I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

Here it is Wednesday, my third official morning as a New Yorker. :-} And the cable Internet guy came today, so we now have a happy little wireless router blinking away on top of the big bookshelf in the corner.

( notes from W. 116th St., day 3 )

Also, I'm going to have to come up to Boston sometime in the next ~5 days to hand off my car to its buyer. I won't make it to the End-of-Summer Party (lunch plans with jessruth!), but am hoping to time things so as to get to see theatreatfirst's As You Like It. :-} I'll try to keep you all apprised.

Did I mention that moving was postponed to Sunday 9/4? (Any NYC peeps who want to drop by Sunday afternoon/evening or Monday daytime to help with unpacking and setup will be MOST welcome. :-)

( September 2011 calendaring )

So there's this hurricane en route.

Which is going to sweep through NYC later today and then on up to Boston Sunday morning, by which time it may have downgraded to Tropical Storm.

Also, you may have incidentally noticed, we're moving scheduled to move on Sunday.

Yes, we know this is suboptimal.

No, we don't know if the move will really be able to take place. We have to call the movers tonight and see what they say. (When we called them Thursday, they said "Oh yeah, totally going ahead! Unless we can't, of course, in which case we can't reschedule you until Sept. 6, so basically you're screwed!")

So.

Either way, we still have to finish all the packing today just in case, so anyone [local enough to travel safely!] who wants to come over this afternoon and help pack the kitchen, plastic-wrap furniture, etc. will be rewarded with pizza. Probably from Pescatore. :-)

Also, we have a stereo, possibly a vacuum cleaner, and undoubtedly some other fun things (four pounds of potatoes??) still to give away!

Which reminds me also: WTF do I do with an entire box of tech trash (cables, external disk drives, etc)? I have three dead laptops I need to dispose of, I know I can take those to MicroCenter or something, but the rest? (That is, in the next 24 hours with minimal time investment on my part.) reuse?

I've been Freecycling up a storm this week as I work on packing/purging stuff (yeah, I had the better part of a year to do this, but did I? nooooo). Right now, I offer up the following:

( remaining: glasses, stationery?, formal gown, papasan )

I'm also giving away a bunch of my Judaica books and having a fire sale on my framed artwork. :-} Some other framed posters (not my art) to give away as well.

Pick up from me in Somerville by appointment on Saturday morning/afternoon the 20th, or Monday night the 22nd (probably after 8pm), or really Tue/Wed are fine too. I can probably also use sorting/cleaning help at those times, but ping me first.

This past Shabbat morning, August 6th, tremontstshul had a farewell kiddush in my honor.

I got to stand up and say a few words (it was Parshat Dvarim, get it??) -- although I wasn't sure if I felt more like the Israelites about to cross the Jordan (which, as I pointed out, in Italian is il Giordano), or like Moshe admonishing the Israelites by way of a historical overview of their sojourn. But it seemed to go okay.

And there was lox, and real whitefish (lovingly deboned by B"H Model), and black-and-whites.

There were also a couple of nice tribute parodies offered, which I found so delightful that I wanted to record them here for posterity and share with you all. One was written by father-of-hilaritea to the tune of the Major General's song from The Pirates of Penzance:

( I am the very model of egalitarian orthodox... )

Edited To Add, since someone asked: In fact, no, I don't consider myself Orthodox by any stretch. We noted that privately at the time of the dramatic reading. (But it does rhyme so beautifully with "paradox".)

The other was written by la_vie_en_rosie and her spouse, RLS formerly of the Menschen, in the vein of Eishet Chayil (A Woman of Valor), which is a passage from Proverbs traditionally sung on Friday nights to the woman of the household:

( Erica Chayil )

I was absolutely tickled.

A number of other people very dear to me were specially present, and we had lots of singing, and a fair quantity of Scotch, and it was a lovely sendoff. Thanks to all those of you who were there.

(And if you missed it, it looks like I'm still going to be in town after all for the Community Shabbat Dinner on August 19th, so you can sign up for that. There'll probably even still be some Scotch left.)