Sept 23 99 -- whatever
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Let's see. Getting off caffeine for Yom Kippur didn't quite work. I had a good headache about 4 PM the evening before Yom Kippur, so I made myself half a cup of coffee right then. Maybe that was enough to get me through the evening and the entire next day, because I didn't have a headache the next afternoon.
I sung with the choir for two, count 'em, two, Kol Nidre services on the evening of Yom Kippur. The two assistant rabbis led the two services, so I got to hear two different sermons. Let's see; one was about a Yom Kippur service in Jerusalem that was marked by singing and dancing in real joy about being able to repent; the other was about the most scandalous story in the Talmud, a skirt-chasing rabbi of two thousand years ago who repented, prayed for forgiveness, died on the spot, and was welcomed into heaven. Another rabbi of the Talmud objected to that story, feeling that true repentance was a longer process than that. I guess that my half a cup of coffee didn't keep me awake enough to absorb the moral for our time.
Between services another bass said, “there's Bobby. He must be happy after today's game.” That's Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots football team, which (I found out from further discussion) had a spectacular come-from-far-behind victory earlier that afternoon. I wouldn't have known. You get a lot of people who show up in synagogue only on Yom Kippur and maybe Rosh Hashanah. I can't say I go to synagogue services much more than that, either, really. I'm in the building so often because of choir rehearsals that it feels like enough to me.
We slept late on Yom Kippur morning and got to services just at the end of Yizkor, the segment for remembering all your departed relatives and friends. There were only (!) about two hours of services left before the midafternoon break, and I napped again when we came home. It was time for the closing service when I woke up, so we were back in synagogue from about 6 to 7:30. Napping all day is definitely the easiest, if least spiritually beneficial, way to get through the fast. I'm counting the extra evening service I went to, though, so I feel I did OK.
I've been indexing stamps a lot the last week or so; we've got several good-sized orders lately. We're also getting ready for the RISD alumni crafts sale on October 2. The first stamps we sold were from a table Charley set up at that sale in October '92 when he was a senior there, and it's been a good event for us every year since. We should be somewhere out along Benefit Street all day.
Yesterday evening I also went to the library and found a copy of Out of the Crater, reported on by Janet. When I got home there was still time to work on my four new shirts. I cut out and ironed on fusible interfacing for the collars and collar bands and ironed down the front facings, but didn't do any stitching.
This morning I woke up at about 4:30 with an aching mouth and didn't get back to sleep. I had two fillings done a week ago and my mouth hadn't really felt right since. The dentist was able to see me at 9:30 and thought it was just that the work last week changed my bite a little. He ground down the top of the tooth that's bothering me the most and said to rinse with hot salt water every couple of hours. I was glad to have him check it so I don't think there's an army of those flesh-eating bacteria working around the back of my jaw.
Yesterday when I left work I only had one bicycling glove. I remembered taking the other off in the post office when I paid for a priority mail package in the morning, so I was all set to ask at the desk if they had found it. I didn't need to ask; when I checked the PO box today, there was no mail but there was my bicycling glove. My first reaction was that the clerks know me well enough by now that they put it in there; but now I wonder if I was just spacy enough to have left it there when I reached in for the mail yesterday.
There must be a flood of $1 bills around these days. Two days ago I got six singles in change for a ten for my lunch, and today when I stopped at Star Market to get a couple of yoghurts and a banana for lunch, and salt for the rinses, and a bottle of ibuprofen, I got eleven singles back from $20.
With a couple of ibuprofen in me I was feeling well enough to go out for a uni ride on the river walk near the Ames store at lunch. I pumped up the tire after my last ride and it was easy going this time. I chatted with a hispanic Ames clerk in the parking lot, a woman walking her dog along the path (she wanted to run back to tell her husband to come look, but I didn't see them on my way back), and a man waxing his car in the parking lot when I got back. After the rain we've had recently the river is higher than it's been since spring, but I didn't see any wildlife today.
The eyes of the world are on Brookline, MA, for the Ryder Cup. Or had you not noticed? If you read the Boston Globe you'd know. Traffic was terrible coming home from work tonight with shuttle busses from The Country Club (and I've never figured out how pretentious it is to call your organization THE Country Club) to parking lots around Newton.
Shirley phoned last night to say that she and Jan were at David's house. I should have written about staying at Shirley and Jan's house near Portland back in July but I never got finished writing up the Oregon trip to this point. Just quickly, Shirl is my sister-in-law's sister-in-law. They're east on frequent flyer miles now and are staying at my nephew David's place in Framingham for a couple of nights, then going to Shirl's sister's condo on Cape Cod for next week. We had met them before but never spent much time with them before our Oregon trip, and were looking forward to repaying their hospitality. Seven of us, Shirl & Jan, David and his fiancee Rachael, Anne, & Arlene & I, went out to dinner at Erewan of Thailand in Waltham this evening. It's the most elegant Thai restaurant right around here, with lots of elaborate wood carvings on the walls and furniture, masks, headpieces, and other carvings and art in cases around the place, columns and different levels and a complex ceiling, and very good food. I found something like Thai melon chicken curry that had cooked squash in it and sounded soft enough to work with my sore mouth, and it was. Shirl asked for extra hot sauce for her pad thai. It's pretty daring to ask for extra hot sauce in a Thai restaurant, but she, Jan, and I all enjoyed the extra flavor. I had a good time talking about my trip to Armenia while Anne, David, and Rachael had a 20-something conversation at the other end of the table.
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