Livre d'Or

As posted under lock, my mother died on 11 March. ( the past couple of months )

My next big thing is that college are insisting we absolutely have to spend the summer in Israel. I don't want to, mainly because I don't think it's ethical, partly because I'm not convinced it's safe, and a small amount because I just don't want to be away from my people for several weeks, especially not far enough away that the only way to get home is several hours' flight. After much soul-searching I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to burn the amount of goodwill it would take to refuse to go. So I'm going to spend a few weeks studying at the pluralist yeshiva, Pardes. I think the actual studying will be great, even if I don't want to be there.

If you want to tell me I'm a horrible person for allowing myself to be pressured into going, well, you're probably right. If you want to be helpful, please recommend me good resources for working on my modern Hebrew over the next couple of months. I know about Duolingo and will probably put in a little bit of graft there, but ideally I want to listen to and read Hebrew media. At the moment I'm putting on Kan Bet (Hebrew language talk radio, I think more or less equivalent to Radio 4) in the background, and it is definitely helping with immersion, but I could do with something more interesting, basically. Indie radio or podcasts or a series or something. My language skills are at a rather awkward level; I am not a beginner and my strong classical Hebrew helps quite a lot, but I can't exactly follow spoken Hebrew at natural pace, I can sometimes get the gist depending on the topic and the accent of the speaker. So I think that means I'm at a level where I will get better with just lots of exposure, but any more structured recommendations would be welcome.

We (jack and I) got Covid at Worldcon, or possibly travelling back from it.

( some covid, some con report )

So, all in all, good, but not worth risking my life and livelihood :-( I won't do that again, even if my entire family are going and I want to be with them.

Shavuot was lovely, apart from one annoying thing I posted about in a locked entry.

( long weekend with religion )

I have always loved this time of year; when I was quite young I tried to change my name to September, though I didn't quite have the conviction to make it stick. Partly the cooler weather and the equinoctal day lengths (yes, darkness is coming, but these few weeks are just perfect for me), partly the sense of anticipation and renewal. The academic and Jewish new years coincide and that's always felt more rebirth-y to me than spring.

( what I did on my holidays )

The most exciting thing among several exciting things is that my dear friend hatam_soferet is in the process of moving to my city, after many years of living in a different continent. So my life is about to get a hundred times more awesome because we're going to be neighbours!

I had a really good festive season, plague notwithstanding.

( Christmas and birthdays and such )

Obviously I wouldn't choose to be stuck at home due to a 700 day pandemic, but having a year end of just being cosy and relaxing with my loved ones was actually quite nice, and I'm pretty certain that getting a proper rest before going back to work was really good for me.

Busy week, at least by pandemic standards!

( vaccination mention, some socializing )

So I had a week off work, which I spent mostly at home because I don't really feel safe travelling. But I had a really nice time and I'm most grateful to everyone who organized to spend time with me.

( mentions a trip during a pandemic )

11 weeks of staying home / 10 weeks since official lockdown. The rest of this post is just what I've been doing since I last posted a journal-type post, there's nothing specifically about the plague, but it is a lot of discussion of online socializing and other things that happened with all involved in separate houses for obvious reasons.

( diary )

So I've been in my new job a month, and not at all coincidentally haven't made any DW posts since I started.

( what I was doing while I was too busy to post about it )

The last bit of chanukah was generally much better than the first half!

( weekend doings ) Today I'm working on a major project report with a short deadline, so obviously I'm procrastinating by updating DW. But writing is happening even if slowly.