Shabbat and other things

[theyellowhobbit]

Shabbat was pretty standard, though I did have to do a lot of mashing, since all of the mashes were either away or invited to meals. Up until now we could rely on the freshmen to do Shabbat meals, but now they're in the whole crowd of people who get invited to meals. Which is fine except that then as a head mash the mashing falls to me if it's my weekend, which it was. Fortunately A.A. made a lot of phone calls on Friday afternoon and I.B. took the first half of dinner and Saturday lunch.

I let mincha on Saturday. Afterwards Rabbi Mike told me that the 1st 2 blessings of the amidah are actually done in weekday nuisach, and then it switches in the middle of the kedusha. Which explains why I didn't know how to place the nuisach on the 1st to blessings and why it seemed a bit weird. I told him that I know a really pretty weekday nuisach (the one NFTY uses), but I couldn't remember it, since I haven't heard it in 4 years. It came to me during shalshuddis, so afterwards I sang it for him. This is the 2nd time in the past few weeks where I could have used shiny weekday nuisach, and didn't, the other being Rosh Chodesh Mussaf at JitW.

The other thing he pointed out was that in CJC the shaliach tzibur says "kadosh, kadosh, kadosh..." "baruch kevod..." and "yimloch..." after the congregation says it. The problem is that 1-the sim shalom doesn't point this out and 2-I'm pretty sure I've seen it done multiple ways so I never remeber who does what. But now I know. (Sim Shalom also doesn't point out where the chazzan picks up in the u'va l'tzion part...)

People were Borat-ing on Saturday night, but since levana_b is away, we're seeing it (perhaps with cynara_linnaea?) on Tuesday night. So I went to "Comedy Sportz" with A.A., A.B., and superducky1. A.A. has to interview one of the guys for a project.

It was amazingly hilarious, though the one thing that bothered us was this really loud group of drunk people sitting in the row behind us. Basically the show is 2 teams that compete in a bunch of improv games. There are 3 audience "celebrity judges" who get to decide who has won a round. And the ref calls for audience suggestions, and calls fouls. There's a "groaner foul" which happens if someone says such a bad pun that it causes the audience to groan. That one didn't happen. The other foul is a brown-bag foul, which is called if someone says something dirty that's out of context, and can be called on both the teams and the audience alike. They get a brown bag put over their head for the rest of that round.

There was someone in the audience who kept on suggesting "Stilettos" no matter what the question was. Even for an activity. My guess is that person was also pretty drunk. For the activities part I suggested archaeology, and they did it! The person had to go out of the room, and come back, and do 5 activities, with her teammates only able to gesture and talk to her in gibberish. So archaeology became "excavating using scissors while wearing a bird suit," beer pong became "playing beer pong with Styx, sans a leg," taboo became "playing taboo using a rubber duck as the buzzer, against the Inca civilization," rock climbing became "Climbing a marshmallow with Harry Potter" and stapling became "stapling her mouth shut for Edgar Allen Poe." She actually got them all, which was pretty remarkable. And the ref was a little surprised when I said archaeology, which amused me. I'm such an archaeology dork. But you already knew that.

Before I went out with A.A., A.B., and superducky1 I had made myself dinner since the show wasn't until 10. So I made pasta. The plastic mixing spoon I used must have been close to the burner, because it was hot when I picked it up to stire the pasta. And then I realized part of it had melted, and the plastic stuck to my hand! By the time I got to the highrise it had disappeared, which both relieved and disappointed me. I'm glad not to have a permanent black plastic scar on my hand, but I would have liked to show it to A.A.

I also finally put up a mezuzah on my apartment. It was one of those things I hadn't thought about upon moving in, and I didn't have a scroll. I thought about commissioning hatam_soferet to do one, but she's doing a bunch of ketubot. So then I realized I could ask mar_gavriel to make me one, since he's a starving sofer. And the scroll came on Saturday and I put up my mezuzah right after Shabbat ended. So now I'm not going to Hell! Yay!

It's interesting when I think about all the commissions I've gotten from LJ, and the things that I've commissioned. So far the only things I've commissioned were a pair of earrings from archgirl06 (in return for a kippah) and the Mezuzah. And in terms of LJ people who have commissioned me (or bought pre-existing kippot in a few cases) there have been a bunch: esterchaya, stone_, purplerifka, nesheekah, kellev, hatam_soferet, and now moss_raven.(This list doesn't count people who are on LJ but commissioned the kippah outside of LJ, such as masteraleph and eitanhalevy or the one I did as a wedding present for amawahibiki) I think the majority of my commissions have come from LJ. Which is pretty cool. If I wasn't on LJ very few people would know about my shiny kippot, and no one would want to buy one from me. Now I have a waiting list!

And this morning I went to the gym for all-girls swim, and realized my bathing suit is getting to be too big for me. Hopefully I still have some old ones back at home from when I was thinner, which maybe will fit now. I guess this is the good kind of problem to have.


At some point I should get to work on my thesis, considering I have a meeting tomorrow and haven't done anything besides read a bit of Insoll's book and be impressed by its awesomeness.