Bits and pieces from NHC

[magid]

Midweek update, in no particular order.

• I'm in the Lakeview apartments this year, which means more (and steeper) walking, and outside the eruv come Shabbat. It also means sharing a bathroom with only one person, and a view of the lake.
  
  
• There are fitted sheets this year! It sounds incredibly trivial, but they used to only have top sheets, and it was impossible to get them to stay on the plastic-surfaced mattresses. However, I'd've thought that if I were putting in a bulk order of fitted sheets for single, extra-long beds, I'd get ones that were extra-long; these just barely fit. Also, sleeping on a bed that is noticeably narrower than my usual means that I wake up a lot more (I usually move around more than most when I sleep, and I'd rather not fall off the bed :-).
  
  
• The workshop I went to on Jewish and Muslim extremism as expressed in women's dress turned out to be more of a general discussion than a presentation of anything new, which was a bit of a disappointment.
  
  
• The workshop on melting cheese on Shabbat was much more interesting, despite not having time to get to any sort of conclusion.
  
  
• The university redid part of the cafeteria, which is nice. However, the food is not the kind of things I prefer to eat, which makes things more challenging. (Really, it is not necessary to have at least one and sometimes two forms of cooked potato at every meal, in addition to many types of bread and sweet baked goods. And for lunches and dinners, there's also pizza and a pasta bar. A typical meal *also* has rice and corn.) Plus I'm spoiled by my farm share; a lot of the produce doesn't inspire me. And vegetable side dishes are mostly single-ingredient ones, often (over-)steamed. *sigh* Also, there's a new mashgiach this year. I hope the old one is ok; I miss chatting with him.
  
  
• I'm really pleased with the classes I'm in, which are halfway done. In the morning the topic is kiddushin and 21st century egalitarianism, and the afternoon class is about geometry in Judaism. More on them (hopefully) later.
  
  
• Yesterday there was a deluge. I thought the weather had turned, but I was wrong, and got caught in a second deluge, which included hail. It hurt! And was cold! I was starting to shiver as I made my way back to my room. Last night I realized I could turn the window fan I'd brought horizontally; it's made a fine dryer for my sopping-wet clothes :-).
  
  
• As usual, I'm getting a fair bit of crocheting done during classes (it's not considered rude, happily), finishing one hat I'd been dragging my feet on, and getting a lot done on the decorations of another. (It's all been work with tiny metal hooks, that I find hard to face at home, but easy enough to do when there's something else to pay attention to other than how tiny the stitches are.)