Listen to the Rain

Security guard: "Good morning, [dorchadas]!"
Me: "Good morning!"
Security guard: "I was starting to think they didn't have you work here no more."
Me: "They sent us home for like three months."
Security guard: "Oh my G-d. "

I'm back in the office! Tuesdays and Wednesday from now until the next change happens. We'll see when that is.

( We did things over the weekend! )

I've been having weekly meetings with my boss, trying to train her on what I do so that she can take it over while I'm out on paternity leave. That means that she finally has first-hand experience with what I've had to deal with over the last year, and along with the meetings I've had with some of the other management, hopefully that means that change is coming. Even if it's another database, which is what happened when the last new database turned out terrible...though obviously that's a monkey's paw wish considering that the current database is somehow even worse than the last database, which was already light years worse than the custom program written for us twenty years ago.

My current productivity is roughly 10% of what it was in 2016. So much for the advance of technology.

We've been more social lately! I was originally planning to go to the Anime Chicago sampler on Saturday, at least for a bit, but instead I ended up cleaning the house for a couple hours and then going to an early Shabbat afternoon dinner at maptekar's place! She cooked a giant meal for us, with Brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes, baked lemon chicken with onions, salad with hearts of palm, and a giant bowl of fruit for dessert. She and sashagee commiserated over how annoying it was to cook for me and having to keep dairy and meat separated, we talked about our lives since I haven't really seen her other than her dropping off some parenting books since we all went to Sea Ranch last summer. sashagee got to meet maptekar's cat Lily--who is extremely fluffy--and we made havdalah at the end before we left. It was a lovely end to Shabbat!

Then on Sunday, sashagee's parents came into town and went out to brunch with us at A Taste of Heaven, a local place where we had wanted to go with aaron.hosek a couple weeks ago but which was closed on Mondays. Not on Sundays--I got walnut caramel pancakes, far outside the usual savory breakfast that I like. It was good! Definitely sweeter than I usually eat, but as an occasional treat I'll take it. And yesterday, lisekatevans came over for dinner and to have sashagee cut and color her hair, for her first haircut in over a year. I made some beef stir-fry with fresh basil and rosemary picked from the herbs that sashagee and I went to go buy a couple weeks ago and it was delicious. No drinks this time, in a rarity, but that day will come again.

sashagee has been feeling kind of isolated lately since she's been at home all the time. Under normal circumstances, she'd get a ton of social interaction through her customer service jobs and then use her time at home to unwind and relax, which is why she's been a homebody. But nowadays she's not working so the only social interaction she gets is with me, and even then less than usual because she can't sit on the couch for very long so she can't really play games or even sit with me while I work. I've been trying to do more social activities so she can get social interaction, especially since we're going to have a baby soon!

sashagee is at her parents' house right now doing laundry because we're stillwaiting on the association to get back to us about reimbursement. Hopefully this is the last time we'll have to do this!

Finally added an extroversion tag because I guess it applies now. Just about everything I was going to do this weekend was cancelled, and then the backup stuff I would have done instead was all also cancelled, so I ended up texting people for one-on-one hangout time because I figured that's pretty safe and also because after one day of sitting at home I was going stir-crazy. Is this was being an extrovert is like? I don't like it.

I do like the Japanese words, though. They're basically translations of the English--extroversion is 外向性 gaikōsei and 内向性 naikōsei, "outward-facing personality" and "inward-facing personality."

lisekatevans's theatre performance is cancelled and they might try to remount it next year. LIVE this month is cancelled, and they said they'll look at next month as the situation changes. Deathscribe, which I first saw in 2018, is also delayed because the theatre where it was going to be held is closed until April. The Art Institute is closed until April. The sea shanty sing for this month is cancelled. The taiko performance I was thinking of going to go to today is cancelled. The Mishkan sing-along today is online, so I might still attend that, but otherwise everything is cancelled. It's for a good reason, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I spent a big chunk of yesterday playing video games and wishing I was outside or a friend's place. Me!

The AMA is still open, though, as of now. Social distancing? Sure, I'll do that and also tomorrow I'll get on the L with hundreds of other people and go into my workplace, which has almost a thousand people. I'm sure it's fine for a medical organization to have everyone come in to work during a pandemic. Nothing can go wrong.

And now, back to translating the Hollow FFVIIR trailer, which I should have done last month but I was too busy extroverting everywhere.

Every weekend should be a three-day weekend.

( Do all of the things )

So, uh, am I an extrovert now? Even beyond everything I've done, I was all set up to do something tonight, tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I wrote about this and some of my friends said they got tired just reading it. I've living that city boy life, as I told fiendishfanfares.

What a lovely weekend.

I didn't have a lot of time to rest this weekend, but I wouldn't change it.

Friday I invited a bunch of people to Shabbat dinner on no notice, so none of them could come and I had a quiet evening in, which in retrospect was probably a good thing.

Saturday I woke up early and relaxed for a few hours and then the day really began when I left to go the second Chicago Japanese Matsuri. Last year was the first Chicago Japanese Matsuri, and I was a bit leery about going then since the things I like about Japan aren't as popular as ramen and anime (though I do like this too), but I had a pretty good time so going again this year was an easy choice. I just went alone, in the early afternoon so I could watch Tsukasa Taiko and the tea ceremony demonstration. Both of them were neat, and I got the chance to ask the person explaining the tea ceremony a question--what is is the different between urasenke and omotesenke? I asked 3388santa--who sometimes practices urasenke--a while ago, and he had a hard time explaining, though he described turning the tea bowl in different directions depending on school. I got a similar answer this time, that the differences were pretty small. He did explain why almost everyone I've met seems to be an urasenke practitioner, though--apparently the 14th grand master Sekisō Sōshitsu heavily promoted urasenke and opened it up, so it spread widely and is what most people think of when they think "tea ceremony."


I only stayed for about an hour and a half, because I had too much else to do, though I did take advantage of the ACEN booth to get an ACEN badge for even cheaper than the earliest early-bird rates available on the website.

After going home and eating dinner, I walked over to courtney.mcnally.9's apartment for her Equinox Party. I only had about thirty minutes I could spend there before my next appointment, so I was glad that courtney.mcnally.9, who had been held up at work, showed up right before I had to leave. I very briefly got to talk to pinandstutter and saintofsnark too! Then I had to leave, so I walked out with someone else who had also come early and had two more things to do that night, she took an Uber, and I took the Red Line down to the Self-Help House where Mishkan was holding Selichot.

Selichot are pre-High Holy Days prayer services, but this was specifically advertised as a way to come and learn the songs and prayers before the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur service, or to come and sing. Music is one of the major draws of Mishkan for me, and I don't know some of the specific melodies they use (because the musicians write some of their own), so I went to sing in community and not have to hum along while I figured out the melody during Kol Nidre.

I took a short recording of us singing "Kedushah," which Mishkan had arranged to be sung in a round. That was probably my favorite part of the event. The whole thing was amazing, though, which was the consistent theme in the conversations I had after we were over and I was following the rabbinic command to eat more of the food. There's something about singing in community that's wonderful, and it's not available to most people in secular contexts anymore.

I met the Director of Development and we talked briefly, and I said I thought about inviting non-Jewish friends to services just because the music is so amazing. She laughed, but it's more than half true.

When Selichot was done I walked out into the rain and went downtown for the final event. The City Pop DJ Van Paugam has monthly events here and there in Chicago, and a lot of them are on weeknights or otherwise harder for me to get to. This one was at Murasaki, a sake lounge in Streeterville, and on a Saturday night! I invited a bunch of people and got a few maybes and smtemp's definite yes, so in the end it was the two of us in the corner drinking whiskey (from Hiroshima!) and shochu and sake, eating bar snacks, and listening to City Pop. smtemp even recognized some of the songs! We chatted while we watched the couple across from us dance to the music while seated at their table; the pair of men, one of whom was face-down asleep on the table and the other one was dancing to himself; and the table full of Japan enthusiasts (we could tell because of the cat ears) next to us. We called it a night at 1 a.m. and both went home, where I went almost straight to sleep.

Sunday I woke up and basically did chores for a few hours before leaving to go another group singing event. thosesocks put out a call on Facebook for people to come to a Sea Shanty Sing-Along. I got there a little late and sat in the only empty seat next to thosesocks, listened to people chat for a bit, and then the music began. There were a lot of songs there I knew--"Barrett's Privateers," "Drunken Sailor," "Bully in the Alley," "The Coasts of High Barbary," etc--so I was fine joining in the singing, but while I was encouraged to pick a song if I liked (in a non-judgemental or pressuring way), none of the songs I thought of would really have fit. "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is sung as call-and-response but isn't about the sea unless it's one of the versions where she drowns him, "Lecha Dodi" is liturgical music and in Hebrew and not at all about the sea, and while "Sōran Bushi" is a sea shanty and the refrain is literally "Put your backs into it! Heave, ho! Heave, ho!", it's also in Japanese and I really doubt that anyone else would had been able to join in. Since the whole point was about singing in groups, I didn't want to hog the spotlight.

Though thosesocks did tell me that sometimes people sing in Irish or Welsh, so maybe I'll practice up on "Sōran Bushi." They might be interested to hear a shanty from a completely different musical tradition!

I left a little early after signing up for the mailing list and then went home and made dinner--currywurst, using Indian curry sauce instead of the spiced ketchup that's more traditional--and then left at the last minute to go to my final event of the weekend. When the Mishkan Director of Development called me, she suggested I sign up for the small groups that Mishkan was doing to help encourage Teshuvah ("repentence," literally "returning") and there was one a few minutes away. Unfortunately one of Chicago's stormbursts rolled through right as I was far enough away that if I went back for my umbrella I would still have been soaked, so I arrived dripping wet, and hostess offered me a towel, and soon we moved into the dining room for the main event. One of the instructions at the beginning was not to gossip about it, so I won't, but I'll just say that I'm very glad the hostess picked "Attention" as the prompt.

Then I went home, watched the last episode of Fruits Basket (Season Two next year! ), and then went to bed. Tonight, worldbshiny and I are going to try once again to go to soufflé pancakes and then she's bringing me to a performance of Bernhardt/Hamlet at the Goodman. Considering the material, I'll be very disappointed if it doesn't end in a riot.