All in all, things are looking auspicious. I mean, it’s easy to say that the first week of a semester, when the notebooks are still all pretty and new and the sweet scent of optimism (not to mention SPRING! Hooray for Adar!) is wafting through the Beit Midrash. And yet, I’ve been doing this rab school thing for a while, now, and I reckon my detectors are pretty well honed for this sort of thing.

Professorial lineup seems somewhere between good and fabulous (still haven’t had one class, we’ll see in which direction that teacher nudges things), hevruta (study partner) lineup seems great, material, you know: Torah. (This is a good thing). I mean, granted, I’m going into this semester a little burnt out, which is maybe natural when one is in one’s third year of a five-year program (Sunday, got to school and started wondering aloud whether it was too late to ditch this whole rabbinic lifestyle thing and work as a barrista–my friend Maria, later, informed me over email that since one can’t get a job at a coffee shop without an advanced degree, I may as well stick with this for the moment.) But even so, I think it’s going to be one heck of a crazy spring. Just have to pace myself, as this is a marathon, not a sprint.

By pacing myself, of course, I mean running around and playing this weekend. Adar is good for a girl, especially when there are two Adars. Double your simcha, double your fun and all that.

On that note, what the heck am I gonna be for Purim? I am from San Francisco and take drag and dress-up (you say tomato…) very, very seriously. Plus I consider it my civic duty to outdo myself each year. I just need a concept that I like and then I can easily rachet it up to mach 10, but finding the right concept is the hard part. Last year I was tumah (ritual impurity). The year before that I was the seir l’Azazel (scapegoat). Next year maybe I’ll have the time and resources to do Cohen Gadol (High Priest) the way The (mighty) Sisters do nunnery. But I refuse do to that here, where I have pitiful access to fist-sized rhinestones and other crucial accoutrements d’drag. So I remain adrift, wondering what aspect of the Temple cult I will call down this year. Suggestions welcome. Maybe I need to rent Jesus Christ Superstar for inspiration….