Read your Jewish News
Cleaning for Pesach, the school dinner, and contract work, plus the shul configuration committee strikes again, office supplies and fixing the my Tallis. You’re reading Air Time, so stick around.
Before I start, let me just tell everyone to see the Detroit Jewish news this week. They ran a story and picture spread on our Jerusalem Pizza hockey team. For those of you wondering about this week, we didn't play, as it was the all star break.
We started to clean for Pesach last week. The ancient ritual is one that we haven’t bothered with in about 8 years, as we have been at my parents and in laws for all those Pesachs. Every year I bitch and moan about being out of the house for the whole holiday, and this year, with my mom running out of space in the house, we decided to stay home for the holiday. Or for the last few days anyway, after we return from NJ.
I’d like to say we found hundreds of dollars, or cool things when we cleaned for Pesach, but all I can report is some loose change and so much crap from my kids school that we needed an entire garbage bag just to get rid of that alone. Why is it that teachers think that parents want to see everything their child does at school. Why should we have to be the ones to toss it in the trash?
But it is gone now, along with much of the crap that has been littering our house. If you do stop over for the holiday, word of warning. DO NOT EAT OFF THE FLOOR under the bookcase or the entertainment center. We swept those areas as best we could, but we did not move them and clean them. Consider yourself warned.
We did find lots of pens, most of which were lifted from past jobs I have worked at. I always keep an eye out for interesting pens, and when I find one that I like, I usually bring it home. I try to hide it from the wife, but she finds it, and steals it from me. And so I need to keep searching for more and more good pens. So far, among other things that fail to impress, the pen situation is dismal. They have decent mechanical pencils, but the only choices are here some crappy papermate comfortmate pens in black and red, and some 7mm roller ball pens in blue and red. Where are the gel pens, the fat pens, the pens that right so smoothly when they touch paper that its like you’re writing on air.
It’s just one more thing to add to the list of problems in the healthcare industry.
Our school dinner took place this past Sunday. I designed the invitations and the school newsletter, which came out looking better than expected considering the types of picture files I was given. Since it is my kids school, and I want the work from them to increase my exposure, I give them a good price break, and use that to pay for things that we don’t want coming out of my wife’s check, like day camp and school registration. In all, they get a good deal and some high-quality PR materials. I get a something for my work, and I am hopeful that it will lead to other work down the line.
I have also been creating shul seating layouts to reflect the almost weekly changes of our shul’s seating configuration. When we moved into the new shul about five years ago, and we were interviewing the rabbi at the question section (you know what I’m talking abuot, everyone asks the rabbi whatever they want, such as would you officiate my sons wedding to a goy, are you anti kiddush club, if you were a body of water, what kind of water would you be), some woman asked if the new shul could have side by side seating. Actually, what she said, in that ultra-militant super feminist tone to help us feel for her plight, was we are tired of sitting in the back of the bus. Did she ever actually ride a bus? What does that even mean? Comparing sitting in the back of shul to being racially discriminated against is like comparing the suffering of standing in a long line waiting for ice cream to being shot at in a concentration camp and bitching about the conditions. But I digress.
The rabbi said as far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter how people sat in shul.
Unfortunately, the sanctuary was already designed and built in a shape that is very conducive to men in the front, women in the back. Or women in the front, men in the back. The point is, the shul was a rectangle with built in bookcases all along the wall. Easy to split horizontally, not so easy to fit vertically.
These women persisted, and now, five years later, they are starting to look at possible seating alternatives. So far we have tried an “L” shaped configuration, where a section of the women’s section juts out into the mens section so the women are enxt to the bimah and the men sitting in that section cannot see the bimah. (This is where I like to sit. My wife sits right behind me when she shows up and we can talk if we need to. I am also being shushed by other women who do not like the level of talking of the people who are now one row in front of them. I say, if you don’t like your new seat mates, move back a few rows.
The there was the penis configuration. Technically, they called it side by side, but let me describe it. There were two women’s section, one on each side of the men, which formed a long shaft down the middle of the shul. The women’s section did not go all the way to the front of the shul, so there was a large section of men’s seats in front io the women’s section.
It’s not all that easy to picture, but if you draw it on paper, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
This week we go for version three, a true side by side experience, with women on each side of the shul, and the men going straight through the middle. For the last two configurations, there was a back entrance for both men and women, with an aisle way blacked off by a mechitza so people can walk to the men’s or women’s section.
To overcome the bookcase problem, they set up a table with siddurim and chumashim, but to be honest, I don’t think it looks nice that way.
I think we are voting on which configuration we like in May.
The thing about contract work is sometimes it is difficult to know your bounds. There are some things we can do here to make us much more efficient, but I wasn’t brought in as a consultant, I was brought in as a contractor, so I am limited by what I can suggest. What we need to do for the manuals is quit doing them in Word. And quit using the track changes tools in word. The files get confusing and complicated. There are actual programs made for writing manuals. Programs like acrobat can be used to simplify a lot of the process, and get rid of all the word junk. But then there is this limitation placed on my position, so all I can do is make small suggestions and then move on to the next project.
My Tallis was broken. The strings weren’t hanging right, so an old guy in shul fixed them for me. Here’s to you, Mr. Mandelbaum. And yes, readers, when we see mr madelbaum walking we can’t help but chant amongst ourselves mandelbaum mandelbaum mandelbaum.
That’s it for me. You’ve been reading Air Time. Have a good shabbos.
Before I start, let me just tell everyone to see the Detroit Jewish news this week. They ran a story and picture spread on our Jerusalem Pizza hockey team. For those of you wondering about this week, we didn't play, as it was the all star break.
We started to clean for Pesach last week. The ancient ritual is one that we haven’t bothered with in about 8 years, as we have been at my parents and in laws for all those Pesachs. Every year I bitch and moan about being out of the house for the whole holiday, and this year, with my mom running out of space in the house, we decided to stay home for the holiday. Or for the last few days anyway, after we return from NJ.
I’d like to say we found hundreds of dollars, or cool things when we cleaned for Pesach, but all I can report is some loose change and so much crap from my kids school that we needed an entire garbage bag just to get rid of that alone. Why is it that teachers think that parents want to see everything their child does at school. Why should we have to be the ones to toss it in the trash?
But it is gone now, along with much of the crap that has been littering our house. If you do stop over for the holiday, word of warning. DO NOT EAT OFF THE FLOOR under the bookcase or the entertainment center. We swept those areas as best we could, but we did not move them and clean them. Consider yourself warned.
We did find lots of pens, most of which were lifted from past jobs I have worked at. I always keep an eye out for interesting pens, and when I find one that I like, I usually bring it home. I try to hide it from the wife, but she finds it, and steals it from me. And so I need to keep searching for more and more good pens. So far, among other things that fail to impress, the pen situation is dismal. They have decent mechanical pencils, but the only choices are here some crappy papermate comfortmate pens in black and red, and some 7mm roller ball pens in blue and red. Where are the gel pens, the fat pens, the pens that right so smoothly when they touch paper that its like you’re writing on air.
It’s just one more thing to add to the list of problems in the healthcare industry.
Our school dinner took place this past Sunday. I designed the invitations and the school newsletter, which came out looking better than expected considering the types of picture files I was given. Since it is my kids school, and I want the work from them to increase my exposure, I give them a good price break, and use that to pay for things that we don’t want coming out of my wife’s check, like day camp and school registration. In all, they get a good deal and some high-quality PR materials. I get a something for my work, and I am hopeful that it will lead to other work down the line.
I have also been creating shul seating layouts to reflect the almost weekly changes of our shul’s seating configuration. When we moved into the new shul about five years ago, and we were interviewing the rabbi at the question section (you know what I’m talking abuot, everyone asks the rabbi whatever they want, such as would you officiate my sons wedding to a goy, are you anti kiddush club, if you were a body of water, what kind of water would you be), some woman asked if the new shul could have side by side seating. Actually, what she said, in that ultra-militant super feminist tone to help us feel for her plight, was we are tired of sitting in the back of the bus. Did she ever actually ride a bus? What does that even mean? Comparing sitting in the back of shul to being racially discriminated against is like comparing the suffering of standing in a long line waiting for ice cream to being shot at in a concentration camp and bitching about the conditions. But I digress.
The rabbi said as far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter how people sat in shul.
Unfortunately, the sanctuary was already designed and built in a shape that is very conducive to men in the front, women in the back. Or women in the front, men in the back. The point is, the shul was a rectangle with built in bookcases all along the wall. Easy to split horizontally, not so easy to fit vertically.
These women persisted, and now, five years later, they are starting to look at possible seating alternatives. So far we have tried an “L” shaped configuration, where a section of the women’s section juts out into the mens section so the women are enxt to the bimah and the men sitting in that section cannot see the bimah. (This is where I like to sit. My wife sits right behind me when she shows up and we can talk if we need to. I am also being shushed by other women who do not like the level of talking of the people who are now one row in front of them. I say, if you don’t like your new seat mates, move back a few rows.
The there was the penis configuration. Technically, they called it side by side, but let me describe it. There were two women’s section, one on each side of the men, which formed a long shaft down the middle of the shul. The women’s section did not go all the way to the front of the shul, so there was a large section of men’s seats in front io the women’s section.
It’s not all that easy to picture, but if you draw it on paper, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
This week we go for version three, a true side by side experience, with women on each side of the shul, and the men going straight through the middle. For the last two configurations, there was a back entrance for both men and women, with an aisle way blacked off by a mechitza so people can walk to the men’s or women’s section.
To overcome the bookcase problem, they set up a table with siddurim and chumashim, but to be honest, I don’t think it looks nice that way.
I think we are voting on which configuration we like in May.
The thing about contract work is sometimes it is difficult to know your bounds. There are some things we can do here to make us much more efficient, but I wasn’t brought in as a consultant, I was brought in as a contractor, so I am limited by what I can suggest. What we need to do for the manuals is quit doing them in Word. And quit using the track changes tools in word. The files get confusing and complicated. There are actual programs made for writing manuals. Programs like acrobat can be used to simplify a lot of the process, and get rid of all the word junk. But then there is this limitation placed on my position, so all I can do is make small suggestions and then move on to the next project.
My Tallis was broken. The strings weren’t hanging right, so an old guy in shul fixed them for me. Here’s to you, Mr. Mandelbaum. And yes, readers, when we see mr madelbaum walking we can’t help but chant amongst ourselves mandelbaum mandelbaum mandelbaum.
That’s it for me. You’ve been reading Air Time. Have a good shabbos.
posted by Air Time at 10:12 AM
1 Comments:
Yep, there was the lesbian, in her formative frum years.
A shame we didn't realize way back then.
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