Thu Oct 13 - As a small administrative aside, I hope you all are enjoying my mid-day posts instead of my end-of-day attempts before. I'm much more awake and thinking mid-day than trying to post a summary on or before midnight or whenever I finally crash every night. This model is really working for me.

I also hope you got a chance to flip through some of the photos from GWW, the links of which I posted yesterday. I'm getting lots of compliments at work from my co-workers who took the time to see what this crazy SCA thing is, and even got a "sit down and tell me what is this?" quiz just before lunch time today.
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I suggested yesterday that my evening might include hanging out with Saul or house-cleaning or laundry. I felt quite fortunate that I got to do all three, just not in that order. Harmony and I spent a good hour or more on IM at the end of my work day, which was lovely, and then she finally kicked me off the computer to go drive home.

I finished the rest of the scrubbing that comes from unpacking after GWW, and then started organizing my room all over again. My floor fan finally gave up the ghost, and the trash was overflowing, so there was a lot of hauling things out to the dumpster. I gave my apartment-complex laundry a whirl, for the first time, but someone else was taking up all three dryers and we're not supposed to use the laundry room after 9 pm. So I finally had to throw all the clean laundry into the car, drive to my normal, favorite, weekly laundromat, and get everything dry. While folding clothes I noticed that some still had soap marks on them, so that tosses out the idea of ever using the "home" washing machines again. I'd rather save the time and have things come out clean, and quickly.

When I finally got all the clothes dry, folded, and back home again, it was time for damage control. If Saul was going to drop by after temple just to hang out for an hour or so, my room needed to be massively picked up and organized again. And we certainly had no place to sit and chat with my bed completely stripped of blankets and sheets for war camping.

So I'm happy to say that the piles of boxes are organized again, the bed has clean sheets and neatly tucked blankets, the floor rug is rolled up and ready to be vacuumed (when my roomie isn't already asleep), some of the ironing is done, the laptop is hooked up again, and the whole room looks nice. And just in time, too.

Saul was exhausted from the drive and from staying at his parents late for Rosh Hoshana (the biggest holiday of the year, I'm finding out researching Jewish holidays online), and although it's a 25-hour fasting period for Yom Kippur, he went ahead and had coffee at my house to wake up enough to make the long drive back home to the house-sitting job he has for a partner at work right now. It was nice to get to just chat and debrief from the events at the war, and he taught me how to play poker to get ready for his big ol' poker night party on Friday. He actually dealt me a three-of-a-kind in my first or second hand, so he was teasing me that I was actually a ringer and not a newcomer. Hey, I've never lied to him, and I'm not about to lie now. This really was the first time I can remember actually learning how to play. And now I'm not as intimidated about going on Friday.

I poured a travel mug of coffee for Saul and he finally hit the road at 1 am. I made him promise to phone and let me know he'd gotten to the house-sitting job safely. At 4 am I woke up terrified that I hadn't heard from him, but when I checked my cellphone it had logged that he called at 2 am and I held a 20-second phone call with him. I can't remember it one bit, and had a good laugh at myself for being asleep but still capable of answering the phone. Too funny.

But I am exhausted today, and the combination of staying up til 1 am, getting up for work around 6:30 am, and sharing in the Yom Kippur fasting, I'm really struggling this afternoon. I already called my web-partner last night to ask her to do our report for the shire business meeting tonight, so that I could RSVP for the Yom Kippur Break Fast at Adrienne's tonight.

Even just trying to talk about it with Saul last night, I got a little choked up. It's hard to describe how honored and humbled I've felt lately, getting to share in Rosh Hoshana at war with White Star and friends, being invited to the Villa for Break Fast, and all the other ways in which I'm learning about the lives of my Jewish friends and their devotions and traditions and families. I keep finding time to look up more online, and I've picked out a book or two that I want to order as soon as I get paid.

I'm just so honored and humbled to be invited to share in their devotions, and feel like people have really made me part of their family. Saul was describing temple to me, Adrienne has described some of it, and then Saul talked about escaping the temple to go have a moment's thought alone with G-d. And it felt so familiar, and so like much of my growing up, too. It's pretty astonishing to me, to feel so at home. And I find myself sometimes overwhelmed by the wonder of it all.

And so to somewhat be able to share in tonight's time at Adrienne's, I've also been fasting since dinner-before-sunset last night. I was still at work when the sun was going down, so I had a funny power-bars-and-V8-and-a-banana kind of dinner in our work cafeteria/lunchroom. Even though a strict Yom Kippur fast even precludes having water, it dawned on me that I've never fasted ever before, that I can remember. I don't think I've ever had to fast for the hospital or a doctor's test. And I can't remember doing any religious fast in all my years. So I've actually been drinking water because I just don't know if I could fast from food *and* water all in one fell swoop. So I'm looking forward to tonight's special time even more, because I kinda understand a little more about their annual traditions.

Saul's boss, who's also Jewish, found out that he'd come to work on Yom Kippur and sent him home from work. I don't have that luxury, taking off from work, but I can see how spending the day fasting *and* in temple and not at work would be a different experience entirely. It's kind of distracting, trying to get things done at work, too. In fact, even having been raised in a tradition where you're "not supposed to work" on one day per week, I don't think I've ever done that either. I imagine I would have to be even more organized and get things done in advance, were I ever to observe a day of not working for a religious devotion. It leaves a lot for me to ponder.
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Oh! And a tiny aside: I lost another 0.6 lbs, making it 8.6 total now. Two pairs of my work pants are fitting so loosely that the weight of my cellphone and pager are tugging the waistband down a little indecently. Time to take a dart in each of them. Yea me!
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Recently Listening to: Tori Amos Boys For Pele