I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

Things that have been happening lately:

• Awesome visits from out-of-town friends (with more on the schedule).
• One band gig. Not a lot of audience, but some nice photos. Next one is Sunday evening, Sept. 29 -- watch this space!
• Work is kicking my ass. We have entered crunch mode before start of school. I expect it to be running at high gear from now until approximately Chanukah (= Thanksgiving)... except for the part where we have off roughly half of the month of September, due to holiday timing, which will both ameliorate and exacerbate the strain. At minimum, I'm gonna need to get my butt into work closer to 8am all the coming week or two, because there is no freaking way I can hope otherwise to get everything done that I need to by start of school. Gah.
• Coworker crush still operative. Awkwardness resulting from certain ill-advised episode* at department retreat 5+ weeks ago finally beginning to die down. (*Seriously, though, I asked for permission a good 12 hours ahead of time, and got it, so it wasn't like I jumped him out of the blue.)
• Handful of dates, non-dates, or semi-dates with various people at various levels of interest.
• A few surprising episodes of breakup grief being triggered by various things, particularly a couple of the aforementioned *-dates. Okay, THAT part is not exactly surprising, but it's always surprising when things suddenly rise up at you, isn't it?
• Awesome beach day yesterday with ZZ.
• Some well-received design work for BHT. Also for shul (new member welcome booklet for high holidays). So it begins.
• Oh hey, I sold another art piece online recently (this one). I love when that happens.
• Working on G&S music for Rockville (Ruddigore and Grand Duke). Also, there was a Pirates of Penzance living-room sing in Brooklyn today, which I did just for fun.
• Did I mention that I have a paid gig for the High Holidays? Singing backup again, basically, for the services at Ohel Ayalah. It means I'll have to trade off some time when I'd otherwise be at T&V singing with the choir, but it'll be nice exposure and a really fun thing to do... and I will get to sing one of the three iterations of Kol Nidrei. Solo. For reals. For a congregation of like 200+ people.
• Sleep has been poor of late (my body has decided 5 hours at a stretch is all it wants to take in... sort of like when my phone battery was wearing out, and couldn't take or hold enough charge anymore. That, at least, I could replace and give it a whole new lease on life). Running on fumes seems to be catching up with me, as I started to feel noticeably iffy today, and need to go to bed within the next hour in an effort to stave it off.
• Got back more seriously on the no-sugar wagon for the past week or so. Not sure if this was related to today's crash or no, but I ended up carbing it up tonight just to see. After which, I am feeling slightly better, so I dunno.
• Booked trip to see my dad (and hopefully some assorted friends) in Indiana the first days of Sukkot, Sept. 19-22.

Whew.

Seders, and vacation:

I had invitations to both seder nights, which were nice in different ways. First seder was with justom's family friends who live in the city, the ones who had me to Rosh Hashanah -- so it was lovely to be with "family", and particularly when it's on his side, you know?

The only problem with the second seder was that it was with some relatively frum and scholarly friends, who called the seder for 9pm (as one does when it falls on a Saturday night, because you have to wait for the Sabbath to be really, truly over)... and I bailed out at 1:40am, when they were serving the soup course. It was really pretty great discussion, and there was a wide selection of green vegetable courses on the table for karpas so that it wasn't directly a problem of falling over starving for 4 hours... but, I just ran dramatically out of gas at that point and had to go home in tears to crawl into my own bed. Where I stayed well past noon, and that was great.

Since then, I have been on vacation all this week, and apparently all I can do is SLEEP ALL THE TIME, like until 11am every day (admittedly, I am also staying up later, but only til 1am instead of the usual midnight). I am trying to take this as "my body needs restoring for some reason", and just enjoy having the opportunity. Oh, and sitting around reading library books.

Mind, I've also been doing set build for Blue Hill Troupe's Utopia, which goes up in a couple weeks. So that's a little like doing actual work. I have some other work I should also be doing this week, both for work-work and for freelance work (remember that project that was supposed to go to press March 1? Yeah, he finally sent me the rest of the manuscript), but hey, there are days left to go, right?

Food:

I had some duck stock in the freezer from the last time I made duck (this was, er, moved from Somerville), so I made matzah ball soup out of it Sunday night. Also, I remembered that I had the brilliant notion some time ago of buying a little spring-loaded OXO cookie scoop specially for the purpose of making matzah balls, so I finally dug it out, and OMG was this the way to go. Beautifully rounded, consistently sized, and done in about half the time it normally takes to whack out two dozen dumplings. NOM. (I think I would recommend going for the medium scoop, though -- these were just a tad smaller than I would normally prefer to make.)

I also made lamb stew in the crockpot, and eggplant caponata, and poached salmon and asparagus, and and and. I think I have made enough food to last out the week, now. Especially since it turns out that all I really want for most of the day is like 3 pieces of matzah and cream cheese for breakfast. At this rate, I might have to buy a second box.

Also, my favorite Passover candy is the fancy peppermint patties that come 8 to a box. I love that sort of thing anytime (Junior Mints, anyone?), and while I've heard people complain about the slightly chalky texture of the Passover ones, I actually love them that way. But also, they come conveniently rationed for 1 per day, serving as a sort of reverse Advent calendar. Countdown to chametz!

And now I should go do something useful for a couple hours before we go see Death of a Salesman tonight. :-D

Oh, but since I just got this and it's on-topic, here: Passover Rhapsody (from Aish HaTorah, but it's cute).

The last two nights, I've had the luxury of being able to get into bed by midnightish and sleep relatively late (Sunday morning, until 10am; today, until about 8:30 since there's nothing requiring my presence at work before 10).

What happens? For the first and second time in a good two months, I wake up at 4-5am, promptly have a jolt of completely fruitless anxiety (Here's an email you should have sent before bed! Here's the phone* you should have bought! Here's something you didn't manage to finish at work on Friday! Hardly anyone's** signed up for Honorable Menschen auditions!) and lie there for AN HOUR AND A HALF in the middle of the night, simultaneously bolt-awake and so tired I'm ready to die.

UGH.

( footnotes )

And while I'm at it: Why did my body decide that the way to celebrate my 38th birthday was to erupt two ENORMOUS pimples on my chin? Is this some misguided attempt at "youthful"? Huh? HUH???