weekend
They're donig something new at Friday-night services: all the board members have name tags now, to make it easier to give new folks (or anyone else) people to go talk to. It's a good idea, though it did feel a bit like we had been tagged and released. :-) I spent a chunk of the oneg talking to someone who was there for the first time (he approached me because of the name tag). He's a gentile who's either dating or married to a Jew (couldn't tell which), and this was his first time in a synagogue. He said he found it fascinating and he asked me for recommendations for books about the basics of Judaism. I'd say he picked the right board member. :-) I gave him a few recommendations off the top of my head, and promised to compile a list for him and invite him and his SO over for dinner or something. He seemed to be agreeable to this. (Ok, when exactly did I start doing kiruv (outreach)?)
Saturday was a local SCA event, and a friend from New York was crashing at our house. He was aiming to get here around 10pm. At 10:25 we got a phone call; he'd been forced onto a detour around some construction I'd forgotten about, and wanted to know where he was and how to fix it. So we gave him directions and told him we'd see him in about 20 minutes. At 11:15 we got another phone call; he was in a completely unexpected part of town. We gave him directions and he repeated them back to us. Then at 11:55 we got another call, this time from an employee at a McDonald's that he had found (again, in an unexpected part of town). So Dani went and got him. Over the course of the weekend we determined by observation that he is "dyslexic" (not the right word as he doesn't have reading problems, but he gets left and right mixed up). I wish I'd known that earlier.
The event was lots of fun. Fianna did a good job with running it. Two local people received writs of summons for peerages (one Pelican and one Laurel), both to be given at Ice Dragon in March, and Dani received the grant-level arts award. (Yeah, other people got stuff too... :-) ) The feast was quite tasty and vegetarian-friendly, though the lack of a posted menu made it hard for me to pace myself. (I didn't know what else was coming, so didn't know whether to fill up on noodles and spinach or wait for more food. My fault for not asking.) We went to the post-revel at Robert and Kathy's and I had my first encounter with a fabulous honey liqueur that I don't know the name of. I will have to go hunting for it. We got home much later than we had planned and crashed.
This morning after our guest left Dani and I went to Ralph and Lori's to play a game called "Tribes". You are playing a group of primitives; each player can be a hunter, a gatherer, or a crafter (crafters make tools that enhance hunting and gathering). The individual object is to have the largest number of children surviving to adulthood (different competitions for men and women); there are incentives to work together as a tribe. I ended up playing a male hunter; next time we play I'd like to try a female gatherer to get the other perspective. We also ended up playing a fairly communistic game, though it started out as more market-driven and I was slow to pick up on the change. This meant that I was playing "greedily" forlonger than other people were; I had hoarded enough food early on (mostly through smart play, I think) to feed my kids through one bad season, but we ended up with a single pool and I felt a little bad about the hoarding after the fact. Then we had a really bad streak of luck and used up all of our food, and most of the kids died. We didn't play quite to the end because someone had to leave, but we had a mostly-good game and I'd definitely like to try again.
Sunday dinner was the usual tasty and enjoyable experience.
Saturday was a local SCA event, and a friend from New York was crashing at our house. He was aiming to get here around 10pm. At 10:25 we got a phone call; he'd been forced onto a detour around some construction I'd forgotten about, and wanted to know where he was and how to fix it. So we gave him directions and told him we'd see him in about 20 minutes. At 11:15 we got another phone call; he was in a completely unexpected part of town. We gave him directions and he repeated them back to us. Then at 11:55 we got another call, this time from an employee at a McDonald's that he had found (again, in an unexpected part of town). So Dani went and got him. Over the course of the weekend we determined by observation that he is "dyslexic" (not the right word as he doesn't have reading problems, but he gets left and right mixed up). I wish I'd known that earlier.
The event was lots of fun. Fianna did a good job with running it. Two local people received writs of summons for peerages (one Pelican and one Laurel), both to be given at Ice Dragon in March, and Dani received the grant-level arts award. (Yeah, other people got stuff too... :-) ) The feast was quite tasty and vegetarian-friendly, though the lack of a posted menu made it hard for me to pace myself. (I didn't know what else was coming, so didn't know whether to fill up on noodles and spinach or wait for more food. My fault for not asking.) We went to the post-revel at Robert and Kathy's and I had my first encounter with a fabulous honey liqueur that I don't know the name of. I will have to go hunting for it. We got home much later than we had planned and crashed.
This morning after our guest left Dani and I went to Ralph and Lori's to play a game called "Tribes". You are playing a group of primitives; each player can be a hunter, a gatherer, or a crafter (crafters make tools that enhance hunting and gathering). The individual object is to have the largest number of children surviving to adulthood (different competitions for men and women); there are incentives to work together as a tribe. I ended up playing a male hunter; next time we play I'd like to try a female gatherer to get the other perspective. We also ended up playing a fairly communistic game, though it started out as more market-driven and I was slow to pick up on the change. This meant that I was playing "greedily" forlonger than other people were; I had hoarded enough food early on (mostly through smart play, I think) to feed my kids through one bad season, but we ended up with a single pool and I felt a little bad about the hoarding after the fact. Then we had a really bad streak of luck and used up all of our food, and most of the kids died. We didn't play quite to the end because someone had to leave, but we had a mostly-good game and I'd definitely like to try again.
Sunday dinner was the usual tasty and enjoyable experience.