My mind, and the places it goes

Rosh Hashannah starts in under an hour. My cooking is done, my haftarah is (mostly) learned for Shabbat, and I am ready to enter the new year. May the coming year be one of happiness and fulfillment.

If you are celebrating the holiday, l'shannah tovah tikatevu. To everyone else, have a good rest of the week. I'll be back online on Sunday.

Be it hereby announced that Michael and Nomi will be again be hosting a birthday gathering for Nomi, on Saturday night (16 January). We'll be starting the gathering at 7 PM and ending around 10:30 PM.

This year, due to the existence of Muffin and Squeaker, we are not holding the open house at Arisia; rather, we are hosting it at our home (e-mail birthday [at] asknomi [dot] com for our home address if you don't have it).



There will be milchig (AKA dairy) snacks.



We know it's a busy weekend -- Arisia, ALA Midwinter, and Mystery Hunt, to name just a few things going on -- but we'd love to see any and all folks who want to drop by.

If you can't make the party but are around for the long weekend and want to drop by our place to say hi, please call (or e-mail) and we can see if we can find some time to get together.

Transportation: We're right off the Green Line, and there is street parking. Also, a friend of ours has offered to give people a lift from the Arisia hotel to our place on Saturday night. If you would like to take advantage of that, let us know and we'll connect you.

...I'm about to disappear for two days for Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish new year.

L'shannah tovah tikatevu v'techatemu to all who are observing the holiday this weekend.

And have a good weekend, everyone!

These days, my online time is down to about five minutes total each day, so until things calm down a bit, I'm likely to be scarce around these parts. Know that I am thinking about all of you, and I'm dropping in periodically when I have a free extra minute. Which might be at 3:30 AM, depending on what Muffin and Squeaker are up to.

I think I forgot to mention I was *going* to Readercon, but now I am back. However, I haven't read LJ since Friday at about noon, so please let me know if there is anything I need to see.

Readercon was fun, and it was good to see people; if you were there and I missed seeing you, I'm sorry to have missed you.

mabfan and I have arranged for a friend, Carsten Turner, who is a certified instructor, to teach us CPR and First Aid at our place. He's willing to open up his class to any of our friends in the area that want or need certification.

Carsten will be teaching layperson CPR for adult, child, and infant, including choke-saving (what was previously known as the Heimlich maneuver) and the use of AED, along with First Aid. If we can get a few more people to take the class, it'll only cost $50 per person for the CPR part, and $80 total for those who also stay for First Aid. In addition to getting a wallet card showing certification, you'll also get a book with a CD. Also, if anyone wants to purchase a pocket face mask, Carsten has wallet-size ones for $10 and a larger one that's $15.

We're planning to hold the class on Sunday, June 28 at our place. If you're interested in signing up, reply here or send me e-mail.

Tonight through Thursday night are the seventh and eighth day of Pesach, which like days 1 and 2 are yom tov days. This means I will be offline starting Real Soon Now and won't be back until Thursday after dark.

I will not be able to catch up with LJ, as right after Pesach ends and we put away our Pesach stuff, we'll have to start heading into the preparation for Shabbat. Therefore, please let me know here if there's anything I should know.

Have a good couple of days, folks, and chag sameach to those observing Pesach.

A reminder:

This Saturday night, beginning at 8 PM, mabfan and I will be hosting my annual Arisia birthday gathering at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, 575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA.

Even if you're not attending the convention, you're welcome to come to my party. I'd love to see folks! I'll be posting the room number tomorrow as soon as we have it.

And behind like crazy. Assume I've read nothing since Friday at about 5:30 PM.

But yom tov was good, and davening was good, and the shul (at least the women's section) was crazy-freezing even through my warm sweater (which I timeshared with my next-seat mate because she was cold to the point of shivering).

Tomorrow I return to the office and will have to remind myself it isn't Monday.

I finally got around to removing the assorted deleted-and-purged LJs I had friended from my friends list, but if I accidentally removed someone who does still exist, please do let me know and please accept my appologies. I only removed six total LJs, so I *think* I got it all right, but do let me know.