Thursday night

I had lots of things I thought I might get off my to-do list last night (not the least of which was use up the enormous Chinese cabbage in a huge salad that I would foist onto p'luckers, with the added benefit of actually seeing said p'luckers). None of those things happened. Happily, none of the things were time sensitive (well, except for the Thursday night gathering and proposed foisting of farm bounty).

Instead, I got to hang out with some friends and help with a project. I had a good time with it. And an added benefit was getting to talk with people I feel like I haven't had time with in far too long. (I'm now anticipating the narration of a cookie :-).

There were some other interesting moments. Yet again I appreciated the welcoming feel of the MIT campus. Meandering in and using space is fine, as long as you're flexible about it. So we got to see a wonderful ballroom dancer practicing with a phantom partner, for instance. It reminded me of how wonderful good ballroom dance can be; perhaps I'll go back to the MIT dance club (I wonder if it runs through the summer?).
(This is a contrast to Harvard, where things just aren't as friendly, somehow. Yes, I've used their buildings sometimes, usually with an official Harvard person of some stripe or another, but the feel was more forbearance than live and let live.)

What I find interesting is how in the middle of making something, you can see all the little imperfections, but when it's done, the whole asserts itself somehow, and it becomes a fully complete thing that doesn't seem to hold on to those imperfections. For instance, when I make a crocheted piece, I can point to a stich gone wrong, but in the end, I can focus on the whole piece (bag, kippah, whatever), and no one else notices the bit gone wrong at all (maker's privilege to notice the mistakes, I guess).

A good night.

Theatre notes

In reading bits of the Globe this morning, I found that there really is going to be a professional theater in Central Square, with productions projected to start in 2005. Very cool.

And in the same article there was information about this summer's (free) Shakespeare Company production on Boston Common: Macbeth begins preview performances July 18, opens July 23, and runs through Aug. 10.

In previous years I've 'hosted' the Thursday night (vegetarian/vegan) potluck on the Common. This year *checks calendar* their run is pretty much the 3 weeks of the summer that start with a minor fast day and lead up to a major fast day (Tisha B'Av (lit. "the ninth of Av), commemorating the destruction of both Temples, as well as almost every other horrible thing that has happened to Jews in the last two millenia or so). Which is the last Thursday of their run. Hrm. Definitely not going to be going to Macbeth on Tisha B'Av, and I'd rather not go during the first days of Av, either. Which means that if I'm going to host a potluck on the Common (ie a Thursday)(rather than just go with a heck of a lot fewer people some other night), it's going to have to be Thursday July 24. Not ideal, certainly. Still, I've had people ask me about it months ago already, if I'm organizing it again this year, so... (At least it's not a comedy. That helps me feel better about it.)

Peeve

I just hate it when people use "name" when they mean "list."

"Name the coefficients of the polynomial." is completely different from "List the coefficients of the polynomial."
The former makes me think of the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin is asked to write something on a test "in his own words." Of course, his own words have a distinct lack of vowels and a greater tendency towards x's than is usual in English... Technically, a student could write "Jayne, Carolyn, and Michael" to answer the question. Of course, the student will end up with a reputation as a smart-aleck, but that's not quite the point. It's not unreasonable to expect well-written questions (or direction lines) in a text book.