Wet (and not in a good way)

[liv]

Today doesn't like me. Today I waited at home half the morning in order to return a phone message left by the guy who is repairing my computer. However, he neglected to mention in his phone message that his shop is closed on Wednesdays.

Today it was absolutely pouring with mislocated monsoon type rain by the time I got out of the house, so I was soaked to the skin standing at the bus stop.

Today I got into work dripping wet three minutes before I had a meeting with the high throughput screening people that nobody had bothered to inform me about. OK, the meeting was productive, but gah. Communication in this department leaves something to be desired.

Today I wrestled with some rather inadequate data and made very slow progress on incorporating it into my thesis.

Today the combination of poor productivity and still not having my computer back meant that I was the only person left in the lab when the fucking freezer failed at half past seven. So I spent this evening moving stuff to the backup freezer, which wasn't empty because it never is. This process involves burning myself repeatedly on metal things which, while rather warmer than they should be due to the freezer problem, are still at -40°C. And also, getting completely covered in ice which, on contact with my body, rapidly turns into water. So, guess what? I'm soaked through again.

Also, as a result of thinking it would be witty to start all my paragraphs with the word 'Today' I have managed to earworm myself with a really, really bad liturgical song where the word 'hayom' (today) is repeated over and over again until it makes me want to scream. Though obviously I don't scream with frustration in the middle of a service. But sometimes I really hate the way my brain works.

Poo.

Comments

[lisekit.livejournal.com]

There must be some way in which we can send the monsoon back over where it belongs. I think Rajasthan might be needing it. It concerns me (when it's not alternately steaming and soaking me).

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

*sympathetic hugs*
well i spent the large part of the day trying to align the variable ITS regions for 30 species with not very much success.. but the day considerably improved by 7pm which is when I went to see the russian landscape exhibition at the National Gallery. i would love to take you if you are at all in London before 20 Sepetember?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Consider it this way: at least you live quarter of the way up your local extinct volcano, and aren't at risk of having your house flooded like much else of Tayside.

Also, just think of all the brownie points you get for saving all your group's cell samples; and how much everyone will appreciate you for it tomorrow.

Still, *hugs* anyway.

[darcydodo]

Aww. :( *hugs you and feeds you tea*

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Evil child, you have now earwormed me with same tune. Argh, and I don't even know the words that do the acrosticky-type bits.

[loreid.livejournal.com]

*hugs*
Hope that looking forward to lots of good company on Saturday helps. It's certainly helping me get through the thesis writing.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My sympathies. *hug* Hope that when you got the chance to go home and get dry and warm you did something pleasantly soothing to calm yourself down.

[liv]

*sympathetic hugs*
Thank you, hugs are much appreciated.

well i spent the large part of the day trying to align the variable ITS regions for 30 species with not very much success.
Sorry to hear you're also struggling. Why does science have to be so annoyingly hard?

if you are at all in London before 20 Sepetember?
I'm afraid this is pretty unlikely. Other than the Norwich trip next week, I haven't anything planned for the next couple of months other than a couple of weekends in Edinburgh. And I don't think making such plans would be sensible, as I'm trying to finish my thesis in the same period. It's a shame though cos the exhibition does sound like something I'd want to see.

[liv]

You are ever so good to me, offering reasons to be cheerful and distracting anecdotes as well as hugs. The hugs are nice too though!

[liv]

I can't resist using the nearly matching icon!

Tea is good. Thank you. And sympathy and hugs are just lovely *clings tight*. I have such great friends!

[liv]

Evil child, you have now earwormed me with same tune.
Ugh, sorry babe. I was thinking as I wrote it that nobody reading this was going to have the least idea what song I was on about, but I'd forgotten that you have much the same liturgical background that I have. Isn't the most appallingly awful song, though?

I don't even know the words that do the acrosticky-type bits.
I don't either, but IIRC the words are just a collection of standard liturgical platitudes and I don't know why someone thought it would be a good idea to put them together in an arbitrary order and call it poetry.

[liv]

Thank you for the hugs. LJ makes things so much better; not only do I have a place to vent my annoyance, but I get lots of consoling hugs when I do so.

Hope that looking forward to lots of good company on Saturday helps.
It most definitely does *bounce*! Thank you for both the good thoughts and for helping to create the situation for me to look forward to!

It's certainly helping me get through the thesis writing.
I'm sorry to hear you're also struggling *good thesis vibes*. I wouldn't normally bother whining if my thesis is just not going too well, but on top of getting drenched twice in one day it felt like a conspiracy to make me miserable!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I don't know why someone thought it would be a good idea to put them together in an arbitrary order and call it poetry.

Because it's Yom Kippur and they needed to pad the service out to 11 hours?

[liv]

My sympathies. *hug*
Thank you! Hugs go a long way towards reestablishing my usual happy outlook.

Hope that when you got the chance to go home and get dry and warm you did something pleasantly soothing to calm yourself down.
I got home at 11 o'clock, *grump*. But once I was there things greatly improved. Warm and dry is definitely good, and I spent the evening talking to lethargic_man about Jewish feminism and Hebrew linguistics and other such fun things, and drinking pretend Ovaltine, which is highly comforting since it consists mainly of warm milk. However reluctantly, I think I am learning to love phones.

[liv]

*grin* I like this comment. And something that made me laugh when I was cold, wet and miserable is a definite bonus.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

*tea*...*chocolate*

We had a monsoon yesterday as well. The best bit was we went to a lecture in the evening about heresy (it was actually a really rubbish lecture, but it had potential to be quite interesting), and the lecturer got up, and started to talk about how he didn't think certain people were heretics, and the sky went flash BANG CRACK BOOM RUMBLE, which was fitting.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I was thinking as I wrote it that nobody reading this was going to have the least idea what song I was on about

<waves hand>

[liv]

Does this mean you do know the song or you don't? Its absence from the liturgy is definitely one of the advantages I've noticed to spending the HHDs in Orthodox shuls, but that doesn't mean it's completely unheard of in your part of the community.

[liv]

*tea*...*chocolate*
Thank you, that's very good of you. That reminds me, I know you don't have a very settled address yet, but when you do, can you let us know so we can send you supplies of tea and chocolate (physical, not virtual) to sustain you in barbarian lands?

It's a pity that the heresy lecture was bad, because I agree it's a potentially interesting subject. I do love the weather providing unintended special effects though!

Vaguely related, do you happen to know anyone in the UK who would be likely to give shiurs about women's participation in Orthodox ritual?

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

I hope we'll have a settled address pretty soon, this hanging about is doing my head in. When I know, I'll tell everyone :)

Orthodox ritual - I went to a good one at Limmud the year before last, but I don't recall the name of the speaker, and I don't have my Limmud catalogue any more. However, Adam's dad does. You could also email JOFA (http://www.jofa.org), the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, and see if they know anyone who's in, or coming to, the UK. Also EDAH (http://www.edah.org), similarly. What do you need? And when? If I have to leave for my visa, I'll be back in September.

[liv]

I hope we'll have a settled address pretty soon, this hanging about is doing my head in.
*lots of hugs* I'm hoping on your behalf also.

Orthodox ritual [...] What do you need? And when?
Nothing urgent. lethargic_man has started going to North London Masorti and is antsy about the egalitarian stuff, so he's been looking up sources to see if he can get a firmer idea what the theoretical position is. Only looking up sources is kind of discouraging, so he said he'd rather go to a shiur. I wasn't sure if there was any of this kind of stuff going on in the UK and wondered if you'd have any leads, though obviously you mostly know the Israeli / American scene.

If I have to leave for my visa, I'll be back in September.
Shit. Much as I'd love to see you, I really hope it doesn't come to that.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Egalitarian and North London Masorti isn't really the kind of stuff there are good sources *for*, I'm afraid. Are articles any better? They're a bit more shiur-y in feel, and I know where to lay my paws on a bunch of those.

North London is Rabbi Wittenberg's patch, isn't it? I have a feeling the theoretical position there is more or less "people would very much like to do this, and they do it in America, so it's probably all right here too," so various articles that were written for, eg, Conservative Judaism magazine, or the Law Committee things, would be about relevant. What've you looked at so far, lethargic_man?

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Shit. Much as I'd love to see you, I really hope it doesn't come to that.

Looks like it may - we're trying the last resort of the desperate, which is that W's mum's boyfriend knows the ?congressman?senator? someone in government, and might be able to pull some strings. But failing that, there's absolutely nothing we can do until we've got some utility bills and proof that W's voted here, and that'll take longer than we've got, so chances are I'll be leaving.

[liv]

Sorry, I didn't explain this very well. M has chosen to daven in a Masorti shul (yes, R Wittenberg's patch indeed :-)) for the time being, but he wants to make a decision about how he personally should react to the egal stuff on an Orthodox or at least formally halachic basis. I have already pointed out to him that Masorti are probably not going to be much help since they think that egal trumps halacha. So he wants Ortho sources, which is why I was asking you. And he's started from the Shira Chadasha website, which is where he got fed up with reading sources on his own.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

If he was reading Mendel Shapiro's article it's no wonder he got fed up. That thing is LONG and DENSE.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

It's a staple of both the ראש השנה and יום כפור services in Newcastle. I'm surprised to learn there are places it is missed out (but OTOH I was surprised Yakar misses out piyutim I'd also have thought of as part of the basic service, such as וכל מאמינים).

Halachic bases for egalitarianism

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Possibly the situation would be a bit clearer if I were to explain it directly. I don't feel entirely comfortable with egalitarian services; my head tells me egalitarianism is a Good Thing, but my heart (or conditioning) still balks a bit at it. I'm not entirely sure why I have no difficulty rejecting large swathes of halacha but balk at including women in (mixed) minyanim and women taking the (mixed) service. I suspect it's because the areas of halacha I reject are ones I generally never embraced in the first place; whereas excluding women from making up a minyan is something right at the heart of the traditional Judaism I was raised with.

Having been greatly impressed with livredor's consulting of the original sources every time she wants to pasken make a decision on the level of halachic observance she adheres to, I thought I'd do the same myself as, really, I have no idea; I only know that I've been told that certain things are halachically permissible. I'm not bothered if the sources are Orthodox or not, so long as they are enable me to trace the chain of rulings.

What I found browsing the links from the Shira Hadasha website and others I found googling, however, was that this did not produce a good reaction in me, instead reviving my cynicism of Orthodoxy. (While precedent is a good basis on which to run a legal system, raising decisions made by human beings, flawed as we all are and the product of the society that produced them, to a position in which they are unassailable is deeply wrong IMO. Tradition should never be the crutch for a rotten institution.) Also, I was rather antipathic to reading long articles off the Web, and not particularly inclined to print them out either (somewhat of a task with my printer).

That's why I thought I might prefer a shiur instead (as in, letting others do the hard work :o)). But it's not something I consider desperately important, given that I don't hold myself entirely bound by the halacha in the first place.

Good luck with your last-chance string-pulling for your visa.

[liv]

It's a staple of both the ראש השנה and יום כפור services in Newcastle.
Yes, but do you sing it to the absolutely dreadful tune that sounds slightly like a more annoying version of The Ride of the Valkyries? I don't object to it being in the liturgy if you're just going to gabble through it along with a bunch of other more or less comprehensible piyyutim (and this may in fact have been the case in the Orthodox services I've been to). I object to the horrible, repetitive, untuneful, unsuitable tune that Beth Shalom insist on using over and over again.

I was surprised Yakar misses out piyutim I'd also have thought of as part of the basic service
As far as I can tell, absolutely none of the piyyutim is essential. Avinu Malkeinu (can't be bothered to look up how to spell that in Hebrew) might be, but even then I'm not sure. Lots of places (particularly Orthodox) seem to miss out the Neilah song from Neilah, which would seem pretty basic (plus, I really like that song).

וכל מאמינים
You just know it's going to be theologically dubious when it starts every line with 'Everybody believes'... I think it's skippable, from a purely aesthetic point of view. It's too long, and the lines are of such different lengths that it's not very singable.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

It's a staple of both the ראש השנה and יום כפור services in Newcastle.

Yes, but do you sing it to the absolutely dreadful tune that sounds slightly like a more annoying version of The Ride of the Valkyries?

We use a nice cheery tune that to me connotates, "Hooray; we've got through the [horribly long] עמידה!"

[וכל מאמינים]
You just know it's going to be theologically dubious when it starts every line with 'Everybody believes'...

Not in Orthodoxy. :-S (That Rambam has a lot to answer for...)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Rambam has this annoying combination of eminent and arrogant that meant that he could not only be heterodox, but define it as orthodoxy.