theyellowhobbit

Tonight marked the beginning of slichot, those late night services where us Jew-folk beg God to forgive us for all of our sins.

The Tremont Street Shul had an ice cream social before their 10:30 slichot. I had planned on attending the social and leaving at 10:30 in order to get to South Station and take the 11:00 commuter rail to WPI for gaming weekend.

Unfortunately, by the time I got to South Station it was 11:00, and as I reached the platform, the train started to pull out. 2 people before me ran and made it on to the train, but the train did not wait for me.

There was pretty much no other way for me to get to WPI tonight. I have to wait until tomorrow and take the 7:50 train in.

So I ended up going to slichot at MIT, which were actually happening after chatzot (12:41 AM), which is when they are supposed to be.

I got a bit lost on the way there and tried

dr_whom and

cynara_linnaea.

dr_whom didn't pick up at the time, though he e-mailed me after the fact, and

cynara_linnaea didn't know MIT's campus well enough to help me. But I ended up getting there. And there was pizza. And there was a short d'var. And I knitted during the d'var, which calmed me down a bit. And there were slichot.

According to

lopaanre not that much gaming was actually going on tonight, but it was more the principle of it. The *&%^&$##@*&%*ing train conductor dude couldn't stop for another 5 seconds! I really wanted to curse at him. Or punch something. Or throw my cell phone to the ground so that it would shatter into a billion pieces and make a big noise. (That would have been a bad idea, hence me not doing it.) And I did make it to slichot alright. And I got a ride home from slichot.

So it could go both ways. Either God hates me and wanted to punish me for attempting to miss slichot in order to go to gaming weekend. Or God really wanted me to go to slichot. I could have just as easily just gone straight home. But I repented, and went to slichot. And I imagine the egal ones at Tremont Street wouldn't have been as enjoyable for me as these ones at MIT were. Just a feeling.

So now I will sleep for a few hours before I wake up and game.