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Sep. 19th, 2011 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuSo I see that I haven't posted here in five weeks. It's been crazy busy.
I spent a week on a jury in Middlesex County Superior Court, civil division. In the end, I was even appointed foreperson. It was a fascinating look at the justice process, even if the jury was unanimous in wondering how this even made it to trial.
The kids and I spent almost a week with my Mom, helping her clean out her basement; we were able to get rid of a lot of the stuff that my dad had accumulated over the past four decades, and we were also able to mitigate a lot of the water damage from Irene. (Fortunately, almost everything in the basement was off the floor, because basements always run the risk of flooding. But the floor itself and the baseboard molding were badly damaged and will need to be replaced. Amica insurance was amazing; they did an assessment by phone and had a check in the mail for the maximum possible claim within 48 horus.)
Of course, I'm still saying kaddish for dad. I have not yet missed a single service, but that's becoming more of a challenge now that sunset is getting earlier and now that our mornings are more tightly scheduled.
H is starting the next phase of her Masters in Teaching schooling; she's at Brandeis 1.5 days a week and student-teaching 3.5 days. It's great seeing what she's learning; I'm jealous. But between her time commitments for that and my commitments for making it to shul for kaddish --- well, let's just say that we have two remarkably responsible and helpful children, without whom we couldn't do this.
Getting back to kaddish, I have some more observations about it that I plan to post at some point.
And I've finally been able to start a Shabbat-morning davening/training program for kids in grades 3-6 at the shul. I've wanted to do this for a few years; the previous programming didn't really address that age group well, nor did it have enough davening (prayer) to suit my children. We had our first session this past Shabbat and it went really well; I'll post more on that later once we've had a few more sessions under our belts.
And I continue to manage the shul library; I've been re-organizing and labeling the shelves and starting to acquire more books, which is very rewarding. I'm also trying to integrate the redesign of the shul website with the existing website infrastructure; that's been a bit more of a challenge than I had expected, but I hope to be done by Rosh ha-Shanah.
In between all this, I was asked by Slik to come up with crossword puzzles for Eltana for Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur. I'm glad that happened, because I was finding it hard to get motivated to get back into that, and it's a great way to clear the mind of other problems and to feel creative and triumph-over-challenge-y. Now I have a handful of additional ideas that I hope to refine and pitch to him for after the holidays.
I haven't even started talking about work. It goes well; I'm moving into a new area of responsibility, which promises to be a more appropriate technical challenge than some of the stuff I had been working on previously. And I am deeply grateful to Adobe as a company and to my managers for the remarkable compassion and flexibility that they have shown during the past few months.
I spent a week on a jury in Middlesex County Superior Court, civil division. In the end, I was even appointed foreperson. It was a fascinating look at the justice process, even if the jury was unanimous in wondering how this even made it to trial.
The kids and I spent almost a week with my Mom, helping her clean out her basement; we were able to get rid of a lot of the stuff that my dad had accumulated over the past four decades, and we were also able to mitigate a lot of the water damage from Irene. (Fortunately, almost everything in the basement was off the floor, because basements always run the risk of flooding. But the floor itself and the baseboard molding were badly damaged and will need to be replaced. Amica insurance was amazing; they did an assessment by phone and had a check in the mail for the maximum possible claim within 48 horus.)
Of course, I'm still saying kaddish for dad. I have not yet missed a single service, but that's becoming more of a challenge now that sunset is getting earlier and now that our mornings are more tightly scheduled.
H is starting the next phase of her Masters in Teaching schooling; she's at Brandeis 1.5 days a week and student-teaching 3.5 days. It's great seeing what she's learning; I'm jealous. But between her time commitments for that and my commitments for making it to shul for kaddish --- well, let's just say that we have two remarkably responsible and helpful children, without whom we couldn't do this.
Getting back to kaddish, I have some more observations about it that I plan to post at some point.
And I've finally been able to start a Shabbat-morning davening/training program for kids in grades 3-6 at the shul. I've wanted to do this for a few years; the previous programming didn't really address that age group well, nor did it have enough davening (prayer) to suit my children. We had our first session this past Shabbat and it went really well; I'll post more on that later once we've had a few more sessions under our belts.
And I continue to manage the shul library; I've been re-organizing and labeling the shelves and starting to acquire more books, which is very rewarding. I'm also trying to integrate the redesign of the shul website with the existing website infrastructure; that's been a bit more of a challenge than I had expected, but I hope to be done by Rosh ha-Shanah.
In between all this, I was asked by Slik to come up with crossword puzzles for Eltana for Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur. I'm glad that happened, because I was finding it hard to get motivated to get back into that, and it's a great way to clear the mind of other problems and to feel creative and triumph-over-challenge-y. Now I have a handful of additional ideas that I hope to refine and pitch to him for after the holidays.
I haven't even started talking about work. It goes well; I'm moving into a new area of responsibility, which promises to be a more appropriate technical challenge than some of the stuff I had been working on previously. And I am deeply grateful to Adobe as a company and to my managers for the remarkable compassion and flexibility that they have shown during the past few months.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 10:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 12:56 pm (UTC)I'd be interested in hearing about the case too, if you can. (I was a frustrated alternate once and Dani is right now, so I'm always interested in hearing how this works out for other people.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 05:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-20 06:20 pm (UTC)