That was fun.
I randomly do vocal exercises here and there, so just now I was singing the notes do-so-fa-re-me-do on the "ah" vowel.  Usually I start fairly low and go through my range, topping out at a high G.
This time I started fairly high, around the C above middle C, and then I just let my jaw drop and kept going higher.  I thought, "Wow, that ( Read more... )

We've been enjoying our sukkah a lot this year!  We almost didn't have one, though and here is the story ( Read more... )

I heard about something called the Implicit Association Test from a book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  The book talks about the unconscious judgments and associations (for better or for worse) that allow us to make decisions quickly.  The Implicit Association Test (implicit.harvard.edu) measures some of these automatic associations.  You have ( Read more... )

My new boss does bellwork on index cards, which the students hold on to until the end of the class, when they turn them in with "what I learned today" written on the back.  It's important to him that the Middle School Judaics department be consistent on classroom procedures, so now I use that system.  Another victory for the paper patrol!  The ( Read more... )

I am on paper patrol.

Last year I made a gazillion xeroxes and didn't know where they were half the time. The students never knew where their xeroxes were either. (To avoid losing them, I would copy them at the last minute, which is a dangerous game.) Afterward, I got the same gazillion xeroxes back for grading. I often returned them to the ( Read more... )

So I have been wearing new glasses for almost a week now, and NOBODY has noticed or commented.  Not a single person ( Read more... )

Ba Ba'Ahava *באבאהבה (Comes with Love) -- Sheva
*(yes that's how it's spelled in Hebrew, as one word--I couldn't find the lyrics on Shironet until I searched as one word)
Because I haven't posted this in a while, here it is again, my all-time favorite song, and I'm trying yet again to understand it properly.  What prompted this is wanting to bring it ( Read more... )

We are getting our home refinanced, so we had to get an appraisal done.  We were all nervous because the market is weak, and houses similar to ours in our neighborhood are selling for very low prices, lower than what we paid for our house.  Well, apparently that has no effect on the theoretical value of our house.  The appraisal came back for over ( Read more... )

I have a lot to say today on three different topics.

1) Sometimes I feel as though I have so many different interests that I can't keep up with them all, and I end up feeling that I'm halfway good at a lot of things but not really good at anything. But I realized that one way to make myself feel better is to make a list of the things I care about ( Read more... )

Sometimes the Hebrew language is so brilliant it drives me nuts.  For example: I just saw the word חדשנות in an article.  "The first person shooter game that gave new meaning to [חדשנות] in games.  Okay, it has something to do with new...  the ות ending means it's an abstract noun... it must mean innovation!  Anyway, Doom 3 has been released, which ( Read more... )