I am here, in this beautiful city very far north, where I can go running around a lake that is clear and clean and pretty. The drive up was lovely, mostly, except that there was too much driving. There was a quick stop in Ashland (no time to take in the Shakespeare festival, but a decent veggie burger at least), Shabbos in a national forest outside Eugene, a hajj to offer supplications at the great temple that is Powell’s Books, and now here, the next place. I’m in a coffee shop where a barrista won the 2005 United States Barrista Championships. It’s like that, see. I’m enjoying myself immensely–4th of July was spent on a friend of a friend’s houseboat, seeing the prettiest and most impressive fireworks I’ve ever experienced, with a soundtrack and everything. If this rabbinical thing doesn’t work out, I might try to become a fireworks choreographer, one of the people who figures out what explodes in what order to what songs.
Anyway, gonna be working my little tuchus off a bit, so not sure how much blogging will be happening in the near future, but keep checking–I’m sure I’ll be poking my head up now and again. Probably more once there’s actually internet at my place of residence.
In the meantime, a couple of new good Jewy links, which I’ll put up on the sidebar when I get around to it. Morfix is a Hebrew-English dictionary with Arabic connections, and this site has a metric ton of sifrei kodesh online in Hebrew/Aramaic. Enjoy!