Waves

Today I learned some contradictory things.

1. I remembered why it is I don't always like to talk. Too many times today I said things, and not even timidly or too quietly, and they went completely unheard/ignored, though I think more unheard than ignored. It's less discouraging (/hurtful) not to make the effort in the first place.

2. On the flip side, I spent a lot of time having fun with my friends.

3. I learned that it's actually quite difficult to write truly bad poetry on purpose (but also a lot of fun).

The Drowsy Chaperoned

Yesterday I learned:

1. SJ, The Apple, and I really do all have ESP with each other. We all wore blue (accidentally) and then took a picture.

2. I guess I don't care enough about art to put in enough effort to actually take a class in it. I just find it really relaxing to draw on my own time, but not actually for anything.

3. Wine makes me really tired. I went out for dinner last night with my family (my mom and Trademark went to see Wicked, so Straight Man and I met them at a restaurant later and my dad came also a little while after) and my dad got us all a cup of Moscato wine (however it's spelled) and sometime through the meal I was suddenly hit with an overwhelming wave of utter exhaustion. Like...it was actually painful to stay awake. And I didn't even drink that much of it! My mom kept telling me to pretend I was on a date, but I think I would have fallen asleep even if I was. So my parents sent me outside to get fresh air. It was sooooo weird.

First Few Days In TBA

TBA = The Best Apartment (ever) or The Blogger Apartment. Or both. Or anything else you'd like to call it.

In any case, today I learned:

1. There is AMAZING parve ice cream right across the street from TBA. We got mint chocolate chip and it tasted DAIRY.

2. You should always warn the apartments down the hall if you are self-cleaning your oven. This way they don't think they might die from something mysterious going around. Basically, I was very innocently sitting at the counter in the kitchen/main area (it's all one room, really) playing on my laptop and drawing a pretty schedule of my classes for tomorrow when I suddenly looked up and frowned.

"Um...M.R.? Does it smell kinda funny to you?"

M.R. sniffed the air and also frowned.

"It smells really bad. Not like smelly bad but like dangerous bad."

"What?" asked SJ, emerging from her room.

"Something smells dangerous in here," said M.R.

"It smells like gas. I hope we're not going to explode." (This was from Chana)

We then all proceeded to try and figure out what was causing the smell.

"I don't wanna go to sleep with it smelling like this," I said, slightly worried. M.R. and SJ seemed worried, too.

"Maybe it's coming from the hall," suggested SJ. She walked towards the door, near where I was sitting.

"Yep. It's a lot stronger over here."

I got up and edged towards the door. SJ opened it and then quickly shut it.

"Oh, yes. It's from out there."

"Let me see what's going on," said M.R. and she slipped outside. I closed the door after her and coughed from the smell. It was strong.

"I hope we don't all die in our sleep!" I think this was from Chana.

A few short moments later, M.R. came back, a relieved grin on her face.

"They're self-cleaning their oven! That's what it smells like."

And so we didn't have to die in our sleep after all. But it would be nice for people to warn everyone else when they do something like that! Oh well.

3. Lost things usually have a way of being found.

4. Girls will always act like girls, no matter the context. Today someone was walking around with a bin of washing cups to give out to the various apartments. When she got to our room and asked us if we needed any, SJ and M.R. said yes and SJ started to take some. And everyone commanded in unison, "get the pretty ones!"

Post-Hiatus Lessons

I took about a ten day hiatus from this blog - not intentionally, but just because it really is difficult to notice what you learn each day. You do learn things, but I think a lot of learning is either unconscious or falls way below the radar of what you remember about each day. Which is in some ways sad and in some ways natural. I think we soak things up without even realizing it and all those things become a part of us, but subtly.

Anyway, I'm not going to play catch up for the days that I missed. A missed day is a missed day. I'm going to focus on the present.

Since it's only the afternoon, though, I'm going to write about lessons from yesterday and so-far today:

1. Playing catch-up is unproductive (sometimes)

2. Sometimes people are just not nice, but when faced with confrontation, it brings out the niceness in everyone else

2a. The workplace is just like high school, in some ways

3. Every cloud really does have a silver lining.

4. Anything you do can have an effect on people - even something really simple

Also, I think everyone should watch the movie Pay It Forward.

8 Things - In Honor Of The 2008 Olympics

Today I learned:

1. That if I want to watch the Olympics, I should watch on channel 4, not channel 99. It took me a while to figure that out, sadly. I couldn't understand why NBC (on 99) kept showing the same interviews with athletes over and over but no actual competitions! Heh.

2. How to defrost the inside of my dad's car

3. I drove in the rain!

4. That I apparently need to watch the Rocky movies to toughen up

5. That the smileys don't turn or animate at all on google talk (sadly)

6. That there's a huge difference between an Olympic sport and a normal sports game (too tired to elaborate on that)

7. That the Seal of Truth youtube is VERY CREEPY and disturbing and that curiosity in times like that (to keep on watching) can prove more harmful than rewarding (I ended up not wanting to have seen everything I saw)

8. That if you think hard enough, you can always find something you learned each day. I know, because I was all ready to write, "I did not learn anything new today" and here I am with 8 things on my list. So ha.

8.

Tisha b'Av Lessons

Today I spent a while watching the YU livefeed of Rabbi J. J. Schacter reading and teaching various kinos. I took some notes, so I figured they count as things I learned today. I'm gonna post the highlights here (er, from the times when I wasn't spacing out from dizziness).

1. Rabbi Schacter was talking about how no one really believed the BHMK would be destroyed and that's a much more difficult kind of loss - when you truly believe you're not going to lose something and then you do. So in the same vein, we can't take Israel for granted and just assume that now we have it, we can't lose it. Redemption is contingent on us - who says now is the time? We have to make sure there won't be another churban. And even if you feel you're just an average Jew and you can't really do anything to make a difference, you can. Even if you just really mean it when you daven for things like shalom and Yerushalaim.

3. At the end of the day, tzaddik hu Hashem, God is righteous in all His ways, which is something we have to accept. It's really hard because there are so many unpleasant things that happen which we don't understand, but we have to trust that all which happens is right.

4. A Stern girl is writing an article for the Observer about hashkafa, so she wrote to Rabbi Schachter asking him what his hashkafa is. I was especially interested to see how he would answer that question, seeing as I'm on a revolution against unnecessary labeling and boxing people up. His answer: "to create a way in which to have a close relationsihp with HKBH and to appreciate the gifts we're given via torah and mitzvos to create a close relationsihp with HKBH." He said the Torah and mitzvos are both a din and a relationship. They provide us with a recipe how to develop that relationship. This was in a greater context that I missed, but he added that there's the maaseh hamitzvah and the experience of the mitzvah. What's going to bring us closer is the experience of the mitzvah, but, of course, the maaseh hamitzvah allows us to experience the mitzvah. We have to overcome the distance, transcend the distance, bridge the distance. Davening is really important in doing this because it's an obvious part of the relationship. That's what we struggle on tisha b'av to develop, because it doesn't look like the other side is having a relationship with us so much, it's not obvious to us, so we have to work on it.

I also learned:

1. It's possible to read three books at the same time (sort of). I don't mean be in the middle of three books at once (I've been doing stuff like that my whole life). I mean - switch off between three books in one sitting.

Yeah...that's all I've got. I'm still feeling kind of out of it from the fast.

Mixed Emotions

I never wrote a post for Friday, so this one will cover both Friday and today.

Friday:

1. I learned how to slip back into my cheerful self again, despite everything that's been out of sorts lately.
2. I learned that I definitely will be able to stay the whole year at Stern, with or without the letter they can't find (somehow it all got sorted out - I'm not sure how)
3. I learned how to talk to some of the people at work and how to not be terrified to ask people things
4. I learned that time cards can't be thrown out until after three years (I think). We threw out a LOT of time cards in the basement at work.

Shabbat/Tisha b'Av night:
1. I learned that the more people talk about two of my really close friends getting married, the weirder I feel about it, even as I'm very happy for them.
2. I learned that it's possible to feel a slight amount of fear at the prospect of a burning Beis Hamikdash. Tonight, for some reason, I just really felt it. It makes me want to write.