Monica

My new cell phone has a camera, as previously mentioned. Some genius thought it would be a good idea to let people take pictures with the phone closed. (Why? You have no viewfinder in that case. Just open the phone and frame your shot!) I have read the documentation and attempted to send email to the manufacturer, but thus far I have not figured out how to stop taking pictures of the inside of my pocket. Whee.

A coworker is trying to place some puppies (black lab mix) rescued from the middle of a road. If you're local and interested, let me know. (This and a photo is all the information I have.)

Since my session of the Melton class was cancelled this year, I was able to return to the SCA choir that practices on the same night. This is a good group, and I'm happy with how quickly I'm picking things up (or back up) again. We'll be performing at an event in a few weeks; I hope the merchant who is making me garb in one of the mandated colors delivers in time. After that, it looks like we'll start working on the Rossi Kedusha -- yay! It's a pretty piece, and it's been lingering in the files ever since a previous director requested a typeset version and then didn't use it.

After the first couple days we've had good sukkah weather. The final holiday of the season starts tomorrow night, Sh'mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Sh'mini Atzeret is, err, a mandated holiday without any real "stuff". The rabbis later added Simchat Torah to this holiday, when we finish the annual torah reading and start right up again. It's meant to be a big party. I haven't yet been to a congregation that really gets the "dance" thing; we kind of manage a somewhat-bouncy skip around the room (while carrying torah scrolls). Perhaps this year I will take advantage of the fact that traditional congregations do Simchat Torah a day later, and see what I can find Thursday night. Or not; I'll decide at the last minute. (A couple years ago there was a big party on a blocked-off street near my house, but we were on our way somewhere. It wasn't there last year.) To be clear: I'm not dissatisfied with my congregation; I'm just curious.

I'll be reading the first aliya of B'reishit (Genesis) both Wednesday night and Thursday morning. That should be fun!

Welcome to siderea, aka Tibicen -- SCA person, early-music geek, and interesting writer. Apparently the Boston crowd sucked her into LJ. :-)

Last night my rabbi gave a class/discussion on mourning, funerals, etc. This was for the group of people who may be called on to lead shiva minyanim (services in a house of mourning), or who might help out those families in other ways. I didn't learn a lot that was new, but I think it was useful to pull all the information, and all the people who might need it, together. And we were given books, and books are never bad. :-)

I came home to find that there was no West Wing episode. I'm glad NBC ran a message on the bottom of the screen during the replacement show. But I was surprised: I can understand pre-empting a show for a baseball game that you're airing, but near as I can tell, they decided to pull West Wing because they didn't think it could compete with someone else's broadcast of the game. So did they think the Law & Order episode they showed could compete, or was it an old rerun and they were giving up on viewer share that night?

I wonder if Nielsen et al have changed the way they do ratings. In these days of TiVo and VCRs (often multiples), I can't believe they're only interested in people who watch the broadcast live. Yeah, we fast-forward through the commercials when time-shifting, but it seems like that's still better than not seeing them at all. So live is best, fast-forwarded is not worthless, and not watching the show at all is worthless.

We finished watching the second season of West Wing a couple nights ago. (Now we wait until April, if past performance is an indicator of future trends.) I'm impressed by this show, and the last episode of that season was very effective even though it used some techniques I normally consider cheesy. It was well-done, both in the writing and the direction. I hope the show doesn't go into a death spiral with Sorkin gone.

I went to services this morning at Tree of Life, where lulav and etrog were provided for pretty much everyone who wanted them. I still cannot hold a lulav, an etrog, and a siddur (prayer book) in a useful way. Fortunately, I'm starting to memorize the responses. :-)

My brother-in-law-once-removed [1] called tonight asking for computer advice. He said he was sitting in front of a dead machine, he had the Windows 98 CD in the drive, and how does he boot from that? This spawned several mental threads: (1) Define "dead". (2) Hey, aren't you a Mac snob? (3) Beats me, but I think Dani has done this. I opted for #3 and gave the phone to Dani. :-)

[1] My sister-in-law's husband. I know that English doesn't distinguish between Dani's sister and Dani's sister's husband in the "-in-law" thing, but it still feels weird to call him my brother-in-law when he's not related to either of us. I mean, if my brother-in-law is married to my sister-in-law, doesn't that sound just a bit too much like incest to you? It does to me.

This Shabbat is Sh'mini Atzeret (cue chorus of "what's that?"s -- goljerp did a good job with this here). In the Reform movement it's also Simchat Torah. In my congregation, this year, it's also the b'nei mitzvah of my rabbi's twins. And, due to unfortunate timing, it's also baronial investiture, a once-in-every-several-years occurrence in the local SCA group. I want to be able to spawn clones in the morning and sync memories at the end of the day, darnit!