Jews in the Freshly Cut Grass

[theyellowhobbit]

JitW was amazing.

I called batshua on wednesday night, and together we decided that she should come to JitW, and that it was possible to plan for it with less than 72 hours.

Unfortunately desh's basement flooded, so he could not come. Nor could my potato kugels, which Mikey had to save. We did manage to get my stuff, which was already in his car. [By the way, did you have "The Plague" or were you just sick? If it was The Plague, I'm sooooooooooo sorry.] And he even put my fuzzy hat in it, which I hadn't seen since my birthday.

We were going to go on the 1:30 greyhound bus. We were going to take a cab to the station to save time. Every single cab passed us by, full with a passenger. For like 10 minutes. It was mind-boggling. We eventually found one and got to the station, at 1:30. And by then it was too late, the bus was still there but there wasn't room.

I called Bev (the great and powerful Car Czarina), quite distressed, but she said we could still make it, and Chana, who I had never met before, would pick us up from the bus station in Baltimore. Ok. I was still crying though, since I hadn't eaten in days [well I did, but very little, under 1000 calories a day, and that day absolutely nothing.] So I got chips and chocolate milk and batshua got some stuff, too, so I was a little better. I also tried to call Ben about the paper to see if I could get an extension because of the insanity, but he didn't pick up so I left a message.

We got on the 3:15 bus, and the only 2 seats next to eachother were in the front. The bus driver was really mean and got mad at us for talking. Mind you, we were talking at a normal volume. What did he expect us to do the whole busride? So he told us we needed to get seats further back at the next stop when people left. So we sat in the way back for the rest of the trip. We ended up getting in at 6:20 instead of 5:30 because of traffic and because the bus left about 15 minutes late to begin with.

Were we going to make it in time for Shabbat? Well Chana had trouble with traffic, and there were like a billion cars that wouldn't let her go, but eventually we got onto route 83, and we made it to JitW. At 7:20. 15 minutes before candlelighting, and then there's also those 18 minutes. So I could change, and light, and relax.

By services I was exhausted, and I almost just fell over. I also did this thing where I sit down just from standing position, without going through the steps that normal people do. It wasn't exactly falling, because I could do it gracefully. I forgot I knew how to do that. It was something I did late in high school. Maybe I learned it from break-falling in karate. I'm not sure. But everyone was amused or amazed or something, and it was fun.

I led Hallel on Saturday morning. There was singing. It went for a half hour.

We didn't have a Torah, so leining was abridged. I was supposed to do haftarah or part of the parsha, but everyone was so indecisive on the listserv that we never came to a consensus, and I didn't have a tikkun on the bus to learn anything, so I ended up leining nothing. And we didn't do the mincha reading either. And I was the leining coordinator! Fortunately, these things weren't really my fault, and no one minded.

We went for a hike after lunch on Saturday, through the woods, so we actually were Jews in the Woods for at least a brief period of time. We walked in the water, and I managed to get my feet stained by my sandals. Everyone thought it was cool, and looked like henna or something. I was reminded of cynara_linnara and her feet last week.

I also lay on the grass, part of the time alone, part of the time with arctic_alpine and part of the time with others. We also sat on the porch to see the sunset.

Saturday after havdallah batshua had to head out to go to mayday the next morning. I stayed, and there was a lot of singing that night over with the Teva people [we had cool Teva people who were around all weekend. They do Jewish nature programming thingies.]

leftyjew and alanscottevil left on Saturday night. :(

On Sunday morning I was in excruciating pain, and I'm still not sure why it happened. I think maybe from the lack of food in me. It was this sharp pain across the top of my stomach, and it kind of would go away, and then it would come back. But I got tasty-d-lite in College Park [the first time since when I visted Celine in February!!] and it made me feel a little better.

I ended up going to the Darfur Rally and getting a ride back with Penn people, which ended up being free. I saw a lot of people, including B.Z. of Mah Rabu, who I had never met before, though I knew his brother from EIE. He said that I was famous when I told him who I was, and I was like "um, you're the famous one!" I mean he was in the finalists for the JPost's Jewish blog awards thing. I'm just the occasional writer for Beyond BT who no longer submits so much, and once upon a time was controversial.

The Teva people were at Darfur. They gave me a sandwich, supporting starving Hobbits in America.

And somehow I managed to study for the Anth 001 final, which I may have done decently on. And Ben gave me a shiny extension!

Now for Hellerstein's paper of doom...