house I've been building my sukkah using 2x2s, rope, and existing structures (a fence and a trellis). That's nice in a lot of ways, but it's a bit of a challenge to set up alone, and some of my infrastructure is hard to use. Meanwhile, a couple years ago our Pennsic group got a new shower frame made out of no-tools-required pipes that just slot together, and I think that's pretty spiffy. So today I ordered a tubular sukkah -- passing on their walls, as I've prefer the lattice I've been using for that. This gives me a free-standing sukkah that should go together very easily. Woo hoo. Who wants to come for dinner during the festival?

It was nice to get back to Sunday dinner after missing a few due to Pennsic. We began to see distant flashes of lightning not long after we finished eating; then we started to see really impressive lightning bolts with lots of forking that just lit up the sky. It was a very pretty storm (I wish I'd had my camera with me), and the liquid component was short-lived. It did a decent job on the humidity and didn't knock out our power. What more can you ask of a storm?

I moderate a mailing list that's a filter on an unmoderated SCA list. I reject messages that (1) clearly should have been sent privately, (2) are off-topic, (3) are flame-filled, or (4) duplicate other messages (the 17-replies-to-a-FAQ problem). Most of the time, I approve pretty much everything that comes in. But since Pennsic there have been a lot of rejections, first because of an accusation someone made that got a lot of people riled up, but then because of an inane thread on laundry. Yes, laundry. Not just things like how to clean tent canvas, which I believe to be on-topic for an SCA list, but discussion of dividing chores, whether it's ok for men to do laundry (!), horror stories involving bleach, and stuff like that. Sheesh. I hope that ends soon.

Someday I will figure out how one properly decorates a sukkah; the only decorated ones I've seen have been done up with stuff made by the kids in the family/congregation. If I decorate, I want adult decorations. Whatever those would be. But at least the strands of small white lights (bought on December 26 one year :-) ) are pretty. And, more importantly, provide ample light to see dinner by.

So far it's a one-splinter year for the sukkah. That's pretty good for me. :-)

For bizarre reasons, yesterday I found myself needing to know how to say "purple dinosaur" in Hebrew. My dictionary was of no help on "dinosaur", so I ended up settling for "reptile". Not the same thing, but good enough in context.

I found out recently that my parents have never, in their entire lives, eaten Indian food. Wow. Chinese food was a novelty for me when I was growing up, but I thought that was just due to the local restaurant options. No, my parents just haven't explored a lot of unusual foods. So we're going to take them to an Indian restaurant in a couple weeks. (And no, I haven't asked them about sushi yet.)

I've been getting a lot of spam lately for Vicadin, whatever that is. From googling it appears to be either a painkiller or a psychadelic, but I'm not sure which. (I suppose the latter is a type of the former, for some people.) Did it just come onto the market or something?

Several years ago, I wrote an article for an SCA newsletter on how to build a yurt (aka ger), the Mongolian round semi-portable structure. I and some friends built one for camping in at Pennsic, so I wrote down what I did and shared it. Every now and then I get random questions and/or thanks from people who've found the article.

The most recent message is from someone who said he does "Roman and Bible reenactment" and had just built a yurt. (Unknown: what a yurt has to do with either.) Its first use was to be for his sukkah. He closed with "Shalom in Jesus".

Um, ok. A Christian? A "Jew for Jesus"? A re-enactor whose re-enactment extends to holidays?

I wrote back to thank him for the message and answer a question. And just to be helpful, I pointed out a couple halachic issues he might consider in using a yurt for Sukkot. I did not translate the Hebrew for terms that a Jew or a scholar would likely know. I didn't really expect to hear from him again.

He wrote back, citing a tertiary (at best) source for alternate interpretations. He also gave a cite for a round, domed sukkah in Amsterdam in 1722. This doesn't match up with anything either of us is trying to recreate, of course, but it sounds interesting. (Not interesting enough to go out and chase, though. It's a curiosity to me, nothing more.) He didn't say what they used for the roof cover or how it was attached.

He also described himself as Jewish, messianic, and a karaite. I didn't know there were still karaites out there. I'm not certain what the combination of messianic and karaite means, but I'm not going to ask him.

Karaites were a "sect", for lack of a better term, that accepted the written law but none of the oral law. They spent Shabbat in the cold and dark because they interpreted "kindle no fire" as "have no fire" rather than "light it in advance". It sounds like it must have been miserable. I thought they all died out several hundred years ago. Maybe this is a "neo-karaite" in the sense that we have "neo-pagans" who aren't tied to the original pagans?

Argh. That was close.

Our garage came with an ameteurish "wood-burning stove" that we have never used. It was, essentially, a 55-gallon drum with a chimney and a barrel of wood scraps. The previous owner of the house used the garage as a workshop. We use it to store cars.

A couple months ago our garderner asked if we would be willing to sell it to him and we told him to just take it (so long as he didn't leave a hole in the wall). We also told him he could have the wood pile. When Dani and I talked it was about taking the barrel and the box of wood scraps, but apparently, either Dani said or the gardener mis-heard "clear out everything". The stove etc disappeared during Pennsic, I think, and I didn't pay much attention.

This morning something in the back of my head told me to make sure all the parts of my sukkah are in good shape. (Sukkot begins a week from Friday night.)

You see where this is going, right?

Fortunately, the gardener still has the expensive roof part, which -- as a roll of laced-together bamboo really ought to have set off the "this might be important" alarm, but didn't -- and he will return it tomorrow. The other important piece is gone, though, so I will have to fabricate a new corner post. Fortunately, it isn't expensive in dollars, just time. (Three corners are anchored to existing architecture; the fourth is a free-standing post with braces and stuff.) Just what I needed, a project to be done in the next week.... I'm pretty inept at carpentry, too. Someone competent could probably make this part in 10 minutes; when I did it before I think it took a couple hours.