devarim

I have temporarily disabled comments and pings on Devarim post older than twenty-one days. If you'd like to contact me about an earlier post, you can email me (or use my gmail address, if you know it).

In possibly the dumbest move of my life, I decided to go leave my car with only half a tank of gas last night, rather than filling up the tank again (I had just done that on Monday). Half a tank is not quite enough gas to get me to and from work today and tomorrow, and due to the holiday weekend coming up, demand was going to be high today even without the well-publicized impending shortage...

Does anyone know whether this is legitimate? If so, it is shaping up to be a good resources for at least once segment of the displaced New Orleans community and their loved ones.

Update: I thought it was clear from the fact that there were already comments here stating that the site is legit, but just to make it perfectly obvious - Yes. This is a credible diary/blog/information page.

It is (just barely, okay, maybe I missed it by a few minutes) Rosh Chodesh Elul. A month of reflection, the month of my mother's yahrzeit, and also the month in which we got married.

With the help of some terrific friends (thanks, everyone!), we've moved about half of our belongings (including lots of the annoying and heavy stuff, like books) into our new apartment. It's nice to have the move underway, but my back has seen better days.

Anyone want to feed a lovely blogger and her lovely husband (in the throes of moving) and possibly his lovely parents this coming Shabbat (September 9 and 10)?

To clarify, for the smart alecks in the crowd - I'm looking at you, persephone and uberimma - we are in search of local meals hosts. Please.

Update: No lovely parents-in-law this weekend. They are still lovely, but they will have to be lovely in New York for now. We now have plans for dinner (thank you ruth!), but a lunch invitation would be very much appreciated.

I thought it was bad for my sister when she ended up with my seventh-grade English teacher last year. This year, though, her English teacher is...one of my seventh-grade classmates. Next year she'll be in high school, where my sister-in-law teaches chemistry and one of my close friends (and a bridesmaid in my wedding) teaches English. She's never going to get away with anything.

Poor kid. Poor teachers.

Yeah, yeah, I need to update this blog with our moving tales. Short story: most of our stuff is in the new apartment, hopefully before we go to sleep tonight all if it will be there, and there will be an open house at the old place on Sunday. Also, many thanks to the friends who will be having us over for Shabbat meals this week and to the other friends who tried to invite us over but were just a little too late. We truly appreciate it.

Anyway, the real reason I'm posting: I just read about the New York Times's new subscription service: TimesSelect. It actually sounds like a pretty interesting deal for $49.95 per year (or free with home delivery of the Times), with liberal access to the article archives and promises of online interaction with columnists. However, it seems like the columns themselves, which are printed in the daily paper and have been available online for free for many years (along with the paper's other content), will no longer be accessible to non-subscribers:

Subscribers to TimesSelect will have exclusive online access to many of our most influential columnists in Op-Ed, Business, New York/Region and Sports. In addition to reading the columns, TimesSelect subscribers can also engage with our columnists through video interviews and Web-only postings.

All of our news, features, editorials and analysis will remain free to readers of NYTimes.com, as will our interactive graphics, multimedia and popular video minutes.

There's a doozy of a thunderstorm rolling through East Cambridge at the moment. We (the P&F law clerks, that is) all spent a few moments gazing out at the rain as if we had never seen water before, and then one by one returned to our desks and our diligent pursuits of Legal Truths and Justice. My workspace faces away from our windows, so I could enjoy the sound of the rain without being distracted by the view outside. Here and there a flash of lightning reflected off of the unused glass (interior) door in front of me, but overall the storm seemed relatively quiet.

Until, of course, I nearly fell out of my seat in response to a roar of thunder roughly equivalent in volume to a 747 engine lodged into one's skull. Now we're taking bets on when the power will go out, which is kind of a crap shoot since the combination of air conditioner, printer, and water cooler usually trips a breaker in our little office space at least twice each day.

Rajiv tipped me off to this opportunity for bloggers to get onto the press list for an advance screening of Serenity next week. Those bloggers who received confirmation emails (not actually guaranteeing us seats, but at least putting our names on The List) have been asked to post the following official movie blurb:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE [sic], ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

I must admit that I was not enthralled with the (extended length) pilot upon first viewing, but after "The Train Job," I was hooked. And in my usual obsessive way, I began reading up on everything Firefly (including the terrific Firefly Wiki). I love future-world stuff, I love conspiracy theories, and I love good dialogue. Not much to complain about here.

So, with some luck, I hope to get into the screening on Tuesday evening, and then before the movie officially opens I'll report back with a review, or at least some semi-coherent thoughts.

According to the article in today's Metro, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher were married over the weekend in "a Kabbalah ceremony." Obviously, this is some wonderful facet of Judaism I missed out on, having had the terribly poor judgment of getting married before the age of forty.

Anyone want to join me in my attempt to get into the Serenity screening this evening? I would go with Julian, but he's presenting at SNUG today and probably can't make it downtown in time. I can take one person, and I reserve the right to pick someone I know personally and/or use other criteria in my choice.

If you are interested, please email my gmail address. If you don't have that address, you probably don't qualify as "someone I know personally" anyway.

I got this meme from Twink, who got it from Amanda, and so on...

Rules:

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it).
3. Find the 5th sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

(For the record, I did.)

Persephone is undergoing her first IVF embryo transfer this Shabbat. So if everyone could think good thoughts in her general direction, that would be spiffy.