So I supposed to be reading Book Nineteen (not XIX) of the Iliad, but I'm fond of procrastination and so I decided to read Banania's blog instead. And I found her NaNo Response, and duly remembered that I said I'd write one too. Do you remember, Bana-knee-uh? We were walking back from that Starbucks writing thing? No? Okay then ( Read more... )

 It seems that I always write when I'm fasting. But it's Yom Kippur (Judaism's Day of Atonement) and though I don't go to synagogue or pray or abstain from work, but I do fast. And it's not a particularly strenuous fast - 25 hours, and you can drink water - but I admit it, I like to eat, especially freshly baked by the undomestic-me cookies. Still ( Read more... )

So school starts in less than a week - it'll be our last first day, which is kind of scary, but whatever - and Mater and I have decided to go on a cleanse. Y'know, one of those healthy-hippie-veg-head things that I occasionally mock but partake in nonetheless. It's supposed to be for a minimum of ten days, but I'm only going to do two, and it's ( Read more... )

It is. I'm doing summer school this summer, and so these few weeks between exam prep hell and grade twelve English and history are rather busy with library research seshes, and eating my weight in backyard-grown berries, Breyers vanilla, and matzah leftover from Passover, while reading All Quiet or Night or whatever else I need to read.

So it's ( Read more... )

Perfection is impossible, yet applauded, in our meritocratic society, and the best is never quite good enough. You may have a 95% average, you may run track and play soccer, and you may volunteer in a soup kitchen every Thursday night and tutor under-served children on Sunday mornings, but you're still missing something. Yeah, your activities and ( Read more... )

You - or at least I - can measure the length of time I've known someone based on their phone number.

Right now, if I want to phone almost anyone other than my parents or my grandmother, I have to whine to my mother for her address book, or at the very least scroll through my cell phone. But back in the day, when we now Internet-addicted teens were ( Read more... )

So, it's my cousin's bat mitzvah tomorrow, and I've just returned from a Shabbat dinner at her dad's house. It was mildly awkward, with there being no-one else under fifty (the bat mitzvah girlie was absent from her own celebratory dinner... but that's what divorce does to kids' schedules), and no-one else unable to chant Hebrew blessings ( Read more... )