Shabbat in Bet Shemesh

I'm at stone_ and galads_forest's apartment right now. For Shabbat we were all at stone_'s family's house [all of 5 minutes away] for Shabbat. Friday night dinner was really good, and there was this amazing pareve ice cream cake. It was probably the best pareve ice cream I've ever had. And we were going to game, but everyone was tired and we went to bed instead.

I woke up to the sound of young children yelling at around 9:30am...still, that's a lot of sleeping in, considering that I've been waking up at 4:30 every day this week. I chilled out and had a small breakfast and read some Terry Pratchett. Lunch was good, and afterwards there was gaming.

First we played Settlers, "we" being stone_, his brother M., his brother's son m. and me. I won. I won by building on sheep carcasses (I had a 3 to 1 port, so pretty much everything was made of sheep.) Then we played a round of this card game that I sucked at, but oh well. Then we played Power Grid, which I had never seen before. It turns out that Billings* Montana is on the board, though we blocked out that region and 2 others. We never got to finish the game, because the guys had to go off to shul for mincha.

Then we had shalshuddis, and there was some singing. I had an epiphany while looking through the NCSY bentscher- I've been pondering what I want to put on the Hadaya ring I'm buying, and I decided I want it to say "אלך ה' אקרא ואל ה' אתחנן..."

And then Shabbat ended, and then we went home, and we just played Alhambra.

(If you want a more detailed account of the gaming, see stone_'s blog).

The one weird thing I did this Shabbat was when I was talking about my plans for the future. I told people that I had just graduated Penn, and I'm going to school for a Master's degree next year. But I managed to avoid mentioning the fact that I'm going to Harvard next year all of Shabbat.

I'm not quite sure why I did this. I suppose I'm still not too comfortable telling people where I'm going. I feel a bit pretentious. Like if I tell people I'm going to Harvard, that's automatically bragging. Though really, it's just stating fact. And I don't need people getting the wrong impression about me. I'm not stuck up (or at least I'd like to think that.) I suppose I'll have to get over it eventually.

All in all, it was a good Shabbat. It was very relaxing and very game-ful. There were no Catan cookies, though. Maybe I'll try making them sometime.


*Ben is from Billings. I didn't know Billings existed until I talked to Susan yesterday when she drove me to the bus stop at Bet She'an and she told me that Ben was from Billings. And now it's on Power Grid.