Shana Tova, with guest
Sep. 12th, 2010 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicA happy, healthy, sweet and successful new year to all of you who are celebrating -- and all who aren't, anyway.
Turns out it was a good idea to clean everything, because the next day I received sudden and happy news that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roga would be visiting for the holiday. We ended up going to Rosh Hashanah eve and morning services together at a temple neither of us had visited before, which were very pretty as high holiday services tend to be. It was nice to have a companion, not to mention a companion whose simple presence served as a constant reminder that when we recite these prayers, it's not just memorized sounds the way they taught it to us in Hebrew school, it's a living language. The rabbi totally glomped on to her after services, too. I guess it was a novelty to have a direct import from Israel.
As opposed to previous years, this time when I checked, two of my favorite prayers/songs were on YouTube: the sweet, haunting version of a prayer called R'tzei that's done on the high holidays -- oh, those last few piano chords; and Sim Shalom, sung by a full youth choir and two soloists, one of whom I like very much and who appears to be the lovechild of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Blair Sandburg. Here's a segment of Sim Shalom again, this time with an adult choir, because I think it's really cool that Jewish music can be done by choirs. I hope you'll give them a listen. I think they're beautiful, and in the youth choir one, you can see how thrilled the conductor is with the performance when he finishes them up.
Anyway.roga and I lazed around a bit, met up with deelaundry, hosted alpheratz for an evening, visited marag (note to self: find and read her Wolverine baby-sitting story), took a quick tour of my workplace, ate at a tasty kosher-style deli, and trekked over to the zoo, where highlights included a komodo dragon, comb jellyfish, baby gorilla, elephant shrews, scarlet ibises, and goats on a playground. Seemingly half the animals there were napping or absent, and the zoo was big and hilly and not ideally laid out, but it was nonetheless quite fun to play games like "Track down the panda/lemurs/otters/elephant" and "Figure out why the antelopes are in the paddock next to the cheetahs'" and to marvel at the Jurassic Park-like fences around the larger animal enclosures. roga will surely post a few hundred of the excellent photos she took. She also spent a day wandering around the Mall while I was at work.
This visit, two or three people asked if we were sisters. That never fails to please me.
Last night we made it across the city to Union Station by car almost without error -- curse you, Columbus Circle! -- but minutes too late for the desired train; so we ventured over to near the Capitol Building, where (September 11?) fireworks were happening over a hill, and then I deserted her and her camera in favor of driving home to lie very still in bed with a headache and fall asleep to Psych.
And now here I am on a rainy morning, sans houseguest* but plus good memories and a few story ideas.
*Er, until this evening, when the originally planned non-fannish one arrives for a night.
Turns out it was a good idea to clean everything, because the next day I received sudden and happy news that
roga would be visiting for the holiday. We ended up going to Rosh Hashanah eve and morning services together at a temple neither of us had visited before, which were very pretty as high holiday services tend to be. It was nice to have a companion, not to mention a companion whose simple presence served as a constant reminder that when we recite these prayers, it's not just memorized sounds the way they taught it to us in Hebrew school, it's a living language. The rabbi totally glomped on to her after services, too. I guess it was a novelty to have a direct import from Israel.As opposed to previous years, this time when I checked, two of my favorite prayers/songs were on YouTube: the sweet, haunting version of a prayer called R'tzei that's done on the high holidays -- oh, those last few piano chords; and Sim Shalom, sung by a full youth choir and two soloists, one of whom I like very much and who appears to be the lovechild of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Blair Sandburg. Here's a segment of Sim Shalom again, this time with an adult choir, because I think it's really cool that Jewish music can be done by choirs. I hope you'll give them a listen. I think they're beautiful, and in the youth choir one, you can see how thrilled the conductor is with the performance when he finishes them up.
Anyway.
roga and I lazed around a bit, met up with deelaundry, hosted alpheratz for an evening, visited marag (note to self: find and read her Wolverine baby-sitting story), took a quick tour of my workplace, ate at a tasty kosher-style deli, and trekked over to the zoo, where highlights included a komodo dragon, comb jellyfish, baby gorilla, elephant shrews, scarlet ibises, and goats on a playground. Seemingly half the animals there were napping or absent, and the zoo was big and hilly and not ideally laid out, but it was nonetheless quite fun to play games like "Track down the panda/lemurs/otters/elephant" and "Figure out why the antelopes are in the paddock next to the cheetahs'" and to marvel at the Jurassic Park-like fences around the larger animal enclosures. roga will surely post a few This visit, two or three people asked if we were sisters. That never fails to please me.
Last night we made it across the city to Union Station by car almost without error -- curse you, Columbus Circle! -- but minutes too late for the desired train; so we ventured over to near the Capitol Building, where (September 11?) fireworks were happening over a hill, and then I deserted her and her camera in favor of driving home to lie very still in bed with a headache and fall asleep to Psych.
And now here I am on a rainy morning, sans houseguest* but plus good memories and a few story ideas.
*Er, until this evening, when the originally planned non-fannish one arrives for a night.
