Weekend Update

[mabfan]

To start with, I'd like to let lizziebelle, xochitl42, michelel72, and sharonaf know that I'm not ignoring your requests in response to my post about taking the Grub Street seminar. The problem is that the scene I wrote was in longhand, and it would take me some time to type it up in order to post it to the blog. That's why I offered to post it if "enough people" wanted to read it. Sadly, if only four people are really interested, it probably doesn't make sense for me to type it up right away. I will try to do it for you soon, and perhaps send it to you by email, but please understand that it will take me a while.

On Friday, a group of my co-workers and I took one of our retiring colleagues out to lunch. The colleague, P., has organized a weekly departmental political discussion lunch for many years, and we wanted to thank her for all her efforts in doing so. So even though the department is having a party and a lunch in her honor later this month, those of us who have attended her political lunches wanted to do something extra.

We took her out, talked about how she ended up running these lunches, and thanked her for how well she has kept them bipartisan. P.'s genius has been in creating an environment where we can all disagree with each other respectfully, and maybe learn something from each other as we discuss and debate. We presented her with a few gifts, including two adorable stuffed animals, a Democratic donkey and a Republican elephant, which are pictured here.

Friday night and Saturday were shabbat, of course. Ever since the beginning of 5767, Nomi and I have been davening regularly at Kadimah-Toras Moshe (which I call KTM but everyone else seems to call Kadimah) in Brighton. It's a friendly shul, and one where we do feel welcome. Nomi's been helping set up the kiddush every week, so she's become a de facto member of the kiddush committee. And for the second week in a row, we found ourselves talking about Pluto during kiddush, because people saw us on television. There's more I've considered posting about Jewish topics, but some it is personal, so...watch this space for a minor announcement.

Saturday night (or motze shabbas), Nomi and I went to a birthday party for two friends. Party goers had the option of coming in costume, so we brought Nomi's camera and took a lot of pictures of folks in fancy dress. We met some new friends, reconnected with some old friends, and had a great time.

Sunday was another day devoted to cleaning up the accumulated clutter in our apartment. As I mentioned before, farwing has been helping us out a bit with our cleaning up, and she helped us out again yesterday. First we went out to Target to buy some storage units for DVDs, and then we brought them home and Nomi built them. In the meantime, farwing and I cleaned up the area around the television set and the right hand back corner of the living room, near the heater. The place continues to look much, much better. We still have plenty more to do, but I'm very pleased with our progress.

I'm also pleased with our new commitment to stop clutter from happening before it starts. With some simple rules (such as, "Thou shalt bring down the paper recycling the instant it fills this one particular bin") we've managed to curb some of our natural tendencies to "get to it later." I'm very proud of both of us for this one.

Copyright © Michael A. Burstein

Comments

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

My novel is eight years overdue. You really think I'm going to give you a hard time? :>

If you find the chance to get your piece into a transmissible format, I would be pleased and honored to receive access to it, in whatever form.

I'm glad your time has been filled with such pleasurable busy-ness.

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, don't hurry on my account! I was thinking it was just a matter of copy & paste. Whenever you can get to it, I'd love to see it, but don't rush!

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Yay on the decluttering! That's a project I've slowly been working on here at Chez scarlettina. It is satisfying, isn't it? Some of an effort like this is a matter of habit-forming. I've more-or-less gotten good at keeping the kitchen and bathroom counters clutter-free. Now I have to extend that habit to the coffee and kitchen tables. One step at a time. And go you two!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Relax. I just wanted to explain why I wasn't going to post it right away...

(Now, if ten people had said they wanted to see it, that would have been a different story...)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I started this whole process for real when I decided it was time to treat my comic book collection like a collection. Now every comic gets bagged, boarded, and boxed, and the boxes are in our storage area. New comics that come in get immediately slipped into the current box as soon as I've read them.

[sorek.livejournal.com]

regarding transcribing longhand to electronic form:

Might I suggest scanning it in via scanner and emailing it as a pdf? If you don't have a scanner, there's always Kinko's. If the price is less than 4 dollars perhaps you could split the cost 4 ways. It sounds like the length of the scene is similar to a short story and a dollar a short story is reasonable.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Scanning it might be an easy thing to do, but my handwriting is difficult to read. Also, going to the effort of scanning still takes the time away, and as I noted, not that many people expressed an interest in the scene. If, say, a minyan had wanted to see it, I would have done it faster. As it is, those who requested it are being understanding and know that I'll send it to them once I have a chance to type it in.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

So when can I get youse guys on an event committee?

[seborn.livejournal.com]

If I could increment the counter, I'm curious about Danny's story too.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

OK, consider the counter incremented. If I get ten people, I'll consider sparing the cities. :-)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

We don't honestly have time to take on more responsibilities right now.

[gilana]

Party goers had the option of coming in costume, so we brought Nomi's camera and took a lot of pictures of folks in fancy dress.

How did those come out? I told my sister about the party, and she's dying to see my outfit :)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

All the pictures are still on the card in Nomi's camera. We need to find a moment to upload them onto the computer, and then figure out how to get copies to the appropriate people...

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

They look good. I'll be uploading them to my machine as soon as I have time and e-mailing folks when I do.

[gilana]

Cool, thanks! No rush, of course, I'm just eager to see.