theyellowhobbit

I survived my concert. It ended up going well. People liked the skits, and according to the audience we sounded good, though there was this point in Melech Shelach where we changed keys and I couldn't find my note (which is hard enough to find as is) since it no longer was the E that I normally would sing. I think we were a half step sharp. So then I sang the tenor note, until eventually I found it and then NB and I sang our "E" or whatever the hell it actually was. But by then the song was almost over.

Our skits were an episode of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego," except on crack. She stole the MIT dome. There were amusing pictures that were photo shopped to have the dome hiding in them. Here (you have to click on them to see the dome).

My favorite part of our skits was either in round 1, when Rockapella gives the most useless clue ever (and then the choices were Burkina Fasa (sp?), Sierra Leone, and United Arab Emirates) or in Round 2, where one of the two contestants was picking the same location over and over again, and his consolation prize was the Deluxe Edition Carmen Sandiego memory game (there were 3 choices, "the room with the loot" "the room with the warrant" and "the room with the crook" with a sign "try this one first" next to "the room with the loot"). Actually, the entirety of round 2 was made of hilarity. You all missed a great show. We might have a video of it on Youtube eventually, but I'm not sure what the deal is with that.

Here, have a wikipedia article on Carmen Sandiego.

And I actually made it to morning minyan today. This is the first time I was at SCM in over a month. I've been not going to morning minyan, and have been spending most Shabbats at home. So I pretty much just haven't existed. HRSFA hasn't really seen me either, since there was Hell Week, and I haven't been going to gaming on Friday nights.

But I exist now. Though I haven't started my presentation for tomorrow. I'll have to do it all this afternoon...

So I'm in College Park for the HRSFA House Party right now, staying at MT's, since he's within walking distance of the HRSFA house. This way there's more space, I get kosher food, and Shabbat isn't an issue.

I went over at around 2ish today, and played a game of Basari¹, which I actually won. I also made some paper cranes, since people are trying to make 1000 for a wedding in September.

We then went into DC for the photo scavenger hunt. I think this should be renamed "HRSFA Terrorizes DC." I don't think my team (which included dr_whom and midnight_sidhe) won. But we did get all the big point-scoring essentials, which included getting random people to spell out "HRSFA" with their bodies, which we did by having them do it in sign language.

People in DC are surprisingly nice and outgoing, and didn't act too weirded out by our scavenger hunt. Though I always feel self conscious in these sorts of situations, even when I'm not the one doing the talking...

So now everyone is out having Chinese food and watching the fireworks. Weather permitting, MT and I will head over tonight around 11ish (when they should return) for gamingness. Otherwise I'll go over tomorrow morning.

I'm very happy HRSFen are around. :) I've missed you guys!

¹The description here is pretty accurate, but we definitely do not handle negotiations silently...

So last night I was introduced to the paper game. Everyone starts first by marking the corner with your initials, and then writing a sentence and then passing it to the person to your left. That person tries to draw it, and folds the paper so the next person can't see the sentence. The next person tries to figure out what sentence was depicted. Since many of us can't draw, hilarity ensues at the end of the game when you see what sentence emerged.

Mine: The stars glittered through the trees as I walked through the forest. (Or something like that.)

Ending sentence: The plane dropped two nukes and there was happiness.

I literally could not stop laughing when I got my paper back, and I couldn't even read the sentence out loud. There actually was a progression:

pastwatcher did a good job depicting it
MB came up with a more complex sentence, still about trees and stars and a forest, with someone's heart rejoicing
KH drew something similar with trees and stars, but also a heart with a smiley face.
EY though the trees were mushroom clouds and wrote a sentence about that
inteluser depicted the mushroom clouds and a plane and bomb and the same heart with a smiley face.
GZ wrote: The plane dropped two nukes and there was happiness. And he told me that it was disturbing but it was what he saw. And so it all made sense.

Also, landofnowhere hands me the sentence "the people fought over the ferret" which I drew as two people with swords and an attempted ferret, which turned into the title of this post: You may have Excalibur, but I have a Jaguar!

HRSFA should do this more often. Though usually gaming is Friday nights, and that fails for obvious reason. But yay paper game.

Gah! I want my character sheet. And it exists. However, it exists in TCRWL, which is in the Quad. And I am on page 9 of my 20 page paper and am very, very stuck. Perhaps I will make progress between now and then, but barring a miracle, it is very unlikely that I have the time to go up to TCRWL.

But now I'm not the only one in this situation. Maybe Warren also has the character sheets on the computer and can e-mail them to us.

Though I should be writing and not worrying about my character sheet.

My paper is finished. If you want to read it, comment here or e-mail me. I would just post it under a cut, however, it is 15 page paper, and also, the members of the Saturday Party cannot read my paper until the campaign is over, since it contains information about our characters which is not known to the general public. Also, if you read my paper, don't go giving it to the Saturday party.

I just got out of a 3-day Yom Tov (holiday). It didn't seem too long at any point, and it was only in the last 4 hours where I was like "I can't wait for it to end." And that was solved very easily by taking a 3-hour nap and then reading some Confessions.

Shabbat consisted of Friday night dinner at home, Saturday morning services at Tremont Street (where I led Mussaf), hanging out in the park for a bit and then heading over to campus to rehearse the music for the HRSFA seder.

Of course, we have a story in which I was an idiot.

There was a giant soup pot, and 2 boxes of kosher for passover chicken soup mix, which I needed to bring over for the seder. And so I brought them over. They were very heavy, but I had the soup pot in 2 plastic bags at one point and everything else inside of it, and I shifted the weight from arm to arm as necessary, and walked quickly, thinking I was going to be horribly late to rehearsal.

About 3/4 of the way there, I saw a man with a baby cart, and thought "I wish I had a baby cart, then I could rest the soup pot on top...wait a second, I have a granny cart. D'oh!" All along I could have used the granny cart to haul this abominable pot to campus. But no, I had to do it the hard way. (Then again, it's not like adlight thought of it, either, though she was the one who suggested the grocery bags.)

Eventually I made it to campus, and I was pretty much on time, certainly earlier than everyone else who wasn't MB (who was running the whole thing and arranged the music and whatnot). So we went in to Eliot once KO came to let us in, and we sang and sang and at one point I had to run out and get a drink of water because I could feel my vocal chords protest. By the end I felt better about most of my parts, though still a bit shaky, and very regretful of the fact that I am so completely out of practice with music, and music that should have been easy for me to learn ended up being quite difficult. But maybe this is going to give me incentive to relearn how to sing correctly and read music quickly.

The seder itself was quite nice, and I didn't screw up my part too badly. And we did most parts of the seder, and I knew I had a more traditional seder for the second night, so I got over whatever halachic objections I might have had to skipping things. And this is one of those compromising on Jew-things so I could exist in a HRSFAn world, but not compromising so much as to go against my beliefs. This is the normal state of things. The only difference is that it's actually easier to explain to non-Jews or completely secular Jews who never were raised with Judaism that I can't do x because of my religion, whereas people with Jewish knowledge are more likely to say "well I do x, so you should, be able to as well."

Speaking of Judaism and HRSFA, in a wonderful set of events, I had volunteered to lead Mussaf for Sunday, which would have required me being at shul until the end of services, which would be somewhere between 12 and 12:30, but then they didn't have enough people volunteering to do things, and egalitarian services were cancelled (and people could still go to traditional if they wanted to be at services). This meant I could go to D&D on time on Sunday, since it started at 12. I felt like a bad person for being happy about services not happening, but D&D is D&D. According to some people I am the world's biggest nerd for working D&D around chag, but I'm not the one doing an internet Star Trek RPG.

Anyways, I managed to have things work by printing out my spells and items ahead of time, and using dice to keep track of HP. We ended up having a really short campaign because there was Noteables rehearsal at 2 instead of at 3, which ate up 2 people, one being hKC, and since hKC is our DM, that meant that we ended before 2. So it was good that I could come on time, since it was so short anyways.

Then I went home (oh, and on the way I totally thought I was going to be late so I speed-walked and ended up getting there 5 minutes early), walking leisurely, and still getting back before 3:30. So I had an afternoon in which to nap and read, though the napping failed miserably because I guess I wasn't tired enough.

Then we had a traditional seder, where we did everything that I had skipped last night, though the singing was nowhere near as pretty. Between the 2 seders I had enough to fulfill all my Passover wants, except for the fact that in neither did we sing the Penn Chad Gadya. I am determined to have it sung before the end of the holiday, considering that I didn't get to hear it on Simchat Torah and thus it has been a year since I have heard it.

This morning I was at services on time, since I thought I was leading psukei, only I wasn't leading psukei. But I was still leading mussaf. Sadly, I managed to mess up the chag nuisach, even though I thought I knew it. I guess knowing it in my head and having it be what I sing are two different things, though usually the two are interchangeable.

Then there was a barbeque with lots of meat. (Yay for being able to transfer flame and thus cook!) I actually didn't have that much meat, though I did have one kabob and also grilled onions and soup (with 4 matzah balls!)

And then I was home, and I read, finished The Amber Spyglass, napped, and then read again. And then chag ended, and I only had 33 e-mails between all my accounts, which is surprisingly little for 3 days. Of course, one was from my comparative religions TF, who was like "if you're writing the long paper as opposed to the exam, please tell me by today, even if you've told the prof already." I had told the prof already. And this was an e-mail sent yesterday. So I had to write back and say "sorry I didn't e-mail until now, but this is the first time I've been able to use the internet in the past 73 hours." I also asked for a 2 day extension because of the craziness of Passover and the fact that I lost 2 days of work (since Shabbat is always a day in which I can't work). I'm assuming he will say no, but hoping he will say yes. I also have a ton of stuff for Ritual, Gender, and Space class due Thursday, though this is my own fault for not doing the response papers when I should have (though I did do the readings mostly and thus had enough to say in class).

And now I also have my papers all due in a couple of weeks. One is due May 2nd, one May 9th, and one May 14th. The one due the 9th is the longest (20 pages), the one due the 2nd is my 5-8 page paper on D&D, and the one due the 14th is my miqvah paper of awesome, though I need to be prepared to do a 5 minute presentation on it on May 1st, and thus have to have at least started it by May 1st. Which is in a week and a half. And this weekend is also Passover, and thus Sunday will have been lost as a work day.

So the ball on Saturday night was amazing. I am so glad I went. And I'm so glad that I got JB to take E-Hobbit and me. It meant that we took turns sitting out and dancing, but I was never sitting out for too long, and JB is good at teaching people how to dance. I also danced a bit with hKC and with EY (though it's easier for me to pick up new dances when taught by a guy/someone in pants, because I will look at my dance partner's feet at first to figure out what the heck they are doing, and then I can eventually stop and look up. This is much harder when your dance partner's feet are being covered by a dress). So there was lots of dancing to be had. And I think tango is my favorite. I wish I had had a rose to hold between my teeth. That would have been made of win!

So everyone had a good time and we all lived happily ever after.

Also, I might take social dancing classes next semester if my schedule allows it. It turns out that this mixed dancing thing is really fun. Dances are much better when you have a date, especially if he's a good leader. And I like these styles of dancing, and they are classy, as opposed to the general people having sex on the dance floor type dancing that was the norm for the dances I went to in high school. Not that I was among those people; I felt uncomfortable with "grinding" and whatnot. So I always considered myself a bad dancer. But since the Tea Party I've realized that I might actually have the ability to learn how to dance. I'd never be good enough to do competitive ballroom (nor do I really have any desire to do any sort of competitive dancing) but it would be nice to be able to go out on the dance floor and do stuff. Hence the social classes.
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In other news, yesterday while I was in Boylston doing work between class and my weekly appointment, I found a knitting circle! They meet in that room every Monday from 12-1, so next week I will join them in knitting (though this means I should do my German homework on Sunday afternoon...) Up until now I haven't been going to any knitting circles in Cambridge because HRSFA eats up my entire life. Which is all well and good since I can knit at HRSFA (except for at Friday night gaming, since it's Shabbat) but I'm always the only one knitting, except at milk & cookies, where some of the other knitters in HRSFA bring their projects. Though last time I was the only one. For all of you who are reading this and are in HRSFA and knit, you should bring your knitting more often. (Though I guess you are all sick with thesis. I suppose this is a good excuse for not knitting or not existing for that matter. But after spring break you will be done with your theses, and then you really should be knitting!)
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I had to write a brief prospectus for my Ritual, Gender, and Space class paper. I originally thought it was a 15-20 page paper, which would be reasonable for a seminar like this. But it turns out my paper is 7-10 pages. Which makes life a lot easier but it also means that I don't have as much space (or ritual or gender) in which to write, and thus I cannot write my brilliant paper on purity in the 2nd Temple Judaism which would be the natural continuation of my thesis. Instead I will write a paper which will just look at existing scholarship and make some comments. At least Shaye Cohen will probably be in my paper. Maybe I'll be able to get away with more than 10 pages if my prof is not a stickler for these things. I'll just accidentally write 15-20 pages. :)
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And I finally mailed off some knit items for charity and brought my Chinese Dress of Awesome to be dry-cleaned. Though upon arrival at home I realized I forgot to weave in the ends on my charity items. Oops. Hopefully the person who gets them will forgive my of my stupidity.
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I have a shiny spinning project of awesome that I think I will work on tonight. Those who see it will be in awe of the shininess.

Since I'm coming out of a 3-day weekend and at the moment there's not much work I can do, I figured I should update.

( Friday night services )
( gaming )

( Saturday morning )

( saturday lunch and stuff )

( Saturday Night )

( Sunday )

( Minyan and food today )

( D&D- skip if you don't want technical details on gamingness )

And then I came home and apparently spent over an hour writing this post. I probably should go to bed soon before I write a birthday rant, which will come later and will be filtered and stuff.

¹Tzitzit are these fringes that go on four-cornered garments. Jewish law requires that when you have a 4-cornered garment >= a certain size with the corners having 90 degree angles, then you need to put these fringes on them. However, this has been traditionally interpreted as something that was only obligatory for men. Technically, women can wear tzitzit, but among Orthodox Jews this is seen as Not Done, and is a Dangerous Feminist Practice. Etc.
Anyways, the thread used to make these tzitzit has to be spun l'shem mitzvah, that is, with the express purpose of it becoming tzitzit thread. I.E. you can't just go to a store, buy thread, and turn it into tzitzit.
There was a debate as to whether or not women could spin tzitzit thread for men since they are not obligated to wear tzitzit. Most sources (including the Shulchan Aruch and the Taz) say they can, and that the problem would be with them tying the tzitzit, which is a completely different act. I suspect the real reason they allowed this was because spinning was women's work, and God forbid a man do women's work! That, or spinning requires a lot of skill and practice and women had this skill and men didn't.
In modern times, all tzitzit thread that you can buy in a store is made out of wool. So if you have a wool allergy, you're in trouble. Unless you happen to know someone who spins, and who can spin thread with the intention of it becoming tzitzit thread.
In this case, the question of whether or not I am allowed to spin it is moot since I'm spinning it for another woman. But I was curious, which is why I looked up the rules.

Yesterday was Shabbat. I was at intangiblehugs' house, and IS was there as well, though she came pretty last minute. Services were fun (I got to pick a Lecha Dodi tune!), Friday night dinner was fun, I got to bed early on Friday night, I led both Psukei and Mussaf for Saturday morning services (they didn't have anyone for Mussaf and I waited for people to volunteer, and when they didn't, I said, "I led psukei, but I can lead mussaf as well if no one else wants to do it." and YR said she could do it, but then people said "Rachel doesn't go here and doesn't lead that often and thus she should do it." So I did.) Saturday afternoon we walked all the way to India Point park and back (probably 45 minutes each way, though I had no watch). And then we napped and then Shabbat ended and I went home.
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Today I saw Spamalot. It was great. I'm too lazy to write about it now.
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Tonight were the HRSFA nominations, which were insane, and after the meeting ended we went for ice cream, and then a smaller subset of us went off and sung (after we found a free piano, which took a lot of time...)

It turns out that I do have an upper register, and I can hit the F at the top of the treble clef. After that it starts to get into shaky ground, and I probably need to be warmed up and stuff. I also can hit all the notes in "Memory" from Cats (which I originally thought was going to be made of failure, but who knew?)

And "On My Own" from Les Miserables is now my song, though perhaps it always has been.

I should be in bed. I really should. But I don't have class until 11 and no one e-mailed me that they needed me for minyan, so I don't need to be on campus at 8am tomorrow. I have to do German at some point, but that can be done between 3:30 and 5:30, since it won't take two hours. Maybe I can even start to get ahead (yeah right). I should also fill out my study card at some point, though Dr. Machinist hasn't gotten back to me yet about whether or not I can count Dr. Nasrallah's class towards my Area of Focus. I suppose as long as I hear from him before Tuesday morning I'm fine. It would be nice to have my 4th class decided, though.

Vericon is wrapping up today, and I have to say that it was amazing.


( Friday )

( Saturday )

I'll blog about Sunday later, since I'm lazy now. It was less exciting than the other days, though still fun.

¹Mixed dancing is something that is very frowned upon in Orthodox Judaism (though it wasn't always. In the 1950s it was acceptable among many Orthodox circles). There are fun jokes about it. For example:

Q:Why aren't Orthodox Jews allowed to have sex standing up?²
A:Because it could lead to mixed dancing.

²There are debates about how much the rabbis forbid with sex. Some say it has to be done in bed, in the missionary position, under sheets, with the lights out, etc. Some are a lot more permissive and say you can do pretty much whatever you want, with some exceptions, and I'm not going to get into the details because I'm lazy. Ask your local competent halachic authority.