The last day of Passover.
Pizza and beer in 2.5 hours.
It always creeps up on me, oddly enough. It takes me about a week to finally get settled into the no-bread, no-rice, no-beans, no-soy-lecithin, scrutinize-every-label routine... and I find that I kinda could keep going, only then suddenly that's it, it's time to cross back into the land of processed foods. -- Not that I *have* to get out of the good habits of salad and protein, of course. Maybe I can take more of that mentality with me into the coming spring. But somehow it's way, way easier when there's a religious requirement driving it. (The same is true of fast days, which is another observational post I keep meaning to make every time one comes around.)
Today in shul I was struck, more forcefully than usual, by visions of being in Israel again. A pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the chag, perhaps. But in a weirdly concrete, "why am I not there?? Must go look up airfares!" kind of way. I think it has partly to do with the pervasive chill still in the air, where there ought to be desert sun. And partly with hearing Pesach musaf (the roster of festival sacrifices, not to mention the duchening) four times in these 8 days... and partly with having been off work throughout the holiday, so that my normal track of time is well and truly thrown off, which somehow starts to make all this vast breadth of time and space seem equally accessible, equally immanent.
But here's something more grounding: Tomorrow I have an appointment to go to my recently-ex-workplace and check out a book project they'd like me to do freelance. :-) It would mean a lot of work for the next month, but also a reasonable chunk of income, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it. However, it also means the urgency of my getting a new computer (running CS2) jumps up an order of magnitude.
No news (that is, no change) on either of my grandmothers. Grandma B is 91 today, though. -- Oh, but that also means: happy b'day to mattblum, and happy [English] anniversary to musicjill and Dan and to chaiya and hakamadare!
Chametz tov, y'all.
It always creeps up on me, oddly enough. It takes me about a week to finally get settled into the no-bread, no-rice, no-beans, no-soy-lecithin, scrutinize-every-label routine... and I find that I kinda could keep going, only then suddenly that's it, it's time to cross back into the land of processed foods. -- Not that I *have* to get out of the good habits of salad and protein, of course. Maybe I can take more of that mentality with me into the coming spring. But somehow it's way, way easier when there's a religious requirement driving it. (The same is true of fast days, which is another observational post I keep meaning to make every time one comes around.)
Today in shul I was struck, more forcefully than usual, by visions of being in Israel again. A pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the chag, perhaps. But in a weirdly concrete, "why am I not there?? Must go look up airfares!" kind of way. I think it has partly to do with the pervasive chill still in the air, where there ought to be desert sun. And partly with hearing Pesach musaf (the roster of festival sacrifices, not to mention the duchening) four times in these 8 days... and partly with having been off work throughout the holiday, so that my normal track of time is well and truly thrown off, which somehow starts to make all this vast breadth of time and space seem equally accessible, equally immanent.
But here's something more grounding: Tomorrow I have an appointment to go to my recently-ex-workplace and check out a book project they'd like me to do freelance. :-) It would mean a lot of work for the next month, but also a reasonable chunk of income, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it. However, it also means the urgency of my getting a new computer (running CS2) jumps up an order of magnitude.
No news (that is, no change) on either of my grandmothers. Grandma B is 91 today, though. -- Oh, but that also means: happy b'day to mattblum, and happy [English] anniversary to musicjill and Dan and to chaiya and hakamadare!
Chametz tov, y'all.