Monday, June 20, 2005

I seem to be back

I haven't posted for a few days. Kind of a busy week last week. A few things took up a great deal of time:

  • Shavuot. As has often happened in the past, I organized the leil limud in our shul, which obviously mandated me staying up throughout the night. Therefore I made sure I slept the day before, and ended up sleeping a good portion of the following day. I basically ended up giving myself jet lag. I had scheduled for myself to give a siyum on finishing Seder Zraim (which ends with Masechet Bikkurim, particularly appropriate for Shavuot.) It would have been my first siyum ever. Unfortunately there wasn't time, and I didn't get to do it. I don't think I'll have a natural opportunity to do a siyum soon, so maybe I'll try to finish Seder Moed by next Shavuot. In any case, one really nice thing about Shavuot was that we read Megilat Rut at sunrise, and based on the location of our shul, we could see all of Beit Lechem and the hills of Moav. The whole setting of the story, with a beautiful sunrise, right before our eyes.
  • My nephew's brit. It fell on isru chag, but it was actually the second day of chag for my father-in-law, which made the whole thing somewhat complicated. But it was very nice, and after a chalavi Shavuot (which I didn't mind - we had a very good lemon meringue cheescake), having a basari brit, even in the morning, seemed fine.
  • A two day conference in Haifa. This was my first "overnight" trip for, actually with, work. The speeches were fairly boring, but it was nice going away to a hotel. And the food was good. Plus, the hotel was on the beach, and there was a sand sculpture contest. Very cool work. One thing I did realize about myself - I really don't need cable at home. The hotel had something like 50 channels - not a crazy amount, but certainly more than the two I have now. And I kept flipping through the damn thing hoping something good would come on. And of course nothing did. If I had that at home, I'd probably never get to work.