(no subject)

I flew back to the US sat directly in front of a clutch of overly merry Estonians. The one behind me was using my armrest as a footrest, so I leaned my elbow on the armrest quite legitimately and innocently and was of course terribly shocked to find that I'd speared a foot with my elbow. Warned by the previous flight's experience, I'd brought sandwiches, and didn't even attempt the Stir Fried Chicken (which included turnips - ?!). The salad had been reduced to a green slime. O British Airways, how are the mighty fallen!

There was a family in the row ahead of me whose video screens were broken, and I got to listen to them soundly berating a crew member for refusing to shuffle all the other passengers around so that they could have four seats together with working video screens - the crew actually had the insolence to think that getting meals served to two hundred people should take precedence over getting two small girls plugged into a video. "What are we supposed to do with them?" the parents asked angrily.

Long journey back from Newark dragging fifty-odd kilos of stuff (books mostly, and chocolate) (that's somewhere around a hundred pounds, for the metrically challenged). Some nice people helped me on the stairs when the lifts were broken - there's something to be said for looking puny. I could've done it, but it was much faster to be helped. BED, nice.

(no subject)

Thursday morning is Torah reading, and this particular Thursday morning is the one I've been coaching my bat mitzvah student towards. They have tefillah class in school which serves the dual function of the Act of Collective Worship beloved of schools and also teaches the kids how to navigate the prayer book.*

And she was completely gorgeous and read most beautifully and they had a chuppah which they hold over baz mitzvah kids, and her friends held the poles, and her teacher said nice things about her, and she was just utterly and completely lovely. Such a yummy kid.

* From a pedagogical point of view, it's rather interesting; they build the service up from the central features outwards year by year, until they're doing basically a full service by the time the kids are bnei mitzvah.